Love is selflessness

I have been thinking a lot about love today. What is love? How is it defined? How do you know if you are truly loved by someone? How do you know if you truly love another person? I have read the 5 love languages book several times over. I think there is a lot to say for his perspective on love, but for some reason it doesn't feel completely accurate to me. It is still missing something. The five love languages are Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Physical Touch, Quality time and Acts of service. I grew up completely not understanding how any soul could possibly feel loved by acts of service. How does mowing the lawn translate into love? Dishes? Laundry? Any of it? It seemed like the most unromantic of all of the languages to me. Today I was thinking about that a lot. Acts of service really has grown on me exponentially throughout the last 4-5 years, yet up until tonight I still held on to a piece of my past feelings. It's great and all, but not the way I prefer to feel love.

 

Not anymore. I have been converted and I want to tell you why. True Love is selflessness. When you really love someone you want what is best for them. You want to make them happy. Your thoughts change from self centered to centered on that person. Their needs become more important to you than your own needs. Their dreams become your dreams because you want to see the look on their face when they realize their dreams. Love has been made over in this world of ours to look like something other than what it should be. All of the movies and magazines and articles scream at us that Love is all about sex. They tell us that looks should be the primary factor in love. Physical touch is made to be the primary love language. Movies often show the physical progression of a relationship without much in the way of the emotional and cognitive sides. But that's just the thing. Physical touch isn't a bad thing, but it comes back to one basic principle. Love is selfless. If there is any other motive, it becomes lust or manipulation. Not love. Affection is important in a relationship. It is essential in a healthy relationship, but it the key is motive. The minute our physical relationship is about what it does for me instead of for you it has turned from lust to love. The same principle is found in all of the languages. They can be a show of love or a manipulation depending on the motive behind them. The words "I love you," for example, when said while a spouse is neglecting his or her companion are not an expression of love. They are a manipulation that says instead, "I know that I am spending my time on something or someone other than you, and I don't want you to be mad at me, but I don't want to put you first, so I will use these words to try to placate you." Yet those same words when said by a spouse who has just cleaned up the puke of their pregnant sweetheart carry more weight. They say, "You are my companion through better or worse, and though throw up is nasty and makes me feel queasy, you need me right now and I will be here to take care of you because you mean the world to me." The same principle can be carried through all of the languages.

 

This leads me to conclude that the difference is all in the motive. It is in the selflessness. I now proudly say that my primary Love language is Acts of service. What is there that is more romantic than that? I have been that wife who carries more than her fair share of the work load in the household. Dishes need to be done. Laundry needs to be done. Bathrooms need to be cleaned. The lawn needs to be mowed. The list is never ending. A household has chores that have to be done. I think when I was younger I didn't understand that. The reason must have been that I didn't know what it takes to keep up a house. How can you truly appreciate all that your mother and father do for you when you've never had to do what they do yourself? After having been in a marriage that required me to do all of that, I fully appreciate the work load. Now that I have the privilege to live with my parents I get the unique opportunity to watch my parents again as role models from the perspective of an adult. I see the kind and tender things they do for each other and for me and my babies and it is enough that it brings tears to my eyes. The trash doesn't walk itself out the door, yet somehow, it makes it out and every time it goes out that I wasn't  the one who had to take it I recognize that it is someone in my home screaming their love to me. Someone, whether it was my mom, my dad or my brother, someone loved me and this family enough that they put our collective needs before their own. Before sitting down and relaxing they took the trash out. There is nothing that means more. Why? it's not a matter of worldly romance. It is a matter of one soul placing the needs of another soul above their own. A husband going to work 40-50 hours every week to put food on her table and a roof over her head. A wife taking the hours to prepare his favorite meal at 5:30 PM sharp. The husband who nearly kills himself during the week with his workload who then uses his Saturday to mow the lawn instead of go golfing. The mother that stays up all night with a sick baby so the husband can function at work. The wife who goes stir crazy in the house all day without a car so that her husband can use it to go to work. Examples could go on and on. These people making sacrifices of themselves because they have MADE THE CHOICE to actively love their spouse by serving them. There is nothing more romantic to me than that, Than the active choice to selflessly love and serve another person. So yes, Acts of Service is my primary Love language. I think it always has been, I just never understood it before. I still love and appreciate all of the others. After all, who doesn't appreciate any gesture that says, "I was thinking of you, so I bought you your favorite treat/took the afternoon off so we could go fishing together/wrote you a love letter/gave you a foot and back massage?"

 

I have been so scared of the idea of being in a relationship again. I think this understanding ties right in to that. I think I was scared because nearly all of my dating/marriage relationships have been with men, or rather boys, who romanced with their own interests at heart. I think at times I probably had my own interest at heart as well. But as I am contemplating this true definition of love I realize that I DO know how to love in that complete and total selfless way. I realize also that if I found a man who loved me by caring for my interest needs above his own, I wouldn't have an ounce of fear in being with him forever and a day.

 

That is the man I am looking for. That is the relationship I am looking for. That is the self that I am striving to become. So how to proceed? Work to become as selfless as possible so when Prince Selfless himself comes along he sees a mirror of himself in that way in me. Ready. Set. Go.

 

 

 

Quotes that fit:

"Being in love isn't a feeling. It is a choice. It is an action. It is a habit." -Unknown

"Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense. It is not resentful." -A Walk to Remember

The House That Built Me

I have heard people say that Music is the Language of heaven and I would have to agree. There have been too many times in my life that I have heard a song that somehow communicated a meaning to my soul deeper than words alone could have.

Today I had one of those experiences. I was driving and Miranda Lamberts song, "The House That Built Me" came on the radio. (Feel free to look it up on Youtube....hearing it makes a difference) I have heard that song countless times before and always liked it because of its sound, but never really connected to it. Today was different. As I listened to the story behind the song as well as the words I was touched by the thoughts that came up. It was as though these thoughts were being placed in my brain rather than my brain creating the thoughts.

The story is about a woman who takes quite a drive to get to her old house that she grew up in. She is feeling lost and broken and is searching, yearning, aching, for some sense of the self she used to know. She goes to her old house out of desperation, singing, "I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside of me might starting healing. Out here it's like I'm someone else, I thought that Maybe I could find myself.... if I could just come in, I swear I'll leave, Won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me." I realized that I fit this girls story in my own way.

I have little emotional attachment to any specific house I lived in growing up, but I have that exact same attachment to that girl that I used to be....before. I moved to Utah a happy-go-lucky, simple little girl and I came home a deeply emotionally destroyed wretch. Not only was I treated poorly, but I also changed myself so I could cope with my situation more easily. I eventually learned to numb every ounce of myself so I couldn't feel anything. You see, if you can't feel at all then you can't feel pain and it's worth it. Not feeling anything, even the spirit seemed a small price to pay for never having to feel the complete lack of hope and total despair.  So when came home I had some of those some feelings as our girl from the story. I felt like when I was here, in tricities before, I was someone else. I wasn't that broken weak girl that I had become. I wanted her back, so I came back.....but to what? What was my "House that built me" so to speak? What was it that could remind me of who I was and fill that emptiness? She is trying to fill her emptiness and fix her brokenness by visiting a house in hopes that it will remind her of who she is. In hopes that it will give her a sense of self back. So what is it for me? I was searching for that distant person, but where could I turn? Where could I look?

And then it hit me. I happened to be on my way to the temple while this whole thought process was taking place. It was to be my first time back to the temple in around 9 months, give or take. At one point after moving back home the temple had become my safe haven. It had become a place that I went weekly to commune with my father in heaven. There was nothing I loved more than being in the celestial room, that peaceful beautiful, quiet and perfect room, praying my soul out, often crying my heart out. It was the one place that I felt like I could pray and receive answers to my prayers and actually trust them. I had come from a rough emotional place and was building back my faith in my father in heaven week by week. And then life hit. My schedule changed, I started school, and suddenly time for the temple was few and far between. And slowly I started losing all that ground I had worked so hard to gain. I was lost. Without going into too much detail, for several months I didn't have a recommend. I COULDN'T go to the temple. It was a hopeless and helpless feeling. "You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can. I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am"  Well it has been a long hard road, but tonight, for the first time in way way too long, I was on my way to the temple.

And Those are the circumstances this song found me in. This poor girl, in her story is searching desperately for the emptiness and coldness and brokenness inside her to heal. I have been so broken and so empty and cold. And, like her, I was going back to the house that built me. The house of the Lord. "I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here it's like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself. If I could just come in, I swear I'll leave, won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me......" All of the sudden the song holds so much more meaning. I know I can't ever go back and be that little girl again. I can't be that carefree teenager. I can't change where I have been. I am a divorced, single mother of twins.I can't be that little girl sitting on daddy's lap without a care in the world again. I can't go back to THAT house that built me. But I CAN become rebuilt in HIS House. I can become a peaceful being in HIS house.  I can build my testimony and faith continually. I can become a strong woman of courage. I may not be able to get the old girl back, but something tells me the one I will end up being will be far better. Step. By. Step.