Today is the ten-year anniversary of my Mom’s sudden passing. I’m feeling blue, tired before I even begin.

The day she died, Friday the 13th, I was preparing for my weekly Saturday night service, which that year was going to coincide with Valentine’s Day. I was looking forward to it. I’d made cards, love notes, for everyone in the community. The service didn’t happen, though, obviously, because I had to be with my family in upstate New York, saying goodbye to Mama.

I remember returning to Albuquerque later in the week, dazed and broken-hearted, wondering, “What in the heck am I supposed to talk about now?!” I had no idea how to share a message of positivity while dismally down in my own dumps. How to be empowering when I was feeling defeated and so very, very sad. How to pull it together enough to do anything at all.

“One thing I know for sure,” I said to myself, “Is that I can’t preach that stupid, cheerful, heart-shaped, Valentine’s Day talk I was going to do last week.” My message was to have been a riff on the Wings tune, Silly Love Songs. “What a friggin’ waste of time it was writing that thing!” I thought, with my grumbliest inner voice.

But then I thought again. Maybe I needed, more than ever, some of that gushy, candy-coated kind of love. Not as an antidote to sadness, but to remember to allow all different kinds of feelings to exist in me at once.

The same realization rings today. There’s plenty to be upset about — AND — maybe I can, at the same time, find ways to be head-over-heels in love with my life. I’m frightened and pissed-off about a lot of important things — AND, ALSO — I am surrounded by beauty and creativity, presented every day with opportunities to connect in relationship and make magic and joy together.

The part of me that gets outraged by injustice and unkindness is the very same part that falls in love at first sight with a flock of geese, and a golden moon, and leftovers for dinner with my Honey, and fun with my friends. I’ve got a tender heart. The part of me that gets loud and passionate about issues that matter to me is the same part that sings out loud and laughs out loud. I feel things deeply, and I process them out loud, and I don’t know how else to do it.

Paul McCartney has talked about his song in interviews. It was composed after critics, including former fellow Beatle John Lennon, had accused him of being too soft and romantic, dismissing his songwriting as schlocky sentimentality. McCartney responded:

Over the years, people have said, “Aw, he just sings love songs, he writes love songs, he’s so soppy at times.” I thought, “Well, I know what they mean… But people have been doing love songs forever. I like ‘em. Other people like ‘em. And there’s a lot of people I love — I’m lucky to have that in my life!” So the idea was that YOU may call them ‘silly,’ but what’s wrong with that?

Ten years ago, I ended up delivering, a week late, a version of that Valentine’s Day message I’d been planning to do. Because, as the song goes, “All I know is: when I’m in It, Love isn’t silly at all.”

It’s largely up to us whether or not we let ourselves be in It. It’s an unnecessary martyrdom to think I can’t be giddy in Love while I’m also sad, or frustrated, or disillusioned, or angry. And it’s really hard to accommodate grief in a healthy way if I’m inclined to deride Love as “silly” every time I’ve got other important (and maybe unhappy) fish to fry.

Will you be my Valentines, Sweet Hearts? I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, February 16, at 10am, with the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew

©2025 Drew Groves