Find Love Blog

Listen for Love

L-O-V-E…Love, love, love…Have you ever felt this kind of feeling? Ofcourse. Whether it would be platonic, romantic, or even puppy love; it’s still love. I’ve seen a lot of people who are in relationships. Some are serious and some are not. I’ve seen relationships that didn’t turn out well because the lover was having an affair with another or maybe yet, he/she doesn’t know how to listen.

A friend of mine emailed me an article that’s entitled “Listen for Love”. I’ve learned a lot of things after reading this article. It’s so enlightening that I just have to share it with you.

There are times when we are timid and shy about expressing the love we feel. For fear of embarrassing the other person, or ourselves, we hesitate to say the actual words “I love you.” So we try to communicate the idea in other words.

We say ‘take care’ or ‘don’t drive too fast’ or ‘be good.’ But really, these are just other ways of saying ‘I love you,’ ‘you are important to me,’ ‘I care what happens to you,’ ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.
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We are sometimes very strange people. The only thing we want to say, and the one thing that we should say, is the one thing we don’t say. And yet, because the feeling is so real, and the need to say it is so strong, we are driven to use other words and signs to say what we really mean. And many times the meaning never gets communicated at all and the other person is left feeling unloved and unwanted.

Therefore, we have to listen for love in the words that people are saying to us. Sometimes the explicit words are necessary, but more often, the manner of saying things is even more important. A joyous insult carries more affection and love than the compliments, which are expressed insincerely. An impulsive hug says I love you even though the words might be saying very different.

Any expression of a person’s concern for another says I love you. Sometimes the expression is clumsy, sometimes even cruel. So Sometimes we must look and listen very intently for the love it contains. But it is often there, beneath the surface.

A mother may nag her son constantly about his grades or the inches of dirt in his room. The son might hear only the nagging, but if he listens carefully, he will hear the love. His mother only wants him to do well, to be successful. Her concern and love for her son unfortunately is misinterpreted in her nagging, but it is love all the same.

A daughter comes home late, way past her curfew, and her father confronts her with angry words. The daughter may hear only the anger, but if she listens more attentively, she will hear the love under the anger. ‘I was worried about you’, the father was saying, ‘because I care about you and I love you. You are important to me.’

We say I love you in many ways: with birthday gifts, and little notes, with smiles and sometimes with tears. Sometimes too we show our love by just keeping quiet and not saying a word, at other times by speaking out, even brusquely. We show our love sometimes by impulsiveness. Many times we have to show our love by forgiving someone who has not listened to the love we have tried to express.

We don’t always understand the love language other people are using. A girl might unwittingly use tears to convey her emotions, but for no avail since her boyfriend can’t understand her because he doesn’t know how to interpret her tears. Thus, we really have to exert effort in enforcing ourselves to listen for love.

One enormous problem with our world is that we rarely listen to each other. We only hear words, which makes us miss “hearing” the more important but inaudible messages that the body expresses. Even worse, others have given up on being understood so everything told to them is interpreted as a rejection. They do not see the love that is there just beneath the surface, especially with angry words. You know what, if we’d only listen intently we discover with utmost delight that we are much more loved that we let ourselves think.
Listen for love and you will find that the word is a very loving place after all.

LOVE is a happy thing.
It makes us laugh.
It makes us sing.
It makes us sad.
It makes us cry.
It makes us seek the reason why.
It makes us take.
It makes us give.
Above all else it makes us LIVE.

It is neither the presence nor absence of people that should determine how we feel. Though it is good to be sometimes just by ourselves, being alone need not make us lonely. You see, being present FOR someone is more significant that being present WITH someone. So remember…if you love someone, you’ve got to tell him or her. You’ve got to always say what you mean. Take this opportunity to tell someone what he or she means to you. Seize the day and have no regrets.

Above all, stay close to your friends and family. They have helped make you the person you are today. Although your relationship with the might have its dents, loving them despite of our weaknesses (or theirs) is still much better than regretting over broken relationships.

Oh, and by the way, love God. Because God said in 1 John 4:6, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”

So how about it? Can you listen?

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