You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.
— Song of Solomon 4:9
I asked my dear wife if I should rerun this devotional from two years ago, and she said "yes." Here goes:
I just got back from the store where I stood among a group of husbands, who, like me, waited until the last possible moment to buy flowers and a card. As we pawed through the cards that were supposed to express our love for our wives, I turned to the these other men — all strangers to me — and said, "Who writes this stuff, anyway?"
They all laughed. None of the cards worked for me. The $6.99 oversized card that said, "I spend my life at the office, but here’s a chunk of my checkbook," wasn’t right. The dumb blonde jokes weren’t right. The mushy mush mush that didn’t say anything wasn’t right. So I finally turned to the other guys and said, "I’m going to buy a blank card and write it myself."
They were all shocked, I think, but that’s what I did.
For some reason, Valentines Day always sneaks up on me. It’s not that it isn’t in my calendar. I even drew a heart around the 14 on my calendar to remind myself to get ready, to have a plan. But I keep coming back, in my mind, to the fateful Valentines Day of 1978 when it was just a matter of time before Kim and I would get engaged and I was still working at the florist, bringing home all the used flowers to distribute through Kim to women all over the dorm.
It was a crazy busy day. The owner finally stopped answering the phone. He loaded his car full of flowers and sent me out into a Chicago blizzard to deliver them all. Things went along swimmingly until I got stuck in a snow drift in a no parking zone. I got out to push the car and then realized I had just locked the owner’s keys in his car stuck in the snowdrift idling in neutral.
What did Mark Twain say? "Let us draw the curtain of benevolence over this scene."
It amazes me, being a man, that we manage to capture any of the attention of these beautiful creatures of the opposite gender. Much of the time I’ve felt like Andrew Stein in the movie "the gods must be crazy." His mind "switched off" every time he was in the presence of Kate Thompson. When my wife asks me what I’m doing, I answer as he did, "I’m making coffee."
I get the sense of God’s smile over all of this. I’m not sure how we got into the path of so much good coming our way, but it hit us head on — and I, for one, am glad.
Be encouraged!
Dwight
Dwight Clough is the author of four Christian books and is an active member of Lake City Church in Madison. This devotional is also available via email and you may review the archives back to 2002. To contact Dwight or Kim, use their contact form. You may also support their ministry.