Learning to Speak the Language of Love

“Thankfulness is not some sort of magic formula; it is the language of love…”

A friend shared this quote with me recently and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m completely taken with this picture of thankfulness as the language of love. I think that’s both beautiful and true.

I’m not always good at loving well –not my husband, not my friends and family, not God, and certainly not strangers. There are many moments in my life I look back on and wish I’d loved better.

The more I think about these words, the more I’m coming to believe that gratitude is an essential part of love. I’ve seen how this works in my marriage.

Jonathan and I have been together for almost eight years and while I don’t pretend that we’re perfect, one of my favorite things about our relationship is the way we still thank each other for everything. This is meaningful for us because saying thank you for things we could easily take for granted is more than just a polite habit. It is meaningful. It’s our way of saying, “I recognize that you did that chore, not because you had to, but because you love me.”

When Jonathan washes the dishes, he’s saying,” I love you,” and when I thank him I’m saying, “I see the way you’re loving me and I appreciate you.”

The thing about gratitude is that it turns our eyes away from ourselves. We can’t love well when we are focused on ourselves – when we’re immersed in our own wants and needs and worries and problems. Practicing gratitude is a way of looking outside of ourselves and recognizing both the gifts we are given every day and the givers behind them.

Gratitude isn’t about smoothing over and ignoring the evil in the world or the pain in our own lives. It isn’t about forcing a smile when our hearts are breaking or trying to put a smiley-faced band-aid on an open wound. It’s about acknowledging pain and struggle and marveling at glimmers of grace and goodness that break through that ugliness.

Gratitude doesn’t change our circumstances – it changes us.

Gratitude makes us generous because when we lose our sense of entitlement to the things we have, we no longer feel the need to hold onto it so tightly.

Gratitude combats discontentment because it reminds us how far we’ve come instead of how far we have to go.

Let us be people who let our haves count for more than our have-nots.

Let us be people who recognize the gifts strewn throughout the most ordinary moments of our days.

Let us be people who give with abandon because we are humbled by what we’ve already received.

Let us be people who speak the language of love.

36 comments

    1. Thanks, Anna. I feel like I was preaching to myself… I wrote this one day and the next morning woke up grumpy because there was a mosquito in my room, haha. Thank God for grace!

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  9. That was an amazing reminder for me. Thank you for your inspiring words. I woke with a bit of grouchy heart today so it was a nice kick in the behind to take a step back and breathe! All the best to you and yours. 🙂

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    1. So glad this was meaningful to you. I also needed to read these words to myself this morning since I woke up (on Thanksgiving Day of all days) really grumpy because of the mosquito in my bedroom. 😉 Gratitude is such a discipline sometimes! Thanks for reading and for the re-blog!

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  19. Found this post to be a lovely read; gratitude certainly wins the the battle with discontentment along with reminding us of how far we have come I find gratitude can alter many negative mind sets and throughout my life the most wondrous times have always been when I have acknowledged gratitude for the little things in life that are often as time has passed been the stuff of wonderful memories , cherished times always reminding me that it was the gratefulness in my heart that made these times so lovely.

    Thank you for such a hope filled post and Kind Regards from Kathy.

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  20. the language of love, which for every one of us is a bit different, while we travel on our own pathway of life, but still the same in it’s core and source of love… thank you 🙂

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