Last Friday we finished our 6 week series on “Love I didn’t know before.” We talked with our youth about love and it’s many expressions and various ways of demonstration to others.
We all agree that there are many ways of expressing our love and appreciation to others. So we have spoken and discussed together all of these: speaking and using the words of affirmation and encouragement; spending a lot of quality time together; serving others in meaningful ways; giving gifts and physical symbols of love; showing love through physical contact like touching, holding and hugging, etc.) To great extent we were inspired by Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, for which we are very grateful.
While we agree that there are various forms of showing love, we don’t always realize that some of the forms and expressions of love are more important for some people than for others. To say it in another way: some acts of love speak louder to some than to others.
For example: Joe can feel more loved and appreciated by hearing many words of encouragement and appreciation, while somebody else, let’s call her Jane, can feel more loved when people do something for her; when they serve her in some meaningful way.
When we understand what their primary ways of expressing and receiving love is, we will do accordingly. That is, we will try to show our love to them in the way that they receive as most loving.
The problem with us is, we don’t do so often. We try to love others sometimes genuinely as much as we can and it still doesn’t seem to be enough. Maybe the problem is that we are expressing love to them in our way not in theirs.
Imagine this: Joe and Jane from our example are husband and wife. She loves him genuinely and he loves her just the same. But they both don’t feel much loved by the other. Why is that? Maybe Jane tries hard and always does something for Joe. She goes shopping, she cooks, cleans the house, etc. But Joe doesn’t seem to feel loved much by it. You know why that is! He maybe needs to hear more warm and loving words than to have a warm meal every night for dinner. He maybe needs to hear more words of affirmation than to see the house always perfectly clean.
On the other hand, Joe does his best in trying to love his wife, Jane. But she doesn’t feel much loved by him either. Why is that? Because, in the words of Jane: “he is only a big mouth with sweet words, who never helps…” Joe tells her always how much he loves her, he showers her daily with the words of appreciation, he always encourages her when she returns disappointed from her work, etc. All that is nice and good. But she would appreciate it more if he sometimes did something at home. Or, if he surprised her sometimes with a dinner (doesn’t need to be anything fancy, you see). That would show her the love that she needs so much.
Both try to love the other as much as they can, but ineffectively. When they learn what the other partner needs the most they can be more loving the next time. Joe can learn to do more things for Jane and serve her more and Jane can learn to speak more lovingly using words of appreciation and encouragement when talking to Joe. Both will feel more loved in the end.
So, does this mean that we stop communicating our love in all the various ways God created it? Not at all. It only means that sometimes we can learn to be more “tuned” to peoples needs and to ways in which we can show our love to them more effectively. We can learn to love them the way that is important for them, not for us.
This simple principle can help us to express more love in our friendships, marriages, churches, working places and communities. It only requires from us some desire to learn more about others. When do the people around us feel most loved? How can they be shown love in the best possible way?
If we learn that we won’t need to endlessly try to show our appreciation and love to someone in a way that doesn’t “speak” or communicate love to them. Instead, we can learn what makes the other person feel loved and we can apply it the next time!
In the end, isn’t that what we all are after? More love!
So, do you know when the people you are close to feel loved the most? Do you show them your love their way? Just start today!
We are thankful to Miriam, who designed and created this poster advertising our new series.
