I’ve been looking forward to this Saturday for weeks. Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day, and one filled with a special programme at that. I begin a new phase of an excellent and intensive missions training programme, and I can’t wait.
Saturday, with its mix of lovey-doveyness and missions-mindedness, got me thinking about the kind of people we’re called to love- the poor, needy, broken-hearted. It got me thinking about the way we’re called to give and receive love.
Because in some ways, we are all poor, needy, broken-hearted-just, in different ways, in different places. And so many of our conflicts, among friends or family, arise not merely out of simple disagreement, but rather, a deficit in the communication of love.
Can you remember the last time you felt hurt, disappointed, slighted? Hurt because of a harsh word, disappointed because of a forgotten act, slighted because of another useless present? But the person never meant to convey what you received. He thought he was merely “being frank”, the act of going two extra miles instead of one didn’t cross his mind, or he’s just not really a gift person. Fissures appear, hurt hearts withdraw into the safety of their hardened fortresses. And all, not because of a deficit of love, but a deficit in what was conveyed.
Just, lost in translation.
Just as how looking someone in the eye may convey honour and love in our culture, doing so in Africa may convey disrespect. In different contexts, our actions are received differently, even though all we meant to do was love, simply because we’re all made differently, speak different love languages. Going to Nepal and giving a freezing child my old jacket would make me his hero, but doing so to a friend here may be plain offensive.
I begin to realise, so acutely, how love can only truly be conveyed in all its fullness and glorious potential when we take the effort to find out what love language the other person speaks.
Gary Chapman wrote the international best-selling book about the 5 love languages- namely, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, physical touch and gifts. People have different primary ones and hence love and receive love differently. While one may feel most loved when offered to be given a lift home(acts of service), another may see it as a mere customary gesture; While one may feel profoundly adored and cherished by a hug (physical touch), another may find it too close for comfort, feeling most loved instead by a chat over coffee on a lazy afternoon (quality time). And then there’re silly people like me, whose hearts are won not by the lifts home, or the expensive presents, but the cards, and the words in them. Or the simple random text message saying, “Hellooooo. I love you” –which would be completely absurd and worthless to someone else. We are poets won by words, and wring them dry of love to fill our cups.
But therein lies the conundrum, the double-edged sword.
Over the past few months, I’ve been observing the love languages of my family and close friends, only to find how vastly different our love languages are. Most of them love me through acts of service- while that sits last on my list. And while I love writing notes and cards to people, long text messages and emails because that is how I’d love to be loved, I realise many others would have preferred a practical gift, or my remembering to photocopy that examination ten-year series for them. People who have physical touch as their primary love language may feel insecure in a conservative culture such as ours, while people like myself find ourselves deeply pierced by a prickly word, far more than someone with a different love language. Some never understand how one could be hurt by a mere careless comment, when the other had gone the extra mile to run a difficult errand for him (“Oh, but I didn’t mean to say it so harshly, just a joke! But I did this for you, didn’t I?”) ; some never understand how one could write the most eloquent love poetry and then fail to even show up (” Sorry I was late- I always am, right? But I hope you like the poetry”).
And so we walk around, trying our best to love and be loved, but failing in so many places, and getting hurt even in the slightest ways, and bring our hurts around, too.
Some brattish part of me wished my family would be more expressive in their words of encouragement, more flowery, more intimate. But as time passes, and I understand their upbringing, their world, I see how profoundly loving they are, not in the way I want- but deeply, deeply loving nonetheless. There are always, always apples in the fridge because I love them, and they very often go the extra mile to get these particularly lovely ones from a particular store; they don’t text me much but they call to ask if I need a lift because it’s pouring; they don’t write me much or spend much time with me because of work, but they never fail to provide. Provision and acts of service are their primary love language, because of the difficult backgrounds they came from, and realising this has been extremely eye-opening for me.
Is there someone you love whom you feel disappointed with, and when you look deep enough, is it really because he doesn’t love you, or that he doesn’t love you in the way you want to be loved.
So I am learning. To give love in the way others long to be loved, and to receive love likewise. I begin to see how profoundly challenging this is, because we’re all wired differently- but I’d like to try nonetheless. Our primary love languages will never change- words will always have such an intimate way with me- but I can try to learn how others want to be loved, and try to understand how others are loving me, too. I can be more aware of their love languages, and learn to be less needy, less demanding, lower my unnecessary expectations. I can see how they want to be served, and serve their need there, too.
Fortunately, I also realise- that words are cheap (the person who wrote me poetry never came through), and I can learn to value wholesome, practical actions which others give me because these always, always come through. And in the areas where my fleshly limits simply fail to fill the gaps of love, I must remember, that God’s love is big enough. Big enough to plug all those gaps, holes in our souls, and because of his sufficient love, I can be healed, restored, overflowing with more than enough to give love to others, too.
Perhaps it helps to remember, that it is not that we are not loved, but just, not in the way we want to be.
We love and are loved imperfectly, but God’s perfect love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)
So while I’ll always have my drawer filled with a stack of random notes, cards and letters, folders of saved text messages and emails, and a truckload of memory space for all the words said to me, hand the gifts over anyway, and nobody gets hurt.