by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Today might be St. Valentine’s Day (or another saint, depending on your liturgical calendar–in the Coptic Orthodox Church it is St. Febrianus Day), but if you know anything about love, you know that it is not a day but a journey. Still, on any journey, it is nice to pause and celebrate the love we share. So today I’m sharing twelve years of Valentine’s Days (or whereabouts) with my own family in photos.

St. Valentine, a bishop who was later martyred, was known for secretly marrying couples who were prohibited from marriage so that the Roman Empire could recruit soldiers. Since marriage was a reason to resist the military draft, St. Valentine was arrested for this sedition and later executed. Here is someone who sacrificed himself for love.

As I browsed through these photos, I thought about how much love truly is about sacrifice. Love is a gift, and love gives. When love gives, it grows. And because God is love, there is no limit to how much love can give, how much love can grow.

Having God the foundation and the center of our marriage and family life lifts a huge burden off our shoulders. We don’t need to rely on our fleeting emotions to know that we love each other. We know that God’s grace has forgiven us so much, and given us the capacity to forgive one another. When we are empty, we can draw upon God’s love to fill us, rather than relying on our strength. We don’t complete each other – God completes us.

These photos are certainly a highlight reel — in between these years are the same struggles every family faces: arguments, misunderstandings, challenges, temper tantrums, illnesses, losses, you name it. But there is a place for celebrating our togetherness. Ingrid Fetell Lee, author of Joyful: the Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness writes on her blog that the secret to more joyful relationships is celebrating together. So today we’ll do just that.

My husband and I celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together the day after our official engagement ceremony. This photo is in Cairo, Egypt, with my mom, in February 2007.

By February 2008, and a long-distance engagement, we were married. In this photo we’re together in Washington, DC, where we first settled…

… But did not stay long – in February 2009 we were living the UK. This is photo we took with Bishop Kallistos Ware in Oxford, where we went to hear a few words of wisdom from him. In this photo, I am also pregnant with our first baby.

Soon after this visit to the bishop, my husband would be ordained a priest in the Coptic Orthodox Church, necessitating a move back to the US, this time to New Jersey. In this photo, our first baby is in the car seat on the left as we enjoy Tim Horton’s coffee during what would become an annual tradition of visiting family in Canada.

In New Jersey our little one grows, and we learn firsthand how love grows exponentially.

In February 2012 we were busy moving into our new home and didn’t get a picture, but the next month we were thrilled to welcome our daughter into the world.

In February 2013 we enjoyed Philly cheese steaks in Philadelphia together, after enjoying the Franklin Institute. Traveling and discovering new places together would become part of our family culture.

Welcoming guests would also become a part of who we are. Here our visitors take a photo of us on the dock before we tour the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

It looks like our kids made us chocolate chip cookies in February 2015. Cookies should be their own love language.

When February 2016 rolled around, our third baby joined us, teaching us that just when we thought our hearts could not get any bigger, they did. Nothing makes us more happy than to see our three kids having fun together. In this photo, the oldest is reading to his younger brother and sister. The oldest would later warn his sister, “He’s not always going to be this cute.”

We took this photo together in February 2017 at a park somewhere in Maryland, and this photo in 2018 at an engagement in NJ.

This year, our Valentine’s date was at the book launch for The 21: A Journey into the  Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach. Somewhat fitting, we celebrated the fourth century martyr of love with the twenty-first century martyrs of love. Love is, after all, a daily martyrdom.

Subscribe to my email newsletter! Email subscribers get access to my free resources – the most popular are a children’s Valentine’s Day craft I created with a blog reader, Caroline Gurigis, and the Annual Reflection and Planning Printable, a tool I put together to help reflect on last year and look forward to the new year. Subscribers will also be the first to hear about the pre-order bonuses that will be available to all those who have pre-ordered my forthcoming book, Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church, releasing in April from Paraclete Press.