Love is a Choice, not an Emotion

Love – Ah, the first characteristic of the fruit of the spirit.
What is my capacity to love God, myself, my children, my husband, my friends, . . . people I don’t get along with, people who don’t like me.

A while back, we studied the 5 love languages. I believe it was written by a Christian author, but for a secular audience. The theory is that there are 5 main ways the the majority of people give and receive love. The 5 ways they describe in the book are: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, and acts of service. Most people have a primary language they use and a secondary language with the ability to operate in the other languages but just not as their first choice. Some people give love best using one language but receive love easier using another. There is a form to fill out to determine your language. Just like with any other personality survey or test that you take, the best use of this data is so that you can understand why certain things in a relationship aren’t going well. If you understand your love language and you understand the love language of the other person, you can diffuse many arguments or hurt feelings.

Example: Nate’s primary language is acts of service. (Not mine.) Sometimes, he does things because he is showing me he loves me, but I don’t affirm him or thank him for what he did (because I don’t recognize it naturally as an act of love). Since I now know that is his way of showing love, it becomes a simple matter of training myself to be sure to thank him or just let him know I notice the little things when he does them. Another thing I have to learn to do is to ‘speak’ his language by doing little acts of service for him every now and then.

In discovering my love language, I realize that I am not very “average/normal”. I have one love language (physical touch) with a very distant second (quality time), and operate horribly in the other three areas. I think the only reason quality time comes into play is because of the physical presence of the person, so its just an extention of physical touch. Unfortunately, I don’t think that physical touch is high on the list for the majority of other people out there (especially in friendships), and frankly most people I know don’t have time to spend quality time with their own families, much less spend it with me. So where does that leave me? I need contact. A hug, a hand shake, a pat on the back, a shoulder squeeze. From my husband, a kiss before he leaves for work will do more for me than flowers or cards. But the reverse of that is also true, I need to be very deliberate about trying to recognize when other people are “speaking love” to me, and I’m just not receiving it. I have a friend who will often tell me that she has been thinking of me and praying for me, but never has time to hang out. Often, I feel let down by her even though she is making an effort to give me ‘words of affirmation’ and I’m just really bad at receiving them. Since my primary language is physical touch, I am usually 99% content within my marriage relationship with my husband and the little hugs and cuddles I get from my kids. I’ll probably be a mess when my kids get big enough to not want to give me hugs anymore. Its only every now and then that I really despair about not having friendships that satisfy my love language. I think its largely due to this contentment that I don’t spend enough time trying to cultivate the other languages. Which continues the cycle of not being content in my friendships. A fortune cookie I had recently said “You must be a friend to have friends”. I’ve heard this before, maybe I need to get to work.

But back to the fruit of the spirit. We’ve been studying love for the last two weeks in the Beth Moore study. If I thought operating in love languages that don’t come naturally to me was hard, how difficult will agape love be?

1 Corinthians 13:4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails.

Today, at this moment, I don’t think I can do it. I feel worn out, beaten down, and this task seems insurmountable. I hope Beth Moore has some good advice for me in today’s study. Maybe as we study the other characteristics of the fruit of the spirit, I’ll learn more about love. I hope I can love when I need to. I am such a product of the “now generation”, maybe this just needs to be something that I have to learn slow and steady (or that has to be beaten into my thick skull over and over). A lifelong change of old habits. Maybe raising my kids will help me. Maybe dealing with each day and growing old with my husband.

Lord, teach me to choose love, even when I don’t feel like it.