Insert obligatory Valentine’s Day Post:

Actually it’s also ash Wednesday and I used to go to a Lutheran Church, and Lutherans and Catholics both celebrate Ash Wednesday, so yeah.

Seriously, we joke about observing the holiday’s, but what are holidays for if not to turn our minds to the same good old ideas at least once a year. That is why we have annual celebrations.

So on this holiday devoted to love, but especially Eros, it’s only right to honor that by posting something about it.

As you can imagine, an day devoted to love of any sort is a win for me. I love love. I never get tired of discussing it.

But what does an always single person like me get out of Valentines’s Day?

For us singles, this day either becomes a day for friends and family (including the friend zone people you secretly hope will do something romantic after all on Valentine’s Day) or a day for moping about our loneliness.

I’ve never seen the point of the latter. Truthfully, since I’ve never not been single, it’s just not a bigger deal to me to day then an other day.

But because of that this day also isn’t a huge deal for me at all. My family makes home made Valentine’s, we give each other candy, sometimes my parents go out or get each other candy or a special card. But that’s about it.

Since I’m not on social media, I don’t have to suffer from all the FOMO of seeing my friends’ perfect days and dates.

Sure, I could be envious, but actually all the friends I have are single or not dating their crush or already married, so I don’t have all that much to envy.

Like many Christians, I take this day as one to think of God’s love on, and to think of how I should love other people better. One of the best ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day is to just be nicer to people, or do something for someone in your life that you wouldn’t normally do.

St. Valentine (who’s full title is actually the official name of today, we all cut out the Saint now) was a man committed to preserving godly marriage in a day and age when it had been outlawed. At least that’s the account I’ve heard.

So that’ partly why romantic love is the focus of the day, but also godly love. For St. Valentine was a christian (duh), and it takes guts and faith to keep marrying people when it could get you killed.

Sadly I have to wonder how many Christians today would even put up a real fight if that happened. I mean, the definition of marriage has already changed. What next?

But that’s a sad thought, and this is supposed to be happy. However since today is also Ash Wednesday, which among other things, reminds us that we are dust and we will return to dust, the mingling of love and death seems appropriate.

Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Lent. The 40 days of fasting before Easter that some churches observe. It’s not a bad idea, fasting is a sobering thing, but healthy in the right amounts.

Some folks think it’s obsessive, but it’s not scientifically dangerous to fast 40 days if you are in good health and drink lots of water and even juice. OF course you should know your body before you undertake food fasting.

Lent reminds us to be humble, and to remember Christ’s sufferings and fasting for us before the cross and resurrection of Easter.

Love and Death, as Rick Riordan observed in his books “The Son of Neptune” and “The House of Hades” are oddly often similar.

But I don’t go so far as to say they are the same thing. Death can be a part of love, but it doesn’t follow that love is a part of death.

Today represents all the “dizzy dancing way (we) feel, when every fairy-tale is real” as Both Sides Now puts it, and it also represents the suffering, shadow, and death that the Christian life, and any life really, entails.

I enjoy the fairy-tale part, the giddy feels, the romantic movies, the candy; the dreaming about one day actually having a date on this day…but do I discount the not so pleasant parts?

You might know that one song from Disney’s Robin Hood, that Maid Marian sings (or thinks, one or the other) “Love goes on.”

Love, it seems like only yesterday, you were just a child at play. Now you’re all grown up inside of me, oh how fast those moments flee.

Once we watched a lazy world go by, now the days seem to fly, life is brief, but when it’s gone, love goes on and on.

Love will live, love will last, love goes on and on.

I think that sums it up, love goes on even to death, and today of all days we should remember that.

So if your’e celebrating with someone you know, then just do something a little more selfless. Be willing to suffer. Yes guys, even to watch chick flicks, and girls even to do something that you might not find all that romantic, but he wants to do.

And singles, hey, make the most of today with what you can.

“…and provide for those who grieve… to bestow on them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Isiah 61:3.

-Natasha.