A young woman in her mid twenties came to me upset and crying.
She had just broken up with her boyfriend after a year long relationship. In her desperation to find out what went wrong with their love she asked me to recommend a counsellor. Knowing she didn’t believe in God I still referred her to a counsellor who loves Jesus, knowing that the counsellor would be respectful and discerning.
In our previous conversation on cultivating the fruit of the Spirit we discussed how Apostle Paul emphasized choosing the way of love above all else. Paul spelled out to us what love is and what love is not. You can read the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Many of us are familiar with this ‘love’ chapter, but we’ve probably all experienced some degree of difficulty in consistently practising the way of love in all circumstances. We choose to love a food, sport, movie, fashion, perfume or holiday. We choose to love this person and not that one. To help us focus on choosing to live the way of love I’m going to take some liberty here and change the proverb which says, ‘Charity begins at home’ to ‘Love begins at home’.
Love languages
Dr. Gary Chapman in his book The Five Love Languages says people express and receive love in different ways. He has identified and categorized these into five languages of love. Although his main focus in the book is to help couples love each other, he says the five love languages also apply to children. Now that makes the book relevant to most of us. If you are not married and do not have children this applies to you too because you’ll still want to give and receive love from your immediate and extended family, friends and church family. Love is a basic emotional need for all humanity.
So together, let’s be women on a mission to love well, starting with the people closest to us.
Dr. Chapman’s five love languages are
- words of affirmation,
- quality time,
- receiving gifts,
- acts of service and
- physical touch.
The young woman went to counselling and was advised to read Chapman’s book.
She identified that she had never heard her father tell her that he loved her. She addressed that with him and now her whole family is practising loving each other. She gave a copy of the book to her Uncle and Aunty when they announced they were separating. It saved their marriage!
I’m happy to say she is reunited with her boyfriend. I’ve no doubt that the Holy Spirit is moving in her life and I’m praying that this young woman will one day soon know the love of her heavenly father. After all, God is love.
NOTE: This young woman gave me permission to tell her story.