It's the little things

That is how you know you are loved. Yes, grand gestures are great and amazing and magnificent and everything our younger selves think they should be because we watch movies and read books that constantly show us that is what love is supposed to be... but it's not. Each person has a specific love language and it is up to us to learn it, just as we have our own love language and they learn ours.

Love is found mostly in the quiet moments. The little blips in life that most don't notice until they are gone. Waking up to coffee on your bedside when you didn't even ask for it... even more, knowing exactly how you take your coffee. Folding the laundry or even helping with the folding without being asked. Picking up one of his time consuming chores because you know that he has had a bad week. Making a meal you can't stand simply because you know he loves it. Cleaning the bathroom because there isn't a cleaner on the universe that doesn't bother your asthma. Taking out the dog whose eyes are floating so you can finish a row and not lose your place in the lace pattern.

I love you too, Pokey.

I could go on but you get the point. These little things, while they may seem common place and normal, are what showing love is about so don't take them for granted. Show honest appreciation for the little acts... because that gets noticed too. If you don't acknowledge those things, and I mean sincerely acknowledge them, the person doing them will feel as though they don't matter and they will stop.

For the past decade, if I am graced with the ability to sleep later than my husband, I wake to coffee on my bedside table. When I was a homemaker, he woke me with kisses and coffee. When I worked from home, he woke me with kisses and coffee. On my weekend, he wakes me with kisses and coffee. Even on the days I have to be up at 5 am and he is peacefully talking in his sleep as I get ready for work, I give him a kiss goodbye and there is freshly brewed coffee waiting for me in the carafe.

That is his love language... and I love him for it.