I have taken the love language test multiple times and Words of Affirmation always comes up #1 for me. This is no surprise. I have hoarded "words of affirmation" since I was young - report cards with nice comments from my teachers, thank you notes with compliments from people I admired, letters of recommendation from high school teachers, emails/instant messages/texts that make me feel loved and special, important letters from friends, yearbook messages, birthday cards with nice messages hand-written inside... you name it, if it has writing on it and it makes me feel loved, I've probably kept it. (Thankfully I'm not quite such a hoarder these days. Mostly I keep cards and digital things.)
However - I had never thought to attribute my feeling unloved by God due to a lack of "words of affirmation" from Him. I realized that I do have some - my patriarchal blessing as well as notes from and transcripts of blessings I've received - and that I reread them often because they help me feel loved! This was a huge realization for me! The three ways I was looking to experience love from God were:
- literal words (a Words of Affirmation expression)
- feeling His presence (a Physical Touch expression - which is my tertiary love language)
- a literal feeling of love (possibly also counts as Physical Touch?)
I made this realization at an opportune time - earlier this month I finally started having dialogs during prayer. I've written down and typed up those answers, and when I reread them, I see a lot of words of affirmation! The thoughts in my head as I receive them have no emotion associated with them, but the more I read them, the more they elicit a feeling of love anyway - they are God's words telling me I am His daughter, He loves me, He could never reject me, and He's always been there in my darkest hours, even if I couldn't feel Him. I cherish those words, and can't wait for my dialogs to resume so I can receive even more!
A few nights ago, I put together a playlist I call "Love Songs From God" that has a number of my favorite songs that are either completely sung from His perspective or have a chorus sung from His perspective. I had noticed in the past that some of those songs affected me emotionally - now I know why.
I am so grateful to have finally made these connections. This part of my life has confused and upset me for so long, but now things are finally making sense and are improving!
