I love long drives with my family because it gives us uninterrupted time to be with one another. Instead of being on our phones or having one-on-one conversations, we have intentional family conversations. For this particular drive, I prompted everyone to have a question ready that we could all answer. It was fun to listen to everyone's responses. It was a perfect way to gauge everyone's evolving mindset and learn more about one another. No one posed any life-altering questions; however, I felt it was life-altering.
Let me explain. One of the questions that popped up was what they thought was their current primary love language. You may have heard about it from Dr. Gary Chapman's book, Five Love Languages. I also wrote a post on it before. Everyone shared, and then I compared it with their answers from a few years ago. Some remained the same, and some changed.
Hearing everyone's honest answers and receiving feedback to confirm their responses was awesome. Plus, noticing how everyone was knowledgeable and engaged with each other's love language was heartwarming.
It was life-altering for me because, as a parent, I always want to nurture my children. So knowing how my child feels loved and likes to express love helps me love them better and give them opportunities to express themselves better. In addition, it provides me a chance to learn why the other languages are not as strong and allows me to build them up, too. It's an exercise that I invite Holy Spirit into to make sure I'm following truth versus assumptions. For example, one child's favorite love language is giving gifts, but receiving gifts is lower in the totem pole, which is in some ways similar to me but for different reasons. For me, I think it sometimes has to do with the feeling of being unworthy and not wanting to be an inconvenience to anyone. I have a few people in my life who are BIG gift-givers. They give all day and every day. And it takes a LOT for me to receive from them continually. One sweet person always reminds me to accept and just say, "Thank you." I think it's also a pride issue because I don't want only to be a recipient but also to reciprocate.
So when I asked the Holy Spirit why gift receiving is number five for my child, He thankfully showed me that their reason differs from mine.
This exercise isn't limited to just parents and children. It can be applied to spouses, siblings, friends, and any other relationship that is important to you. Give it a try if you want to improve your connection.
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