Love To Love and Be Loved

Gary Chapman is a champion Love Language writer. If you've never heard of his series and your are unmarried, you'll get a copy of his Love Language book for couples as part of your wedding present from me! After a dear friend introduced to me, I quickly understood the role of love in marriage so much more. Chapman is a Christian and writes from that perspective. This particular book is an extension of the Love Language series. It focuses on explaining all of the basic 5 love languages that exist: 1) words of affirmation; 2) quality time; 3) physical touch; 4) acts of service; and 5) gifts. Chapman explains that each of us have a primary, and sometimes, secondary love language in which we naturally better understand/interpret love. In the marriage-relationship love language book (1st link below), he explains that spouses should learn to love one another in their primary love language. In other words, if I feel naturally loved through words and my husband feels naturally loved through acts of service; regardless of how much I tell him I love him, he'll feel it most deeply when I love him in HIS language, by serving him. Similarly, regardless of how many chores he does for me around the house or gifts he buys, i'll experience and understand his love more intimately and deeply when he expresses it with words since that's my love language. Now, the point to keep in mind is that we all speak all 5 languages, there's just 1 that is our primary.

Chapman has cloned this concept to relate to love languages with children, teenagers, and God. I've included links below to a few of his works in case your interested in reading them. This most recent book was the best of all! The premise of the book is that God loves us in all 5 love languages, but we tend to enjoy Him most intimately or naturally in our primary love language. We also tend to opt to love Him back in our primary love language. For example, my love language is words of affirmation, and my secondary love language is quality time. This reflects through my relationship with God because my routine of enjoying God or nourishing my Spirit is to read my Bible (His Word) each night before bed, journal (or write down words to describe) the work I've seen God do in my life that day, journal my prayer requests, spend time talking to God in prayer, and reading a good devotional book each night before bed. Words! Words! Words! It's all about conversation, writing words, and quality quiet time with Him. This is not to say that I do not enjoy expressing my love for God through service. Mother Theresa is an example that expressed her intimacy and closeness for God through acts of service by serving others.

You may be wondering, well how do I know what my love language is? The BEST way to know is to purchase the book and take the quiz in the back. A few other good ways to tell are to take note of what you naturally do to show others love. Are you a server? When you really care for someone are you eager to hug them or squeeze their shoulders? Do you just want to take a walk with them or enjoy a long chat? Do you want to write them a love letter? The way you naturally tend to love people is typically indicative of your love language. According to Chapman, people typically speak in their natural languages. This is often helpful to newly married couples when they realize that to communicate love effectively, you should try to love your spouse in their love language. In this book, Chapman explains that God loves us in all 5 languages. We can experience God intimately in all 5 languages and speak those in return. He also pushes the reader to explore other dialects of love with God to experience Him differently. It's a very interesting read. I enjoyed every minute of this very satisfying continuation of the Love Language theory.

The Heart of the 5 Love Languages

The 5 Love Languages of Children

The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers

The 5 Love Languages of God

Jesus, the Evidence

A must read for Christian's seeking a deeper understanding of the 4 Gospels. Strobel does a phenomenal job at presenting a very objective and relentlessly persistent questioning style to get to the heart of the Truth contained in the Gospels. He takes us through several evidence-focused questions to show that there is hard, real, undeniable evidence that Jesus indeed: walked this Earth, performed miracles, rose from the dead, and thus saved our wretched souls. Sorry, if that sounds harsh. I just got caught up in the flow of the sentence. Though, I firmly believe we are inherently selfish and sinful people. Any who, if you're reading this blog and not a believer in Christ, then Strobel's book is a good place to start your search. The Bible, of course is the BEST place to start. However, Strobel's book is tailored to skeptics. This is my 2nd time reading it through. It's incredibly dense so take your time through it. For believers, it's a refreshing and reaffirming read that makes you reflect on just how incredibly sure we are of Jesus' love and sacrifice for us.

A few chapter titles, just in case you're considering purchasing:
-Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?
-Were Jesus' Biographies Reliably Preserved For Us?
-Is There Credible Evidence for Jesus outside His Biographies?
-Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?
-Is the Jesus of History the Same As the Jesus of Faith?
-Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?
-Did Jesus Fulfill the Attributes of God?
-Was Jesus' Body Really Absent from His Tomb?
-Was Jesus Seen Alive after His Death on the Cross?
-Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrection?

As a believer, the greatest part of closing the last page of this book, is smiling to yourself because you know Him...truly and intimately. For those that don't, He's so undeniably real...

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you," Matt 7:7.

Weddings, Pasta, and Corporate America.

A Wedding In December by Anita Shreve...OH where to begin?! I toyed with putting this one down many times mid-read. It just isn't my style of book. However, I tried to read it through to get a grasp on the full experience. I can say that I really love Shreve's writing style. She carefully builds stories about the characters, leaving full reveal of each character's history sprinkled throughout the book. She definitely has creative tactics to tie the reader into the story. Though, this is where I get stuck. I just had very little taste for the story line. Not my style!

The central premise of the story is that 6 high school friends get back together for the wedding of 2 of them, Bill and Bridget. Quite the time has passed. The characters are in their 40s now and have led separated lives. Though, Bill and Bridget somehow found each other after all this time and tied the knot. Sounds very sweet; sappy even. However, where I loose eagerness and excitement is when I found out under what circumstances Bridget and Bill rekindled their high school love, an extramarital affair. That's right, Bill was married with children. He had an affair with Bridget for several years eventually leaving his wife. Bridget, a divorced mother of 1 teenage son, has stage 4 cancer. They have decided to get the wedding underway because of their fond love of one another despite her terminal illness. This is not the only affair in the book. Harrison, happily married -- setup to be seen as the perfect husband and father -- gives into a childish crush as well during his weekend visit at the wedding. The book is ridden with infidelity. This was a huge turn off for me. If this doesn't put distaste in your mouth and you think you could still find the storyline appealing, it is surely a good read. Shreve is very talented and skilled at the composition of developing her characters. There were several layers of conflict and climax. There was also a missing faith element. Faith didn't play a role in the storyline. This was also disappointing particularly when the sanctity of marriage was continually muddled over. Truly talented author, just not my type of story.

The Next Level by David Gregory proved to be better than my first Gregory treasure. I will admit my first experience with his previous book left me a bit disgruntled at the end. Though, it was a good read; highly encouraged, if only to be thought provoking. That would be my summation here as well. The Next Level is a clever story of young man, fresh out of college trying to secure his first job in corporate America. He's brought on in this "Universal Solutions" company and progresses fairly quickly from one level to the next. The entire book parallels his rising in levels with varying depths of faith in Christ. Again, a good quick read. This book definitely pushes to you to ponder which level you're on. It does not end "cheesily" either. Try it out!


Strega Nona Meets Her Match by Tomie dePaola delivers another great story. He truly never disappoints. This story is definitely one that will make it to baby McGehee's personal library. Strega Nona finds herself confronted with stiff competition in her village. However, leave it to great old Anthony to set everything right once again...on accident of course. Enjoy.