To love and to be loved is the greatest gift

I am a relationship person.  Everything I do is about relationships...at home, at school, at church, and even facebook.  I am an extrovert who is energized by knowing and loving people, but even I get "empty" sometimes.  I forget to get filled up in my relationship with God.  I heard someone say this week, "God is the only one who can give to us perfectly because He already has everything and He has no needs of His own."  God is the only person who can truly love us unconditionally and fulfill us with everything that we need.  Once we are filled up with Him, His love can overflow our lives and impact the lives around us.  The Bible says we should love the Lord our God and love our neighbors as ourselves, but I certainly can't do that without first receiving His love.
Twenty years ago, Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages.  If you are a relationship person (and even if you aren't), you should read it!  I've had so many conversations in the last two weeks that have made me think about "love languages" and how I can communicate my love, and more importantly God's love, to the people in my life.  This book was written about marriages, but I think it can also apply to my son, my friends, my students, and really anyone else that I spend time around.  Dr. Chapman defines five ways that people give and receive love: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.  I am the most blessed by words of affirmation and quality time and those are the "languages" that I speak the most fluently...the ones that I give easily...but that doesn't mean that I am unable to give to people who have other love languages.  It means I need to intentionally use the other love languages with the people in my life who speak them, and I need to practice them so that I can give the gift of love to my family, my friends, and my students in the way that means the most to them.  To love and to be loved is truly the greatest gift!