I’m a few weeks shy of twenty years old, and this is the first Valentine’s Day of my life that I haven’t been single. Most of those Valentine’s Days, I was perfectly content exchanging homemade valentines with my friends, but I won’t lie—those last several Valentine’s Days were hard.
Something in the human heart longs for romantic love, and it can be nigh impossible to accept that that love has been denied to you. This innate longing for love is one of the reasons that romance is consistently the top-selling genre of fiction, and many classic fairy tales echo the same theme of love conquering all—little wonder we love such stories so much.
All too often, fairy tales—and, by extension, all romance novels—are viewed as grossly unrealistic and bizarre at best, sexist and misogynistic at worst. And while I’ll grant that some fairy tales are odd, to say the least, the point was never meant to be that women are helpless and in desperate need of rescuing by a prince. Rather, fairy tales portray the depravity of the entire human race.
In Scripture, God’s relationship with His people is frequently portrayed as a marriage. And the reason we humans crave the kind of love we see in fairy tales isn’t because of some unhealthy obsession with romantic love (though it can drift to that extreme). Rather, in traditional fairy tales, we see reflected the love of God for us, a selfless love that lifts us out of the poverty and helplessness of sin and into a joyous life as His sanctified Bride.
Ironically, even while fairy tales are often accused of their lack of realism, they also capture the nature of self-sacrificial love better than nearly any other kind of story. In the story of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche willingly undergoes numerous trials to be reunited with her love. In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast risks his own life to save Belle from the wolves. And in Sleeping Beauty, the prince hacks his way through a maze of thorns to rescue the slumbering princess.
While Valentine’s Day as we know it has largely devolved into chocolate, roses, and all things garishly pink, its origin captures the same selfless love that Christ has shown to us. According to legend, St. Valentine was brutally martyred for disobeying an imperial edict that banned marriage. Instead of obeying this law, Valentine upheld the higher law of God, preserving marriage as the holy conclusion to romantic love in his life, and demonstrating the self-sacrificial love of Christ in his death.
Several years ago, my father gave me a crucifix for Valentine’s Day, probably not realizing it was one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve ever received. Of course, it’s nice to be remembered on Valentine’s Day, especially when all your friends are planning date nights while you’re sitting at home, but more than that, that crucifix was a reminder of a deeper kind of love, a love that was already mine.
As a liturgical Christian, I have often been intrigued by the fact that Valentine’s Day often takes place near Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the penitential Lenten season that leads up to Easter. Valentine’s Day is, after all, a happy day—or supposed to be. Ash Wednesday is not. Other than Good Friday, it’s the most somber day of the Church Year, a day when we all bow our heads to receive ashes upon our foreheads, a reminder of the weight of our sins and of our own frail mortality.
But perhaps the timing of Ash Wednesday isn’t so odd as it might seem. Perhaps the love of Christ and the love of a fairy-tale prince aren’t so different after all. Perhaps when Belle loves the Beast and turns him back into a man, Christ loves us and restores human nature as it was always meant to be. Perhaps when Snow White takes the forbidden fruit like our own Edenic ancestress and is kissed awake by the prince, we too are woken from our death-that-is-but-a-sleep by the kiss of our resurrected Lord.
As a child, I was enchanted by the opening song from the old Disney Snow White—as Snow White patiently scrubs the palace steps, she sings of her hope and longing to one day meet the prince she has always dreamed of. And I remember, even as a very young child, my own heart echoed that same longing.
The desire for love and belonging awakened in us by fairy tales runs much deeper than a mere longing for romantic love—it cuts to the very core of who we are as human beings, separated from our Creator and Bridegroom who will one day reclaim us as His own. The song of Snow White, the song of my own heart even as a child, echoes the song of the faithful here on earth: “How long, O Lord, how long?”
And it is only in the answer to this song that our hearts can truly rest. Whether the song of your heart echoes Snow White’s, or whether that plea was long ago answered and you find yourself waking to the daily reality that love sometimes looks a lot less like a fairy-tale prince and a lot more like ashes smeared across a forehead and blood dripping down the rough-hewn wood of a cross, that fundamental longing remains the same.
Fairy tales and romance novels may be unrealistic. They’re certainly less messy than real life. But they still have a very practical value—they awaken in our hearts the desire for a love that transcends this world, for a love that is magical and life-bringing, for a love that is found only reflected in human romance.
Dear reader, I don’t know if you are still laboring with Snow White and Cinderella, waiting for your prince to come and rescue you from bondage. I don’t know if you, like me, are marveling at the wonders of love, still a little terrified because you don’t know how it will all turn out. I don’t know if you’re already married, joined in a beautiful and challenging union that I can’t even begin to understand.
But I do know one thing: every proper romance novel has a happy ending, and God has chosen to write the story of salvation as a romance. I don’t know if this day brings joy and love to your door, or only regret and loneliness. I can’t promise you that you will ever find romantic love, because God chooses where to bestow His blessings, and sometimes withholds one to offer another.
But I know this: your story isn’t over yet.
And when it is, it will be a beautiful ending.