It’s something that all mothers are inherently provided with ample opportunity to learn.  But all of humanity gets its share of readily available lessons too.

Love comes in different forms.  And you need to accept it in whatever form it takes.  Learn to see love in its many varied shapes and sizes.  And welcome it with open arms.

Sometimes, when you’re the mother of lots of littles, love feels sticky and usually is covered in both jam and magic marker.  Sometimes love looks like your spouse taking the kids to play outside or waking up early one morning so you can sleep in.  Love might look like your five-year old “helping” make lunch by fixing the sandwiches and making a colossal mess in his effort.

I remember reading a quote years ago by author Wally Lamb.

Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

I liked the quote then.  But I understand it even more now.

Even when love doesn’t speak your language, it’s still love and it’s still yours to accept or to turn away.

Remember that popular book years ago that made its rounds in certain circles?  The Five Love Languages?  I’ve had a little problem with that book.  I mean, I found it helpful in lots of ways.  It came in all sorts of forms.  Five Love Languages for Couples.  Five Love Languages for Teens.  Five Love Languages for Children.  For your grandma.  Your dog.  Your neighbor.  The Five Love Languages for the FedEX driver.

(Don’t even get started on all the endless variations of the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchising machine.)

I actually did like the concept of the book.  There was much to learn there.  I found it to be helpful in understanding the different ways we hear and offer love to those around us.  It was an aid in communication and understanding and it certainly had its place.

Here’s what the book basically promotes … there are five different ways we offer and understand love.  Categories like words of affection and quality time.  Gifts, acts of service and physical affection are the other three.  The author was suggesting that if the person you love doesn’t understand your love language, they might misinterpret how you are loving them and then feel unloved, even when you feel as if you are offering great love to them.

But if your love language is words of affirmation and someone gives you a gift, what kind of a fool are you if you are ungrateful?  “This doesn’t speak my love language.  Will you please write me a letter instead?  I need to know you really get me.”

Then the tool just becomes an avenue for you to be selfish and demanding, that love has to look like what you think love has to look like – and trust me, that’s not loving to anyone – to be demanding of how love arrives on your doorstep.  Come on person, just take the crock pot gift and make a roast already.

Sometimes the gift offering is actually about the giver.

I think this is predominantly true in motherhood and childhood.  Your child is presenting you with a quiet hour when what you really need is a hot meal.  Fine.  Look at what is actually happening in front of you.  Someone you love dearly is trying to serve you.  Can’t that be enough?

This is easier to type than it is to do.  And as mothers I find us especially susceptible to expect the gifts to look a certain way.  It seems particularly easy for us to be unable to recognize the offering for what it is – love, in a flower petal for our hair and the voluntary washing of a dish, even though they washed it the “wrong” way.

Eventually, when our response is half-hearted thankfulness, these little generous givers who we are raising, will stop presenting us with presents if our response always lacks wonder and appreciation, if we miss the giver and the heart wrapped up in the offering.

I spend most of my writing talking to myself.  So when I say the words – I often am the one needing the lesson.

Take what is being open-handed offered to you.  At face value.  Without demands or strings attached.  With a word on your lips that sounds like “thank you” and an attitude in your heart that looks like grateful.

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