What is the language of love?

I find that I'm always ready for the new season whenever it's about to begin. I feel that is just as the Lord planned it. Perfect timing. Today I look outside and it's shaping up to be a beautiful, sunny fall day that started off rather brisk and breezy but will warm up with the sunshine. Tonight it will go back to it's brisk drop in temperature - just perfect for September and Ohio. I love it.

We have been reading "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. It's what our small group (aka "marriage enrichment") is studying. We took the "official test" a few weeks ago and I found out that my "love language" is QUALITY TIME. If you haven't read this book, all I know so far is that it means the most to me when I spend good, quality time with people - this shows love to me. OF course, the book is geared towards showing love to our spouses, but I have carried it further in my mind to include all peeps. :-) My spouse's "love language" is WORDS OF AFFIRMATION. I already knew this would be his . . . and I already know that I fail miserably at showing this to him. So I have my work cut out for me!! :-) I also found out (at least according to this so-called TEST) is that he doesn't actually care about RECEIVING GIFTS (another love language). You can see my cynicism creeping through about the test, I guess. It's not that I don't believe it has identified our true love languages, but I'm unsure about the secondary things it has brought to our attention. Maybe we should ignore those for now. Perhaps that is the real answer!?

In true LOVE LANGUAGE form, we have learned that whatever our love language is, usually we are showing what ours is to the other person already. For example, since my husband's is WORDS OF AFFIRMATION, he gives me compliments and/or nice emails and builds me up. However, since it is not MY love language, I do not really give much thought to those words . . . they are nice and all, but I can't say that I cherish them AS MUCH as he would cherish them if he heard them from me. The problem is, he does not hear them from me as much as he would like to. Sooooo, time for me to change!

Mine is QUALITY TIME . . . it's not that he doesn't like to spend time with ME . . . but his definition of "quality time" and my definition is probably a little bit obscure right now. Also, he is a very, very busy person. I am a stay-at-home mom. Of course I am going to desire a lot of his eye-to-eye time when he is home, but so do our two kids. Everyone wants Dad! It's a difficult balance.

So, we are in a learning curve right now. It's good . . . it can be muddy! But I wanted to share. I do say I need a place to "keep it real!"

He just got done mowing the lawn for the past 2 hours . . . time for some words of affirmation . . . wink.