Is Your Heart Heart-shaped?

That’s the title of my latest newspaper column for children. It makes me smile. I always smile when I finish writing about a topic adults consider mundane or take for granted.  

Most children grow up thinking that their heart is shaped like the red ones being peddled on Valentine’s Day. It is the shape they (or anyone for that matter) draw when they refer to their heart. Not too many of these little ones realize that real human heart is shaped like a—pear!

It’s almost Valentine’s Day; all the signs are there. Marketers (as I was in the workplace) are once more obsessed with milking the occasion to cash in on various merchandise at double or triple the regular price—flowers, food, parking lots, hotels, gift items, media space, and more.

According to the Greeting Card Association, about one billion valentines were sent worldwide on February 14 last year! And the number grows every year. Valentine’s Day is the second largest card-sending holiday of the year—next to Christmas.

I can never forget that one Valentine’s Day years ago when my husband and young sons attempted to go to our favorite restaurant. The traffic stalled us and the waiters starved us. The whole exercise took about four hours and we ended up with three little boys wailing, “I am hungry!” From that day forward, we vowed to stay safely home on February 14.

Can’t I say anything good about the Day of Hearts? I can. I did—right after the wedding of my two good friends, Brando and Irene, sometime ago. Let me upload it now for heart’s sake.

One Magic Moment

From my painted eyes, tears threaten to escape. I position my hanky to avert the impending ruin of my mascara. Then I hear snivels. But the sound comes from the equally dolled up ladies to my left and right. They are offering each other Kleenex and hastily dabbing their eyes as well.

It may be the music—Ngayon at Kailanman (Now and Forever); or the nervous groom, being nudged by his groomsmen; or the radiant bride, marching down the aisle; or the Greenhills Christian Fellowship's solemn ambiance.

Whatever. Together with my fellow principal sponsors, the bridal entourage, the couple's family and friends, I turn my damp eyes to Brando as he takes Irene to the altar. Fascinated by the age-old ritual of marriage, I feel . . . Well, you know about life's magic moments: time stops, everything is right and in place, and you feel wonderful.

"I always cry at weddings," the matron beside me says, her voice muffled by a wad of tissue. "I don't know why."

"Love," the minister's voice breaks the sound of sobs. "Love is what a wedding is all about . . . we are only capable of loving because God loved us first. Jesus showed us what love is at every chance He had while on earth." Then he looks at the couple squarely, "The closer you are to God, the closer you are to each other."

I chew the words over. Weddings are not about two people in love becoming one. They're about two people being joined together in love by, with, and for God. And by His grace, they receive a magic moment that is planted in their hearts like a seed that promises to grow and blossom.

The minister reminds us, "Weddings are a celebration of family life—for married couples to remember what it was like when they exchanged marriage vows."

I call to mind my own vows of three decades. Like me, the people in the wedding party feel the magic because we are all reminded of how God’s only Son so loved us He suffered and died to prove it.

The intense silence shouts of spouses falling in love again, of singles wishing they too could find true love, and of every guest seated on the pews searing from the heat of collective emotion.

Like placid water rippled by a pebble, my magic moment is rippled by intrusive thoughts: An uncle and an aunt, married for fifty-two years, recently deciding to live apart despite their family's plea for them to reconsider; close friends (so in love in the beginning) having their marriage annulled, leaving their children more desolate and broken than orphans; beautiful celebrities with grand weddings now living with different partners; and children of these broken homes no longer believing in magic moments.

Where love was planted, weeds have grown—impatience, hatred, and anger. All antonyms of what we find in 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs . . ."

So how can two people, who profess and affirm love at the altar, create a long record of wrongs?

In the ordinariness or complexities of daily living, we allow other concerns to live in our hearts, crowding out the magic moment until it is lost to us and totally forgotten.

As the world celebrates Valentine's Day with red cupids and flowers, cards and love songs, dinner and wine, may we remember—and allow His grace to take us beyond remembering—so that we may feel one magic moment again . . . and again.