Valentine for A Homeschool Mom

The following was published anonymously as my contribution to a very small local newsletter at the beginning of the month.  My hope was that it would rekindle a deeper, sacred heart of husbands for wives, wives for husbands.  I am posting it here because it IS, after all, Valentine's Day and there is but one home-educating mother who was and is the inspiration for my romantic ruminations.

Dear One,

Where to begin?  We have traveled some distance from our first Valentine's day.  I loved you then, and I love you now, though neither of us are quite the same.  I have smiled (to myself) as you have struggled bravely with the changes time and child-bearing have brought.  You are still beautiful.

Your daily activities seem endless.  When other women take their education and their talents and their passion to the work world where they can dress nicely and receive glowing annual reviews and actually get paid for their efforts, you toil diligently in near anonymity instilling timeless truths into the fertile ground of a few young minds.  Our children, the fruit of our marriage. These little images of you and I have no understanding of the magnitude of your task and will not until they are grown and someday have children of their own.  Even my understanding of all you do is limited to what I see from the edges of the day.  Yet, your heavenly Father sees fully your hidden labor of love.  I am grateful for you.

But, this is not Mother's Day, it is Valentine's Day.  So, for all that I am thankful to God for the gift you are to our children, what you are to me is an even greater treasure (in my ever-so-slightly-selfish manly heart).  For, in spite of all you invest in our children, you somehow have time for me.  You listen to my mundane complaints about the job, you make sure I am fed and clothed, you allow time for my linear mind to grind away to conclusions your intuition discovered long ago, you appreciate my dreams.  In all my failures and triumphs, your love is constant.  You are the one who inspires me, whose eyes look best and brightest in candlelight, whose smile affirms like none other, whose prayer sustains me even when I am not aware of it.  In the 'for better or for worse' of married life, you have been the better.  You are precious to me.

I am thankful that centuries ago a priest named Valentine had the courage to resist an emperor's edict forbidding marriage and that someone decided he was a saint and needed a special day on the calendar so that you and I can celebrate the mystery of our love today.  My Valentine's Day wish, etched on innumerable tiny heart-shaped candies, is that you will always 'Be Mine'.

Your 'Valentine'