Father’s Day 2011

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15:9

My husband’s love language is acts of service. He is just like his father and expresses his love by doing things to help people. He will drive out in the middle of the night to rescue you if your car is on the fritz. Even if he is tired from a long day of work, if you show up at our front gate with a broken piece of equipment, he will do his best to get it running for you. Yard work, helping you move, building something. It is all ways he shows his love. So, you would think I would have figured out a long time ago that if I want to show love to him, I need to do something for him, but it took me a while. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, but sometimes, I am not very smart. This year, youngest son and I both chose to do something for him instead of buying him a gift on Father’s Day. Though youngest did get him a very funny and very appropriate Father’s Day card, he also gave his dad the gift of time. He’s been running a hectic schedule, one day at the fire station, one day at paramedic school, one day doing clinicals at the hospital or on the ambulance, and then, it starts all over again. But he took a break from that rotation to make sure he was home on Father’s Day. And on his only day off in weeks, he helped husband clear a brush pile left from the marathon Memorial Day tree trimming frenzy. While they were doing that, I was shoveling out husband’s side of the closet. Husband hates shopping and therefore, refuses to give away any item of clothing that might have to be replaced. He had a lot of shirts that had not been worn in so long that they had dust on the shoulders. I found the suit that he bought to wear to our rehearsal dinner thirty years ago. There was even a pair of never worn white jeans that dated back to the 1970s. I pulled two garbage bags full of clothes out and hid them before getting his opinion on the remaining items, most of which he wanted to keep. I will go in a few months and pull a few more out until I get it clear of all those old clothes. He has almost three dozen pairs of jeans many of which are so full of holes he could not wear them off the property! When I was done, the closet is once again what is was designed to be, a WALK IN Closet. He was very pleased. It’s funny, but a lot of the clothes I got rid of were given as gifts that obviously didn’t mean much to him because they were never worn. The key in letting someone know how much up love them is to make sure you are speaking their love language. Not your own!