Valentine’s Day. A day to celebrate love. Some feel it is a made-up holiday, by the card and candy companies. That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t matter to me either way. I am all for celebrating love no matter who decided to highlight it first.

However, love is different than romance. Let’s get that straight. Romance is a feeling of excitement and mystery often associated with love. Romance is the butterflies. The adventure of someone new and exciting. It is the happiness in the pit of your stomach when you see the object of your affection. It is the smile which creeps up without notice at the sight of your person. Romance is a lovely feeling, so full of hope and anticipation of just being together.

Love on the other hand, is a choice. In the dictionary, it is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. Yet, I think that definition is incomplete, because it doesn’t address the kind of love that is void of the intense feeling. The love that sticks around in the hard times. The love which only exists after the romance and feelings fade. The kind of love that is difficult to explain because it doesn’t look like Valentine’s Day.

I titled this blog, Beauty and the Beast for a reason. I have written before about the significance of that movie in our love story. After Bill’s head injury, he was a beast. Truly. His brain was reeling, he had very little control of his emotions. They vacillated from minute to minute. His frustration was high and his fear even higher. He was both a little boy and a monstrous man, all rolled into one. There was no way to determine which person would show up at any given time.

During his years of recovery, and relearning how to be together, romance wasn’t on the radar. It was all about survival, for both of us. How to communicate. How to stay out of the way when anger flared for no apparent reason. How to speak confidence into our fears. How to walk into the fear instead of away from it. How to find love in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances.

We went to see the movie Beauty and the Beast for the animation, but as we watched the story play out on the screen, we were both moved. It was as if they had written our story there in front of us. The turmoil of the two characters, trying to find one another, was us. Belle trying to stay despite wanting to run away. Beast, trying to win her affection even in the midst of his instability. The two of them trying their best to figure it out. Choosing to keep going, keep trying, and keep finding their way.

By the end of the movie, Bill was weeping. We sat in the darkness and he explained through his tears that he was the beast and he knew it. I was Belle, standing by him despite his beastliness. This child’s story, touched his little-boy heart. He saw, in that moment, that love is a choice. That I chose him. That he was choosing me. We were for each other. We were choosing love.

Of course, he has no memory of this significant moment in our lives. Haha. But at the time, in that theater, it was as if he saw my sacrifices and knew they were my attempt at love. He was grateful, and that made all the difference for me. It helped me keep on going. It gave me hope, that somewhere inside of him, my prince was still in there.

I told him I was writing about this today and he said, “About what a beastly man I am?”

I said, “No. About my prince. About the transforming power of love. You are my prince and I am your princess.”

He came back to me. We figured out how to love again. Everything was demolished but the foundation was there. Finding our way back took years. Rebuilding, relearning took time, still does. But on Valentine’s Day, we celebrate. The bond we have is born of necessity. Of survival. Of hardship. Of pain… and of love.