Never Walked In High Heels

I see it all the time, particularly in older couples, but the truth is, despite what I would like to think, most of my married friends are headed to it too. Couples get to a point where they just miss each other. One person attempts to show love and the other person doesn’t realize it, or it doesn’t come in the form that she is expecting, and so she complains that he doesn’t love her at all. Likewise, she didn’t to anything that he thought ought to be done. And so they miss each other again. Both of them are attempting their best to show the other all the love in the world. And yet there is no (…luck?)

Dr. Gary Chapman writes in his book that there are 5 basic love languages. We have a primary love language, and then a secondary one, a way we show love, and a way we automatically receive love. Briefly they are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, encouraging words, and the giving of physical gifts. For me, the hardest love language to accept has always been the idea that acts of service communicate a form of love. When you’re disabled and always needing help, it becomes customary to constantly have individuals help you. It’s just what needs to be done and so you assume that every ramp somebody builds with their own hands, or every tire they change, is simply done out of necessity rather than love.

One of my favorite moments in the movie Anne of Green Gables is when Marilla tells Anne, “Anne, you have tricked something out of that imagination of yours that you call romance. Have you forgotten how he gave up the Avonlea school for you so that you could stay here with me? He picked you up every day in his carriage so that you could study your courses together. Don’t toss it away for some ridiculous ideal of romance that doesn’t exist.” I know I have myself been guilty of that exact fault. Missing the love of many people who are directly in front of me who love me because they do not look how I think suitors or adorers should look and act. If he doesn’t hug me, and yet he spends 8 hours on a Saturday trying to fix the electric door opener on my backdoor, should the physical touch be taken as a more suitable or a more devoted act of love than the quality of service?

One need only to open a book or switch on a TV to get a rather absurd ideal of what love ought to look like. He brings you a dozen roses to say I’m sorry but yet refuses to change his ways. She completely blows your mind and yet refuses to respect your parents, insulting them and driving a wedge between you and the two people who love you most. If everybody is different and unique, surely the way they express love is as unique to them as their own voice, or their own way of moving. And if we owe it to everyone to try to understand their background and where they are coming from, perhaps we also owe it to them to try to understand their expressions of love, their natural expressions of love, rather than complaining that they don’t suit our ideal.

Love is actually surprisingly easy to miss and it is simpler to assume it isn’t there when it doesn’t take the form we desire to see. Over and over I hear, “look for ways to love your neighbor.” That’s important and crucial. But are we also looking for ways in which other people show their love for us, even if it’s not necessarily in the form we expect?