February – a Month for Love Stories

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“If I had a rose for every time I thought of you, I’d be picking roses for a lifetime.” –An Old Swedish Proverb

I had fun sharing some Valentine stories on Sunday and I have just a few more to share today. Then I will share my own “how we met” story.

First Betty found her special Valentine at a young age. Here’s her story.

A simple Valentine’s Day story that could be shared is a story of the first year my husband and I were dating.  He appeared very self-confident but admits that his self-confidence was very low. He was 16 years old, the youngest (and babied) of six children. His mom had died exactly a year previously. I really liked him, and I baked him a chocolate cake in the shape of a heart and frosted it with pink cooked frosting. He just commented last week about how thrilled he was to receive that cake and to realize that I cared for him.

That was obviously the perfect cake recipe for love, Betty. And sometimes you start out as friends and then figure out something more is happening. Sometimes that happens on Valentine’s night. Here’s Mary’s story to prove that.

One day a friend of mine called me and asked if I wanted to go out on Friday. I did not know if he meant as friends or as a date. I said yes. He meant to go out as friends, but the Friday he asked me about was…Valentine’s day. He had not looked at the calendar and had no idea that it was Valentine’s day until he was leaving to pick me up and his Dad told him what day it was. We ended up calling it our first date because we knew after that night that there was something between us. That was 30 years ago today and we have been married 26 years. Since then he does notice Valentine’s day!

Great, Mary. Glad he learned to pay attention to Valentine’s Day. This last story is shared by Rhonda about her parents and it’s all about roses.

My favorite Valentine’s Day story is not mine – it is my parents. My dad had gotten mom some beautiful roses for Valentine’s Day. My mom liked them, but money was tight. She told my dad they were to expensive for something that just faded away and died. The next year, my father, a talented artist, painted her a large painting of a bouquet of roses that would never die. Dad passed several years ago and these roses are still hung in a place of honor over the headboard in my mom’s bedroom.

What a treasure for your mother, Rhonda. Thanks for sharing that with us.

And now, my own “meant to be” meeting of my future husband.

First, like Betty, I was very young. Only a month past turning fourteen. So I truly got “set out,” as my family called it, way too young. I had a friend named Judy. We went to the football games together, but I’m not sure we were as interested in the boys out on the field trying to win a ballgame as the boys we were noticing in the stands. The whole world of potential romance seemed to be there waiting for us, and to be honest, from my mature point of view now, we were way too young to be out there boy hunting.

As it turned out on that night sometime in the fall, Judy had a boy she’d arranged to have a ride home with even though he wasn’t at the game. We walked down to the sidewalk in front of the school to talk to him. When he saw me with Judy, he thought I was going to be a third wheel. That wasn’t true. I was spending the night with my sister who had an apartment in walking distance from the game that night. But he left and came back with Judy’s cousin, Darrell. So, they gave me a ride home too. And that was the beginning. Sometimes a spark just happens even when you are almost too young to know what romantic sparks even are. Darrell was a senior. As I said, I was a green freshman who had never gone on a date. So, I guess I was blessed that the Lord put the right guy in my path early on. If we go back to that first meeting, we’ve been a couple for over 60 years. Now I’m feeling ancient. 

I hope you enjoyed those stories of romance.

Do you believe that sometimes people are just supposed to meet?