Lost in Translation: Love Languages

Love is a funny thing. It's worth living for. It's worth dying for. It's a universal thing. Everyone loves, so it should be the common language among us all, right? Wrong.

There are nearly 200 countries, thousands of cultures and languages, and recently the population of the world reached 7 billion. That's 7 billion uniquely designed, hand-crafted individual souls roaming the earth, each with a particular personality and preferences for the way they give and receive love.

I live with 6 of those souls, come into contact with dozens others each day, meet new ones on a daily basis, and count a select few as nearest and dearest to my heart. How on earth am I supposed to communicate love?

I can recall one recent experience when love was lost in translation. One way I love to love is through encouragement. I was expressing this one day to a friend, and quickly realized that she was not receiving what I was sending. This friend interpreted my act of love as an act of critique. What I intended as good actually ended up hurting her. How did this happen? It seems with each person, we must learn a unique style of love: how to give, and how to receive. In this case, love was neither given nor received correctly.

This was a an English speaking friend who also grew up in middle-class America in Florida attending public schools less than 4 hours away from where I grew up. Strange how communication can still be blurred among native speakers. But God's creativity is infinite, and no two people are exactly alike, which means that we must invest time in each relationship we have learning how love that person well.

I am in the beginning process of preparing to go overseas to a new culture I have never experienced before. How am I supposed to love these people? I must become a student. A student of culture, a student of individuals, a student of love. Why must I do this? So that I can learn how to communicate the greatest Love of all. Christ loves these people, perfectly. I must figure out how to communicate this to them in a way they can understand. Sure, there will be a learning curve, perhaps one bigger than the length of time I will even spend there. But I will try. And I know my Lord wants them to understand, so there will be victories. I can't wait.

Lord, help me learn to love like you do. Across every barrier, every culture, every language. Let them know a new experience, the experience of being loved by their Creator and showing love back to him in return.