Why Love Should be Shown With Actions and Words
Love is active
Love should be a verb because it is an action word.
Love can be expressed in words but is best shown in actions. A child wildly hugging her grandma is active love, and the feeling will never be forgotten.
Love must be shown.
If you say you love me, will you also hug and smile at me?
Will your actions back up your words?
If not, your words are empty.
I have been reading Anne Lamott’s book Somewhere. Her wisdom is combined with humor and wonderful observations about love.
Love is the warmth we feel in the presence of our favorite aunt, the kindness of a waitress, and the warmth of hand that pulls us back to our feet when the loss of love has all but destroyed us.
It is the stuff, which any kid and most poets will tell you we experience in our hearts. Somewhere by Anne Lamott, page 3.
Her examples are about love in action.Â
Your favorite aunt probably pours love on you because that’s how aunts are. The waitress is KIND. The hand of love PULLS us.
Love is meant to be shown, and active, and expressed in words.
Couples who have long, happy marriages show and speak affection to each other regularly. They help each other, do things for each other, and speak words of love.
Many years ago, I was approaching my birthday.
A week before my birthday, my husband brought home some chocolate . I can’t remember what it was, but it was chocolate.
Every day for a week, he brought something chocolate home for me.
On my birthday, he gave me a very chocolate cake and Death by Chocolate ice cream!
We both laughed about the name of the ice cream.
His only goal was to make each gift as chocolatey as possible. It was a wonderful gesture of love. Simple and expressive because he knew how much I loved chocolate. I remember and cherish it to this day.
That’s how real love is.
It’s giving, thoughtful, kind and funny. Love should be fun, not a job you must complete.
Love is hard work sometimes because life has dropped a bomb on us.
When my first husband (the one who gave me chocolate) died, the love of others brought me strength. I was lost and torn apart, but love healed and helped me find my way.
Years ago my friend Caroline found a small frog in a shower that was being remodeled, so she picked it up and carried it in her cupped hands to the wet grass outside. The frog was leaping in terror against her hands as she carried it, and probably did not understand the quiet, comforting words she spoke to it along the way. I think this is one of the best examples of how love operates when we are most afraid and doomed, carrying us to a safer place while we pound against its cupped hands. Anne Lamott, Somehow, Pages 6–7.
It’s a beautiful picture of the actions of love and love’s impact on me when my husband died.
These are the same actions love always takes when we are in the dark and lost.
Let your love be active, shown and spoken each day. You never know who you might heal and restore with just a few words.
Thank you for reading! I appreciate it.
This article was published on July 18, 2024 in Medium.
© Fleda Bennie, 2024