Check out those Love Jugs

You’ve heard of the idea of love languages right?

Basically it’s the idea that we understand love given and received in a certain form better than others.  You might give and receive love in terms of touch.  You might give and receive love through helping out – serving people.  You might understand love communicated through kind words, quality time & attention or possibly even through giving and receiving gifts.

Love languages.  They’ve helped my wife and me understand and communicate our love better.  I think they’re great but let’s not get stuck in one metaphor.

Emily and I only speak English.  We communicate in English and that’s fine.  We’re hilariously trying to learn French together, but it’s fortunately not exactly essential to our relationship!

If we only spoke ‘Gifts’ or ‘Time’ then our love would be pretty anaemic. There’s more to love than five different ‘languages’.

What about thinking about your love buckets – or jugs – for a bit instead?

Everyone has five jugs.  Time. Gifts.  Words.  Touch.  Service.

To know that you’re loved fully you need all five jugs to be full.  The problem is that each of them leak.  It’s like they’re cracked – but they all have different size cracks.

As they empty over time they need to be replenished.

To have a healthy relationship your other half has to keep an eye on the levels and makes sure you’re topped up.  Some people need to be topped up in Gifts more often than Words.  But everyone needs gifts and words.  And time and service and touch.  Don’t try to maintain a relationship without any one of them.  After a while it will feel empty.

It’s sad that they’re cracked right?

Maybe, or maybe it’s exactly through the cracks that our love lands on other people.  People who have a cracked Service jug pour out service on other people but that means they will feel loved when people reciprocate.

It is in our brokenness that we can bring healing to others.  Our cracks allow us to love others.

Don’t be ashamed of your cracks.  Don’t hide them from your partner.  Don’t hide them from your friends.  Learn which jugs you need to replenish regularly & don’t forget the others either.

Anyway.  Don’t get caught up in a metaphor.  I hope this idea might help you display your love to your special people this week.  If not, don’t worry!

Love God.  Love People.  Don’t be a div.