The Best Valentine’s Day I Had Was Also the Alonest
“Happy Valentine’s Day!”
If these words stick in your hard heart like peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth, and you’re allergic to peanut butter, this letter is for you. This is for the brokenhearted, the lonely, the grieving, the isolated, for anyone who is very much over our distant and unsocial world. This is for anyone who over the last year has been faced with the truth of who they really are, and they don’t like what they’ve seen.
Are you your Valentine? Maybe that’s doubly depressing because you don’t choose you, either.
Take heart, Jesus did.
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isa. 43:1).
The Best Valentine’s Day I’ve Had Was Also the Alonest
My friends and I have a tradition that started over a decade ago after a painful breakup. It’s called Operation Valentine’s Day.
Operation Valentine’s Day is a gathering of friends, a light-hearted event, a mission centered around the truth that “we love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Each year, we write these words on as many Post-it hearts as we can find, and then we venture out to share them with our city.
A few years ago, at the very location where we hosted this event, a man attacked my friend and me in the parking lot.
Jesus teaches me to love my enemies, so naturally, I picked this location again for the following year’s event. I decided to stare down fear as I reminded myself of perfect Love himself (1 John 4:18). I returned to the scene of the crime, pulling into the same parking space, loaded with enough Valentines for the small army of beloved friends I expected to meet there.
But instead my phone buzzed as one by one, 26 canceled RSVPs confirmed what I somehow already knew: nobody would be joining me this time.
In a way, it was a foreshadowing of the long pandemic isolation ahead. And in a way, it was a gift to me, one divinely ordained by God. He prepared me for it, he walked with me through it, and he now enables me to hold this memory fondly.
“My phone buzzed as one by one, 26 canceled RSVPs confirmed what I somehow already knew: nobody would be joining me this time.”
In that moment, my phone buzzing with cancelled RSVPs and pictures of my friend’s cute kids holding homemade Valentines, I realized I had a choice. While I was sorely tempted to lick my wounds and wallow in bitterness, instead I was reminded of my Savior, who so often walked alone on this earth.
So I looked to him, and I chose to believe that even in my seeming aloneness, I was not alone.
My own words of encouragement, written in the margins of my Bible came back to remind me: Set aside your disappointment; there’s work to be done.
So I did.
Face Your Alone
It takes bravery to face your alone. But that’s precisely what Jesus did on your behalf. To win you back. Nobody understands alone better than Jesus. If he had walked out his days on earth in your third-grade classroom, his homemade Valentines mailbox would not be the one exploding with Crunch hearts and Nerds candy. He was a man of sorrows and was acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3). We loved him not.
And yet he draws near to the brokenhearted (Ps. 34:18). He is with you now, so you don’t have to be alone.
Jesus With Me in the Alone
Last Valentine’s Day, alone and undistracted for the first time in a long time, I was free to be fully present. I was invited to sit in the stillness with the Lord. I was challenged to truly pray for the people I encountered. I had the best small moments handing out my Valentines.
And God had a Valentine for me too. While handing a heart to the woman in front of me in line at the coffee shop, I saw a man who looked shockingly like the man who attacked me last year, except he was kind, clean, smiling. He walked over and said, “What you’re doing is really beautiful; keep going.”
God knew I needed to hear those words, and I needed to hear them from him, here, on Valentine’s Day. And I needed to hear them alone. The police never caught the attacker, but I still have hope that Jesus will tackle him with his love someday. Until then, maybe he’ll stumble upon a little pink heart somewhere in San Francisco and those words will finally sink in.
You Are Loved
These three words scribbled on a pink heart. A small pink paper Ebenezer: a commemoration of divine assistance.
It’s not about you. But it is for you.
You are loved.
I write this truth on hundreds of Post-its because people need to read this truth. I write it because you—and me—need to believe it, hundreds of times.
Maybe our culture needs more pink heart Post-its, interrupting the lie “you are not loved” with the truth that you are. Maybe you can’t leave your home, but you can believe that you are loved. Believe it for you, so you can believe it for them.
“Maybe our culture needs more pink heart Post-its, interrupting the lie “you are not loved” with the truth that you are.”
If you’re still bleeding from shattered hope, you can still hand out hopeful Valentines because the love on that paper and the very real love behind it has not budged. You can love the brokenhearted, even with a broken heart. And as you do, the comfort that God is actively comforting you with in this exact moment can pour out to someone else too (2 Cor. 1:3–4).
This story is so much bigger than your broken heart or mine. Even in our aloneness, we can do what we were made to do and scatter these seeds of hope that have the power to grow life.
There may not be a happy ending to your lowercase story, but there can be a harvest. Come join the party (Ps. 126:6).
The End of the Story Is Love
I think the enemy is trying to silence us, so I am fighting back with my sharpie to a pink paper heart. My Valentine’s Message to the enemy: Shut up.
This year, though still stinging from recent rejection and disappointed dreams, I remain tender and hopeful, still standing, still putting pen to paper and sticking the truth all over this city, even if it’s virtual snapshots of hope this year.
I still love you, San Francisco. I’m still in.
The enemy doesn’t win. I’ve read the end of the Story. As God’s people we are loved, and the enemy is muted when we lift our voices to worship the God of love (Ps. 8:2).
You, friend, are loved. Love himself is here, pouring love into your heart. Let him (Rom. 5:5).
He is for you. He is near. He is with you.
You can weather the lonely places. You can do hard things, even alone. Because Jesus is in the alone with you.
This Valentine’s Day, remember the love that Jesus died for and lives to deliver to you. Receive the Valentine of Jesus himself.
You are loved.
Yes, you.
*Editor’s note: This article is a follow-up to Hollie’s popular article last year, “Happy Valentine’s Day to the Man Who Assaulted Me.”
Hollie Fortkamp is loved by Jesus and so are you. She loves to feed people: Truth, love, and whatever she cooked today. Come to the table. She is a coordinator for Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, a culinary teacher, and studies Biblical Counseling and parallel parking in San Francisco.