Valentine's Day - A Day to Celebrate God Within Us (Audio)

ITP #32: If God is Love, and Valentine's day is a day to celebrate love, then shouldn't Valentine's day be a day to celebrate God? On this week's Inside the Pomegranate, Anush shares some thoughts seeing the beauty and love around us, and appreciating the God within.
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Valentine's Day - A Day to Celebrate God Within Us

Valentine's day has always been a favorite day for me.  What a beautiful day to celebrate love.  I think this was set in motion in my childhood.  My father was big on Valentine's Day.   He was a romantic, and would send my mom flowers.  It was a given.  I remember coming home from school with expectations of seeing what kind of flowers my mom got each year.  Always red (my dad's favorite color).  Roses, antheriums, gladiolas, tulips.  There were also presents for us.  My father was a pharmacist, within a larger store equivalent to say, a Walmart.  So he would come home with heart-shaped boxes of candy for each of us kids, along with little stuffed animals, mugs, whatever caught his eye.  Pre-Valentine's day, there were valentine's to choose to give to our classmates.  And I'd come home with my brown lunch bag decorated with pink and red construction paper hearts (of course) packed full of those little valentines from my classmates.  Fun times.

And I still love Valentine's day.   On Valentine's Day morning, during my prayer time, I was thinking about the concept of "God is Love".  And with all the preparation for Valentine's Day and talk about love, I started thinking about this day of love and how it ties in with God.  And so here it is.  Valentine's day is a day that we celebrate love.  And since God is love, and Christ is love incarnate, this beautiful day takes on new meaning.  Now stay with me and think about it.

What happens when Valentine's day approaches?  We head over to the store to buy our valentine cards...or we bring out the paper and pens and create our own.  We think of our loved ones regardless of their shortcomings.  I mean, if you purchase your cards, you read through the messages to find the one that best suits your love.  From sappy to funny, they all focus on the good qualities not the bad.  For that one day, we don't focus on the fact that the lightbulbs didn't get replaced, or the trash didn't get taken out, or that I leave shoes all over the house wherever I take them off.  We focus on the best in one another.  We accept one another's shortcoming and we appreciate what we do have together.  Right?

Isn't that what God does?  He understands that we are not perfect.  He accepts us with all our flaws and quirks and loves us unconditionally.  He is there for us always, whether we take the time to acknowledge Him or not, and he doesn't care if the dishes didn't get done.  And though, I'm sure He doesn't like us sometimes, He loves us ALWAYS!

And then what about the candy?  Life is sweet.  God gives us that sweetness.  The sweetness of love, the innocence of children, the ability to love.  As God is love, and we are created by God, we are created with the ability to love one another.  That love factor is implanted in each and every one of us.  It's part of our genetic make up ingrained in each of us.  But just like the God-given talents that each of us possess, it's up to us to nurture those talents and build them up. The same is true of love.  In other words, we have the tremendous capacity to love one another, and to embrace one another for the unique individuals that we are, but it takes practice?  Are we looking at the glass as half empty? or half full?  Are focusing on our loved one's faults or are we seeing them as beautiful as is?  That's the hard part, right?

And then there are the Valentine flowers.  Take a look at those flowers.  Colorful, beautiful, delicate and

intricate.  Have you ever tried mixing colors to paint a flower, or anything in nature for that matter.  The sunset, the sunrise?  It's not just "out of the tube" color.  It's a mixture.  If you're looking at a red rose. The color is not just Alizarian crimson or scarlet lake.  There are all kinds of colors within those shadows and highlights.  There is beauty in the highlights and the shadows.  Just like there are lessns to be learned during our dark days and the light happy ones.  The love that God has for us, and instills in us...and ability to see the beauty around us, are all put there by God. We delight in that beauty. The colors, the fragrances, the way it all fits together to make our lives that much more pleasurable.  Even when our days get a little cloudy, or downright dark, the beauty is still there if we can only see beyond the darkness and look toward the light within.  Because God is always there.  Love is always there.

In searching for quote on love, I came across this quote by John Lennon:
                            "We need to learn to love ourselves first in all our glory and imperfections.  
                            If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others 
                            or our potential to create."\
I glossed over this quote at first.  What didn't appeal to me was the part about loving ourselves. Self love.  It kind of comes off as being proud, boastful, conceited.  Right?  But it's not that at all.  I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately.  A lot of writing about the little things that make me tick.  And one of my biggest problems has been my lack of self-acceptance.  "Love ourselves first in all our glory and imperfections" it says.  That's a tough one.  But I am so much more than my "parts", you know?  We can learn to love ourselves imperfectly.  Simply as being God's creation with a capacity to love and radiate His divine love and light to others.  When we can put aside our own failings...our own flaws and shortcomings and just accept ourselves - love ourselves - we can then throw away the self-absorbed negative speak that goes on inside us and understand that we are all part of God's creation, no better or worse than anyone else,  we can then focus on accepting others as they are, and creating a beautiful and sweet world for all.  A world where we see the beauty of God's love in each person and open up our hearts and minds to spreading that love and kindness to others.  Here's another nice quote I came across.

So what are your thoughts on this?  I love Valentine's day.  It's a day of love...and therefore it's a day of God.  It's a chance for us to look beyond the petty - as God does.
                       To see the potential and beauty in our loved ones - as God does.
                                   And to love one another unconditionally and to celebrate God within us,
                                               and give thanks for the love and beauty around us!

I hope you all had a beautiful Valentine's day and that you carry the message of love and beauty forward everyday.

An Amazing Love - or - The Love Gene

I don't know how they do it.  Nurses.  I read a post on Facebook just yesterday and in a nutshell, it said this:  They don't have time to take care of their physical needs because they are taking care of ours.  They get yelled at because our medication is late, they are away from their families because they are there taking care of ours.  I know this all too well because in 2011, I was hospitalized three times over a six month period.  And while I was going through all that, my daughter Ani was a nursing student.  As a nurse's aide, I heard all about her day to day and so I tried, despite my pain, to be kind to my nurses.  When I was going through my bouts of cancer, my daughter was there by my side, not quite a nurse yet, but so loving and caring.  She would follow up with my appointments, question my doctors, sit beside me to offer support.  All good training for what was ahead.  That very year, I proudly watched her graduate nursing school just 6 weeks after my surgery,  and the following year I was there to celebrate the completion of her nursing residency.  And so why am I bringing this up now?  Old news, right?

Well, today is Valentine's day.  A day to appreciate those we love.  And I wanted to share this with you because it touched my heart.  This morning I got on the bus at 6:30 a.m.  In my mad rush to get out of the house on time, I grabbed my phone off the charger, threw it in my pocket and made it to the bus on time.  Looking down at my phone when I finally sat down, I saw a text message from my daughter:  "I just went to see my patient.  He's not looking too good.  Please keep him in your prayers."  My daughter and I are united in a lot of things, but one of the strongest of these is prayer.  So I prayed - on the 409 Commuter bus - for her patient.  That God give his body strength to receive the medications, treatments and care.  But also, that if that was not possible, that He not allow this child to suffer long.  I texted her back.  and looking at my phone I realized that her text had come to me at midnight.  6.5 hours earlier.  I wrote her...apologizing for the delay...asking how her patient was, hoping that he made it through.  But she responded that he had passed away during the night.  This patient had been in her life in and out of the course of a year.  Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, he was in the hospital frequently.  I could "hear" it in her text message, and later in her voice when she drove home in the early morning.  Just as our nurses grow on us; so too do their patients grow on them.  They think of them; pray for them; and have hope for them.  And this loss affected my daughter.

I rode into downtown thinking about all of this.  How do nurses do it? Faced with life and death everyday?  I don't know if I'd be able to be so strong.  And it got me thinking of the difference between them and us.  I think that some people are blessed by God with the "love gene".  It's not a scientific thing...or maybe it is...but it's the love gene that makes a nurse able to comfort someone's sick child in the middle of the night.  It's the love gene in a nurse that restores a hospitalized teen's dignity when they need cleaning up;  It's the love gene that enables a young nurse to dry her tears at the loss of a patient, and in their grieving, turn around, put on a smile and help someone else that's in need.  The love gene is patient, kind and nurturing.  And it is filled with hope and compassion.

So on this Valentine's Day, I wanted to send a special love note out to all those amazing nurses!   Thank you for all you do.  From all of us: parents and patients.  Thank you for being patient and kind with us with us even though  sometimes we aren't patient and kind with you.  Thank you for hurting when we hurt.  And for your amazing love.  You are a blessing in our world.  Oh, and a special note to my daughter...I love you,  Ani.  You are my hero!