In my childhood and young adult life, I strove to be lovable, so my parents, husband, children, and God would love me. I ended up with the curse of codependence, and I made many mistakes with my life choices. I never thought I would be loved on this side of Heaven.
Admittedly, my significant others did their best to love me in their own way, hindered by their own woundedness, insecurities and idiosyncrasies. Yet, I never felt loved. In my mid-life years, I learned about the Five Love Languages, and I finally understood why I felt this way.
Others loved me with acts of service and occasional gifts, but this was their love language, not mine. I always appreciated, and still am grateful to be loved by any of the five love languages, but the one my soul needs in order to truly feel loved is focused attention.
My first husband divorced me out of frustration, differences of opinions, and my overly emotional personality. I actually drove him crazy by my insecurities and anger. The man who proposed to me after my divorce adored and cherished me from the moment we met, and he showered me with focused attention.
He said that my worse day was better than his former wife’s best day; therefore, he appreciated who I was, how I served him tirelessly, and he was so grateful to me that I was not materialistic, and that I loved him selflessly and with his love language of words of affirmation.
After a while, his busy schedule and his growing responsibilities as a pastor of a large, growing church prevented him from remembering to give me daily focused attention. My resulting resentment and anger surfaced more and more often, until he shared with me that he could no longer live with either one of these emotions.
In our vulnerable conversations that followed his pronouncement, we agreed that he would really listen to me, take me seriously even if he saw no value in what I needed, and give me even a small amount of focused attention some time during each day.
I also vowed to express my needs rather than to allow my disappointment to grow into resentment and anger again. To this day, we both do our best to keep these commitments, and our love and appreciation for each other has increased by leaps and bounds over our decades of marriage.
Prayer:
Father God, thank You for teaching me how to enter into Your rest, so that I could learn firsthand the depth and width and breadth and height of Your unconditional love for me (Ephesians 3:18). Thank You also for really impressing on me the truth that You loved me sacrificially even while I was still a sinner (Romans 5:8).
You convinced me that I do not need to earn Your love by my behavior, because it is a free gift that You give to the whole world (John 3:16-17). Thank You for sending Jesus to pay the penalty for my sins, so that I am guaranteed a place as an adopted child in Your family. I can never thank You enough for loving me, even while I still live on this side of Heaven.
Thought for the Day:
My husband and I both often express amazement at how wondrous we feel to be truly and completely loved this side of Heaven. It does not take a large expense account or exorbitant amounts of time to love our spouse in his/her love language; just a bit of study on what the love languages are, and how to love each other as we each truly need to be loved.
- https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/
