Quotes from Gary Chapman

Among those emotional needs, none is more basic than the need for love and affection, the need to sense that he or she belongs and is wanted.

You may also want to try giving indirect words of affirmation—that is, saying positive things about your spouse when he or she is not present. Eventually, someone will tell your spouse, and you will get full credit for love. Tell your wife's mother how great your wife is. When her mother tells her what you said, it will be amplified, and you will get even more credit. Also affirm your spouse in front of others when he or she is present.

I keep my head down and for self-preservation just do my work with little conversation with anyone. Yet the irony is this: in my self-preservation, I'm actually destroying myself. In bottling up my unexpressed feelings, I'm making myself sick emotionally and physically.

When you are given public honor for an accomplishment, be sure to share the credit with your spouse.

Steven Covey, author of the bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, feels so strongly about people's need for appreciation that he states: "Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival, to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated."1

Strew nuggets of affirmation and caring along your path today; you never know whose day you'll brighten. — Mary Kay Moody

Material things are no replacement for human, emotional love. A wife says, "He ignores me all day long and then wants to jump in bed with me. I hate it." She is not a wife who hates sex; she is a wife desperately pleading for emotional love.

Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love. That is why the ancient biblical writings spoke of the husband and wife becoming "one flesh." That did not mean that individuals would lose their identity; it meant that they would enter into each other's lives in a deep and intimate way.

Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardships our lot in life.

No matter what I did, it was never enough.

The in love experience temporarily meets that need, but it is inevitably a quick fix and, as we shall learn later, has a limited and predictable life span. After we come down from the high of the in love obsession, the emotional need for love resurfaces because it is fundamental to our nature. It is at the center of our emotional desires. We needed love before we fell in love, and we will need it as long as we live.

normal developmental

Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love. "I love you. I care about you, and I choose to forgive you.

The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history. Yes, it happened. Certainly it hurt. And it may still hurt, but he has acknowledged his failure and asked your forgiveness. We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history. We can choose to live today free from the failures of yesterday. Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is

Through love, God paves the way to reconciliation. — Deb Wuethrich —

May God teach us to enjoy serving others as a sign of our love for Him. — Pat Stockett Johnston —

Your example is a witness—of God's love and yours. — James Hopkins —

Only by God's divine love can we truly forgive from the heart. — Jessica Talbot —

May we serve as God's messengers through love in action. — Nora Peacock —

Love is not only realistic, but our only hope of survival.

During infancy, a child does not distinguish between milk and tenderness, between solid food and love. Without food, a child will starve. Without love, a child will starve emotionally and can become impaired for life. A great deal of research indicates that the emotional foundation of life is laid in the first eighteen months of life, particularly in the mother/child relationship. The "food" for future emotional health is physical touch, kind words, and tender care.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is sadness, joy; where there is darkness, light.

It's too easy to complain. A heart of love finds the good, and, if necessary, helps change the bad things. — Zach Davidson —

Remember love, not hate, equals peace.