Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry about Your Explosive Diarrhea

I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day, or as it was known around the Cynical Christian home this year, "Valentine's and Painful, Explosive Diarrhea Day," as yours truly was stricken with some mutant strain of stomach virus that probably originated in the darkest part of the Congo, most likely in the restroom of the Congo Arby's.

As I was lying curled up on my bathroom floor, watching my life pass before me and everything I've eaten for the last three days pass out of me, I thought, "This isn't romantic, but it might be more meaningful than a typical rose-colored Valentine's Day."

Because in the midst of my intestinal throes, in the middle of the night, my sweet wife came in to check on me, sat beside me on the bathroom floor, folded up a towel and laid it under my head.

Think of all the Valentine's cards you've gotten. How many of them were give to you by people who would hold vigil by you while you were sick? And I don't mean sick in a noble, dignified way like Lavinia with her soft-focus Spanish Flu on Downton Abbey. I mean sick in a most unpleasant way, like the real Spanish Flu, and with worse lighting.

Buying candy and flowers for someone you fancy is fun and all, but that's not love. Not compared to a wife sitting on the bathroom floor by her sick husband, wanting to do something, even though she knows she can't. Just being there so that he knows there's somebody there. It's worth more than any card.

But I got a card too, so that was nice.