What it looks like

A few months ago, my neighbor came upstairs all excited. I just took this test that tells you what your love language is. You guys have to take it!


I was pretty sure I already knew what mine was, but I played along anyway. The test confirmed my suspicions: acts of service.

Studies have shown that we show others our love by acting out our love language for them, and I’ve found that to be so true.

Nothing gets me more choked up in a movie than when you can actually see love happening. You know the scene: character is distraught, faced with conflict and struggle on their own, trying to display independence and strength they’re not fully convinced of. They arrive home after feeling defeated only to find someone who loves them there, committed to standing in the trenches with them.

I will always value relationships more than anything else. I learned that early on, especially in work. I am the kind of person who has to work for myself because I crave the freedom to be there for people when they need me. I don’t like being caged in. A huge part of the reason I felt like I needed to leave my job was because more than once I felt overwhelmed with the urgent need to go home and be with my mom only to feel trapped in, taking care of a family that wasn’t mine. I loved them all the same, but it was hard to balance that complexity.

Saturday night, good friends of ours were involved in a terrible accident on I-40. Luckily, they were okay (relatively speaking), but their dog, spooked in the crash, bolted from the car. They were on a road trip, about two hours from home when the accident happened. They’re battered, exhausted, and now distraught. It’s been days, the dog has been spotted but not caught. Yesterday, I had a todo list a mile long, but I was distracted, my heart heavy.

Finally, around mid-afternoon, I gave up, hopped in the car and drove the little over an hour to be with them to help them search. Hours and hours later, we still came up empty handed, but there was something about standing all together at the end of the night that filled my heart right up. Their friends came from all across North Carolina, not waiting to be asked to be with them in their time of need. My friend said it best, at this point in our lives it’s far more about quality than quantity.

My last year in my twenties was spent processing the loss of an important friendship, accepting that they were never going to be the kind of friend I needed them to be, and questioning if they really ever had been. And over the weekend, the final blow delivered, I let it go.

Love is simple but we over complicate things. Love is uncovering what someone needs above all else, and giving it to them.