These items were presented at our Men's Breakfast on Saturday
and there was a request to have them posted on the blog. So, here
they are:
1. Learn her Love Language. If you haven't read
Gary Chapman's book,
The Five Love Languages, you need to read it! And once you've
read it, speak your wife's love language.
2. Make her a meal - and don't skimp on it. Either
make a good one yourself or go to a nice restaurant and get a nice
one to go. Make sure its what she likes to eat - even if you don't.
If its breakfast, it should be served in bed.
3. Write a poem or love letter. Poems aren't as
hard as everyone makes them out to be. So long as you can rhyme the
last words, don't try too hard to make each individual line have
the same number of syllables. And if a poem is hopeless, then write
a letter....that means more than just three lines. Shoot for a
whole page explaining why your wife is a special gift to you from
God.
4. Pick flowers. Listen...you're out in the woods
anyhow hunting all sorts of animals - pick some flowers along the
way. Make sure if you do this, you try to get a handful...not just
one or two. It should take some time to put a decent bouquet
together. You do NOT get kudos for delivering them in the mouth of
ANY animal!
5. Recreate your first date. This will probably
take some creativity since as the years go by, you can't always
recreate it exactly. But the more creative, the more kudos you'll
get...
6. Love Coupons. That's right...give your wife a
coupon for something that you know she enjoys for her to use
whenever she wants. And when she redeems it - don't put it off! If
you're really feeling risky, give her a blank coupon for her to
fill in the blank!
7. Leave notes around the house for her to find.
Write short notes about why you love your wife and then hide them
around the house for her to find - and make sure they are spread
out enough that she won't find them all in a day. Dont' tell her
where they are. Let her keep coming across them.
8. Remember the small things. Hold her hand, hug
her, sit next to her, and open the door for her. In other words, do
all the things that let her know that you really do believe that
she is the one that God gave you to complete you - that you can't
live without her.
9. Sing a song to her or dance with her to a song.
if you listen to the radio, then there are love songs that come on
all the time. Even if you don't know all the words or can't sing on
tune, sing to her! If there is a song that is especially meaningful
to you both, put it on a stereo at home and dance with her to
it.
10. Take the
Love Dare. This is another great book. There
are no magic bullets in marriage or love, but this book - if
followed - will help to strengthen your love for your spouse.
Now, as you can imagine, there was no lacking sets of eyes rolling
as I presented this to the men. But the question is not if the guys
enjoy doing this. My question to the men was 'Which of these would
your wife NOT want you to do?" I didn't get any responses. The
question, guys, is not what we want to do to communicate love but
instead what can we do that will communicate love in a way that our
wives will understand. In all likelihood, that will require us to
humble ourselves to do something that will be deeply appreciated by
our wives. However, we saw from
Ephesians 5 that such a humbling of ourselves mirrors the love
that Christ has for His bride.
A couple bonus ideas.
- Read Song of Solomon regularly - maybe once a month - to remind
you about what a love for your spouse looks and sounds like. Until
you love your spouse with the kind of unfailing love that Solomon
speaks of in this song, you are not loving your bride like Jesus
loves His.
- In my premarital counseling, I try to explain to the couples that
we relate physically, emotionally, spiritually. In the marriage, a
healthy relationship has all three of these components. Our
physical relationship is communicated through physical intimacy,
our emotional relationship is communicated through conversation,
and our spirtual relationship is communicated together in prayer to
God. If you aren't praying with your wife, you're only sharing 60%
of yourself with her. Pray together with your wife.
- Don't wait! February 14 should be a catalyst and reminder...not
an island amidst a year of little or no communicating of love.