Love Languages- Formula For a Consecrated Marriage

A few years ago, my husband and I did the Love Languages exercise by Gary Chapman as part of an assignment for one of my classes I was taking at BYU-I.  We found out some very interesting things about each other and our relationship.  We discovered that we are very similar in many ways.  Neither of us values gift giving as a love language at all and we were also very similar in the quality time, and acts of service as far as significance.  The big difference between the two of us was what we craved the most in a relationship.  I love words of affirmation and he thrives on physical contact.  What is even more interesting was that physical touch was close to the bottom of the scale for me and words of affirmation are not important to my strong confident husband.  We took a look and realize that we had been trying to show love to each other love in the ways that we wanted to receive it.  Instead, we needed to make a conscience effort to show love to the other person in ways that didn’t really come naturally or seem significant to us.  This week as I was reading from Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage by Wallace Goddard I came across the idea of consecration in marriage and realized that this is what my husband and I have been trying to accomplish by focusing on the love language that is important to the other.  Goddard said, “Consecration is a covenant that moves us from asking how we can get our needs met to asking how we can bless and serve.  We become more grateful.  Rather than wondering if this marriage is a good investment that will pay us a handsome return, we ask for heavenly grace that we may love and serve as Jesus served- without thought of reward.”  We are far from perfect at this idea of loving each other the way the other wants to be loved.  It is easy to fall into complacency and think we have done enough, the other person should just be happy with the efforts made.  The truth of it is, that if we are truly consecrated in our marriage we will lay all we have, our time, talents, and other blessings on the alter and give up all thoughts of ourselves.  I know that when we do this our marriage runs smoother and is one that we can be excited to have for eternity.