How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways - Part 3 of 5

It’s the day before Valentine’s and I can picture everyone scurrying around shopping and surfing through cards trying to pick the one that best fit their sentiments. How do you effectively express your love to someone that’s meaningful and touches the heart? It’s easy to pick out a card or take your loved one to dinner and why not? It’s fun and it’s sweet. But sometimes you want to do something a little different – something that will be remembered longer than when Valentine’s Day is gone. I know everyone is doing it so I’ll join in and jump on the bandwagon and list some ideas of my own on ways to meaningfully express your love to that special someone. Here goes:

1. Not only on Valentine’s Day but for the remainder of Valentine’s Week, each day slip a note somewhere saying why you love them. It may be on the bathroom mirror or a note next to their coffee mug. Write more than a few words. Give them details on how unique and special they are to you.

2. Cook a special meal with wine and candlelight and soft music. You don’t always have to go out to enjoy yourselves. You can make it special and comfortable right at home.

3. If you’re musically inclined, compose a song and sing it to them. Or, write them a poem. If you’re not good at composing, you could just write them a letter sharing your love for them. On our 40th wedding anniversary, I got a blank, rustic journal from the book store and titled it 40 years and in it I wrote on 40 things we shared together and experienced, the things I love about him and his strengths along with pictures. It was a memorable moment when I gave it to him and he loved it.

4. Surprise them with asking them out on a date and if you live close to where you first met revisit some of the old places you went and recreate the night as if you were first dating. If you live far from where you first met, still call them up and ask them out on a date and plan an evening as if you had first met.

5. Recapture what it was that first attracted you to them and hold it in your mind’s eye and see it in that person now only value how much more they mean to you. Express that to them in some way through word or touch. There’s a sweetness of young love. You can see it captured in Janie’s wedding picture, 22 years ago on her Wordless Wednesday post on Colloquium. Valentine’s Day is special as it gives us a time to stop everything we’re doing and what we’re involved with and remember what’s important and celebrate.

6. Turn off the TV and play some old songs. Sit on the floor in front of the fireplace and cuddle, reminisce and talk to each other again about hopes and dreams.

7. You may be dating or in a long term relationship but not married. These are the times when Valentine’s Day is fresh and real. You’re creating a memory. You may start your own tradition. Maybe it’s a get-away weekend with hot tubs and massages. Just to get away and spend one-on-one time with each other is invaluable. Or maybe you create a memorable Valentine’s Day where you get dressed up and go to an opera or a play or just go out dancing. It’s not so much what you do but how you feel just being with each other.

Whatever you do tomorrow for Valentine’s Day, do it with your soul and heart. Cherish this time that you have to spend with this special someone and share that with them. Take care to show them how much you value them and how they brighten and add to your life.

In his book, Wisdom of the Ages, Dr. Wayne Dyer, shares a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

From the kitchen table - Pat
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