Love is in the air! It’s everybody’s favorite manufactured holiday, so gentlemen, I hope you made preparations to woo your significant other on a holiday that was created just for that. This will be the 19th Valentine’s Day for me & Tiffany, and to this this day, my favorite V-Day story might be our first. We were 17 & 15 and in puppy love. We had been dating for about 6 weeks and I had made up my mind that our first Valentine’s Day would be when I broke out the "L" word for the first time. We had a "romantic" dinner, probably at Sonny’s BBQ (our go-to back in the day), and then went to drop her off at her house. Before I left, I gave her a card, small gift, and blubbered out my rehearsed spiel. I don’t remember what I all I said, but the grand finale was me saying "I love you" for the first time. I waited with baited breath for her response and her words were… "Aw, thanks." Not perfect. To this day, she’ll make up some excuse for not saying it back, but I’ll continue to hold it over her head, just because I can. But let me brag on Tiffany for a minute. She is full-time entrepreneur with two businesses, with a passion to serve others. She’ll admit that saying no is her weak spot, but despite all the pulls on her time, she prioritizes family first and is a fantastic mom to Hannah Grace and a wife to me.  She is a superhero in my eyes. With anything, she has days where she thinks she’s failing and other days where she feels like she can conquer the world, but day-in, day-out her ability juggle and manage all the different balls in the air amazes me. With that said, I also know her well enough to know she would much rather me take out the trash or clean out the garage than brag on her in a blog post. Since that first Valentine’s Day, I’ve learned a lot about relationships. At that time, neither of us could do wrong in the other's eye. That changed more quickly for her than it did me (yikes), but as we grew more comfortable with each other, the more I realized showing love is WORK. Not a little bit either. It takes being intentional every day. Lance and I were sitting around talking about how we could make our wives happier (no easy task), and we decided we would do one intentional thing each day to show our love in a way THEY would appreciate. We texted each other daily to remind the other and hold each other accountable. It lasted all of about 10 days. I tell you that to say, despite our best efforts, life gets in the way. Ephesians 5:28 says “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church”. This serves as a great reminder because ultimately our Creator is the one who put love in our hearts. We love because He first loved us. And until we can get our arms around this, we’ll always treat our relationships as “quid pro quo”. I love you so you’ll love me back. But that’s not how love is defined in the bible. We should shower our spouse with deep love because Christ has done the same to us. So on this Valentine's Day, I encourage you to be intentional in how you show your love. Not just today, but everyday! Happy V-Day!