Problem in the Language of Love

All of us, we’re in touch, we’re in tune with our musical preferences.  We know where our CDs are, the tape players, the graphic equalizers are programmed just so.  What if, though, I asked you to list your love preferences?  What station you’re tuned into concerning expressing love, what flavor do you like to listen to?  I bet if I really asked you that question, I would receive a sea of blank stares.  I think it’s much more important, and I think you would agree with me, to be in touch with your love preferences than your musical preferences.  Five years ago, I was sitting on the beach at South Padre Island with a young junior high student, his name was Will.  Will was talking to me about his father.  He said, “Ed Young, my father doesn’t really love me.  He doesn’t love me,” and he began to weep.  I said, “Will, your father loves you.  I know your father.  He talks about you all the time. 

You’re the apple of his eye.  He treasures you.”  And he says, “No, he doesn’t.  He doesn’t.”  I thought, “Is this young man lying to me?  Was his father lying to me?  Is there a lack of love in this relationship?”  The answer is “no”.  There was love in the relationship.  The problem was in the expression of love, in the language of love.  The father was tuned-in to highbrow classical when his son needed “Young Country”.  The language of love.  That’s a problem that we all deal with, isn’t it?  In marriages, amongst friends, parent/child relationships, at the marketplace.