Valentine’s Day: A Realization

I had a delightful Valentine’s Day this year. About a week ago, I remembered that in the fall, we stopped by our favorite jewelry store, where I spotted some cute earrings. I said, “Get these for me for Christmas,” and the proprietor said, “If you buy them today, I’ll take off half the price,” so we did. We went back home and Whitley tucked the tiny box away.

When Christmas came around, in the midst of buying and wrapping presents for family and friends and planning where to celebrate the holidays, we both totally forgot about them. About a month ago, I suddenly remembered their existence and said, “Those would make a lovely Valentine’s Day present for me.” The problem was, Whitley couldn’t remember where he had hidden them! He searched through the “junk” drawers in is dresser and desk, and in all the other places where he tends to secrete things, but he couldn’t find them.

I mentally shrugged my shoulders and decided that we’d find them when we eventually move, and since we have no plans to do that anytime soon, I figured it would be a long time until they resurfaced. Some of the things I found when we’ve moved before were amazing: chewed toys our cats hid away (just like Whitley, they had probably forgotten where they put them) and old pine needles from a shedding Christmas tree we waited too long to throw out years before. The most amazing thing I ever found during a move was when the two of the movers tipped our convertible couch on its side while preparing to take it out the front door and poured out POUNDS of cat food that mice had secreted inside the fold- out bed.

Whitley may have forgotten where he put those earrings, but he has started to remember more of the Visitor experiences that occurred during our years at the cabin, and recently told me a very poignant one. In order to appreciate it, you need to know about one of the most heart-rending Communion letters we received out of the estimated half a million that I ended up reading. In it, a mother and daughter are abducted out of their car, taken into separate rooms in a craft and examined (all pretty typical, so far) then returned to their automobile. When they’re back home, the little girl tells her mother, “Mommy, I’m going to die. The spaceship people told me so. They said little bugs had gotten into my body and they were sorry, but there was nothing they could do since I’m a little girl.”

I was reminded of this by a newly-unearthed memory of Whitley’s, in which he described waking up in the middle of the night at our cabin and realizing I wasn’t next to him in bed, then running downstairs and finding that our young son was missing from his bed as well. He ran out to the porch and saw two tall, thin aliens, each of which held one of us in his arms. The being carrying our son walked into our house and returned him to his bed. The being carrying me did the same thing, but first he stopped and stared at Whitley, then slowly and silently shook his head.

I think that what he was trying say was that he had detected the aneurysm inside my brain that many years later would suddenly burst, almost killing me, and that he was trying to communicate that there was “nothing they could do” about it.

But I lived and not only that, I got all sorts of wonderful messages from Whomever, such as the love message, which is especially appropriate for Valentine’s Day. After 39 years of marriage, I’ve come to the conclusion that what Valentine’s Day is all about is not just that we all want to BE loved: The main goal of everyone on this earth is to find someone that WE can love. When the day looks dark and everyone around us seems foolish or evil or both, it’s a nice realization to have.

NOTE: This Diary entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.