I love the beauty of words strung together. I love the pictures I create in my head from a detailed description. I love words that have the power to tug at my heart strings, to make me laugh, to make me cry, to insight passion in my soul.
I love words.
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Have you heard of the five love languages?
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure who first officially came up with the concept, but Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages way back in 1996.
The idea behind the book and "love languages" is that, just as people from different countries speak different linguistic languages, each person speaks their own language of love. Your "love language" is whatever makes you feel the most love and it certainly differs for every person.
There's five main love languages — physical touch, words of encouragement, gifts, acts of service, and quality time.
Most people have one primary and one secondary love language, or they have two that work in conjunction with each other. For example, a person may have a love language of physical touch, but they also have the love language of quality time. As such, taking a walk holding hands with their spouse or spending an afternoon cuddling on the couch makes them feel doubly loved because they receive both physical touch and quality time.
Considering how much I love words, it shouldn't be surprising that one of my primary love languages is words of encouragement.
There are few things in this world that make me feel more loved than a random card from a friend or a note from my mom. In college, my mom would send my brother traditional care packages filled with all sorts of goodies. These were nice on occasion, but I felt so much more loved when I received a note — however short — telling me something that she loved about me or something that I did that made her proud.
I love to encourage people using words and I love being encouraged by words.
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At the start of the year, I was kind of in a funk, but as I started to get out of it, I realized there were some things about my life that I wanted to change. Some of them were pretty standard on the New Years resolution list like eating healthier and getting in shape, others related more to my spiritual life, but after some conversations with various people and a few things that I read, I decided that one of my goals for 2013 is to be more encouraging.
In a post on her blog Dear Hanna (that I cannot currently find but will link to when I find it), the lovely Hanna Easley (eldest daughter of my former senior pastor) points out that everyone can use more encouragement. Even if words of encouragement isn't your primary love language, nearly every single person on the face of this planet is under-encouraged in some area of their life.
Think how much of a difference it could make if on a random Tuesday you were really struggling with feeling value, you got home from work, checked the mail, and saw a note from a friend telling you how much you mean to them.
Or perhaps you're feeling like you can't do what you really what to do — it could be because you're not getting a lot of comments on your blog, or you got a bad grade on a test, or you didn't get the part in a show you wanted, or you didn't get you "dream job." You could be questioning if that's what you're really supposed to do. Then all of a sudden you have an email sitting in your inbox from a random stranger who commented on your blog about how much your writing has helped them, or a friend who found an even better dream job that would be perfect for you.
It could literally be hundreds of situations.
Last year, when I was coming up on a day that I knew would be particularly hard because of my recent break up, my older sister decided to do something about it to make my day better. So on a random day, I arrived home to a box that contained a huge cookie bouquet full of brightly frosted cat and dog shaped cookies. I started crying in my kitchen because I felt so blessed and so loved.
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I want to be able to do that same thing for people all the time. And I'm challenging you to do the same.
You don't have to write notes or letters or emails. You could randomly clean the kitchen for your roommate or make some baked goods for your neighbor. You could help an elderly person with some household chores or make a meal for a family dealing with difficult circumstances.
It can literally be anything.
But let's get something started this year. Let's encourage people to be their best person. Let's encourage our friends to pursue their dreams. Let's remind our friends that they are known, they are loved, they are valued.
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