Who Was Saint Valentine?

Saint Valentine is a mysterious figure.
By most accounts, he was part of a Christian resistance movement defying Emperor Claudius of Rome. Claudius forbade the marriage of young men because he wanted them enlisted. Valentine married them anyway. This would cost him his life. His last letter to a young lady he had a romantic attachment toward was signed, “from your Valentine,” an expression used today. The Valentine legends (and there are three) all point to a period of time when the Christian faith seized the imagination of people with a sympathetic, heroic, and – most importantly – romantic figure.
I was tinkering with this sort of research when Annabelle and I saw a bird fly up to our window. We wondered how those birds survive. Somehow God sustains them. Texas doesn’t give you snow when you want it, like at Christmas, but it is known to surprise you on Valentine’s Day and Easter. When that happens, nobody is more fun to get snowed in with than Annabelle. Ever the soul of spontaneity, we were sitting together at the kitchen table looking out at that bird and our frozen back yard when she declared, “Hey, the sun is going down, and we only have only 10 minutes to get a picture!” I didn’t know that you have to get a picture outdoors when it snows on Valentine’s Day, but at the time, it seemed to make sense. It was a race against the clock. Next thing I know, we’re slip-sliding down the walkway to a flag on the front yard, and in an instant, it was a frozen photo finish!
Annabelle is my favorite person to be snowed in with.