On Foxes and Love Languages

Hello and happy Sunday!  Hope this post finds you well.  I feel like I am always saying this, but time is flying.  It's hard to believe that we are already in the last week of October (and for me the tenth week of school).  I finished my first major round of exams about two weeks ago and everything went well.  Since then I have been recovering.  Trying to pick the pieces of myself back up after the madness of the past two weeks.  Between weekly teaching, leading a seminar, and serving on a new board of directors life has felt really full.

On Friday night I went out to the bar to celebrate a friend's birthday.  It was okay and I'm glad I went but I can't help but feel like a misfit in situations like that.  On the drive home I saw a baby fox run across the street close to my house.  And it got me thinking: I am like that baby fox, running around in a place I don't belong, looking for my home.  Always looking.  Wondering where the other foxes are.  Pondering where I should make my den in the meantime.

So I left the party that night like I have left so many before.  Wanting more, wanting something deeper.  From friends and from myself.  Wanting conversation and philosophy and prose and meaning.  Wanting to meet foxes.

Despite how it sounds Friday played out, I have been fortunate enough to experience deepening friendships with a few people who are very dear to me.  One new friend (who already feels like an old friend) came over yesterday and we played music together and talked and laughed.  They don't know it, but it was a therapeutic exercise for me.  It was what I was wanting on Friday but couldn't get at between the deafening music and bright lights.  It's nice to have people in your life that know you are not a normal person and even like you for it.

Something that has been helpful to me in developing deeper relationships with people has been Gary Chapman's concept of "love languages."  Chapman suggests that there are five key love languages and that each individual has a primary love language (native tongue, if you will) in which they prefer to "speak."  If you know how a person best feels loved, it is much easier to know how to make them feel valued and loved.  And if you know what your love languages are, you can know in what ways you are fluent in showing love and in what ways you could probably work on to benefit others.  The five love languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and giving/receiving gifts.  My primary love languages are quality time and physical touch, in case you were wondering.  You probably know what yours are already too, if you give it a bit of thought.

So, I guess that's a little bit of what's been going on lately.  Years after starting this blog I have finally reached a milestone of 50 posts with this one.  I find that I am always writing but not always posting.  I'm working on learning to do more of the latter.  On learning to unpack my heart.  If you've been reading you know this isn't easy for me.

Here's to being up for the challenge,

E