New Life for Old Love

FAMILY  Season 2, Episode 020 "New Life for Old Love" audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly and his wife, Janet Chester Bly.  Recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, 1990. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.  

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Transcript

New Life for Old Love
Stephen Bly
Recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, 1990

This morning we want to talk about a subject familiar to us as we speak about marriage relationships.  

Philippians 1:9 … Paul says, “And this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.” 

The thought that comes to my mind is that Paul is writing to the church that is the most loving of all those he ever started and served. The Philippian church is so loving that they support Paul generously with their gifts. This is the kind of church that historians relate Paul wanted to be buried there. This is the kind of place where Paul would be able to retire and stay there. A loving group. Yet, he writes he hopes their love will still abound more and more.  

That is, love is meant to keep on growing. Paul wrote this to a church. That theme can also apply to married life. You don’t have to say to only unloving people, “Let your love grow.” This can also be said to people who love a lot. Let’s explore new ways of telling your mate, “I love you.” 

Let’s pray … “Father, we do commit this time to you. We pray we will hear you as you speak to our hearts, that we’ll be willing to change if there’s changes needed, that we’ll be willing to do new things in order to please you and to strengthen our relationships. We ask that in Jesus Name, Amen.” 

I want to explore some ne ways of saying, “I love you,” and how people say, “I love you.” What you’re going to find is that most of those examples fit into certain categories. My friend from North Carolina, Gary Chapman, talks about “love languages” and sometimes he tells about five love languages. I want to go over those with you and add a couple of our own and show how we can use those to find a new way to say, “I love you.”  

The challenge isn’t, “Well, you don’t love your mate.” The challenge is how to show them that you love them.  

One of those ways is verbal. Say, “I love you.” 

Some people say, “I love you” a lot. That’s how they express love and want to receive love. If you like to receive love that way and your mate isn’t that way, you probably spend a lot of time saying, “Do you love me? Do you love me?” Because you want to hear it. It’s important to you to hear those words. So, some of us express and receive love verbally.  

Another way we express love is through the giving of gifts.  

That means something unexpected. If you think you give your wife gifts at Christmas and birthday and anniversary, let me tell you that’s nothing special because if you don’t give them one, you’re in big trouble. But it’s those unexpected gifts that say, “I love you.” Some people feel loved when gifts pop up.  

A third way is through uninterrupted time.  Somebody said, “My husband listens.” A time when you really listen to what they need to say. 

A fourth way is through acts of service. When you do things for other people or your mate. You do something for them and they feel loved. 

A fifth way is through touch. Through a snuggle or holding hands. Through a kiss or sexual relationships.  

A sixth way is through sharing your mate’s adventures. Doing some of those exciting things your mate wants to do, even though it may not be very high on your agenda. You’re showing love.  

A seventh way is through uncompromising loyalty. Demonstrating your loyalty in all circumstances.  

I think that’s some of the ways that people feel loved. And that’s some of the way people express love. There might be some new ways for you to say, “I love you,” in those categories.  

Let’s take a verbal, “I love you.” Maybe there’s a new way to verbally say “I love you” to your mate. If you say it quite often, there may be a new way. Let’s suppose that husband’s at work and there’s other guys there when you’re on the phone. So, other people will hear what you say. And wife’s at home.  

It’s about quitting time and everyone’s gathered as your wife has something important to tell. “Honey, will you bring home some milk and eggs.” At the end of the call, she’s in the privacy of her kitchen and she says, “Honey, I love you.” And what do you say? Those terribly romantic words, “Me too.” What if you were to say, “Wow, I really love you too!” And she knew all the guys heard. So, you’ll get ribbed some. But she’s going to feel loved. A verbally new way of saying, “I love you!” 

Janet: Let’s take a hypothetical. Suppose you’re with a bunch of women and doing something creative like, perhaps, making tamales. And you’re all together in a social hall somewhere or a kitchen. You’re having a good time together talking and telling stories.  

All of a sudden, you look up and coming through the door is a guy who happens to be your husband. But on that day, he happens to be wearing snake skin boots, a black leather vest that you really like, and he has on a bright shirt that makes his eyes sparkle, and his hair looks shiny. And he also has on that sharp belt buckle that touches off the whole outfit just right. And you turn around and say, “Wow, what a hunk!” right in front of all those women. That’s another way of saying, “I love you!” 

Steve: some people easily say, “I love you,” and that’s their primary love language. That means they need to hear something verbally. Often what happens, we indeed have a primary love language, but we marry someone with a different primary love language. One of the partners might be saying “I love you” all the time but the other is saying “I love you” in a different way. What we need to do, of course, is learn to speak their love language.  

If your mate says “I love you” all the time, you should probably say that back verbally too, even if that doesn’t come natural to you.  

Buying unexpected gifts is a love language. It reminds me of a friend of mine who right before Valentine’s Day sent his wife some flowers at work. You might say, “Well, that’s nice.” But it was really spectacular. For one thing, we are forty miles away from a florist. So, I don’t know how he got flowers delivered. I was impressed. This guy found somebody to deliver flowers.  

But then, when the flowers got delivered to his wife, she was so surprised she kept saying, “Are you sure they’re for me?” But she’s the only person who works in that office. They had to be for her. Then I found out, she told her husband when she came home, that was the first day in their thirty years of marriage, but also in her whole life, that anyone sent her flowers. Now, he had said, “I love you,” often. He had expressed his love in different ways. But never in that way before. She certainly felt well loved. By the giving of a special gift. 

Janet: Giving a gift is a difficult thing for me because I have a hard time finding the right gift. And then when I find a good gift or I think it is, by the time I bring it home I can think of several different reasons why it’s not a good gift after all. So, it’s a big hassle for me. I dread holidays when I have to find something that’s just right. And especially for Steve, I want to find something special for him.  

Well, the last time we were here in Lake Jackson, Texas, we stayed with Bettye Denam and she has tons of all kinds of catalogues. So, I took some samples home with me. I made a couple orders and then my post office box got deluged by more catalogues. One day I started pitching them out and noticed one of them, a tool catalogue, had red marks all through it that looked like what Steve would do. Now, I didn’t know what any of those things were. But I looked at the prices and picked out a few things and ordered them.  

Another thing about gifts, I hate it if he ever figures it out ahead of time. So, I thought this is going to be really special because not only had he chosen these things but he would never guess what they were. I always got him something western or something like that. And this is really different. The tricky part would be when they arrived in the mail. I had to be there at the post office and hide the packages and the whole thing. But I did it.  

Then, on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, he was one shocked guy. He had no idea I knew anything about those tools. But I finally found something he really wanted.  

Steve: That’s neat. And I remember getting the charge account bill for those too. Special gifts saying, “I love you.” Maybe your mate expresses love that way but it’s not your way. Think about it because you might want to show love in a new way with the giving of gifts. 

Quality or uninterrupted time is also another way of saying, “I love you.” I prefer uninterrupted time because quality time doesn’t mean anything anymore. Quantity is extremely important. When we use quality, we like to say, “I’ll give you three full minutes and that’s like three days.” Well, baloney! It’s worth three minutes and that’s all. But uninterrupted time is when there’s no other hassles going on. 

Here's what that looks like. Say it’s in the fall and you come home on a Monday night. You’re tired and sitting in the easy chair and flip on the television. There’s a really good football game going on. I suppose you root for Houston. We root for Seattle until they bomb out, then we pick a really good team to root for.  

You’re watching your favorite team and it’s a close score and it’s really going good and your wife tells you, “Honey, have you got a few minutes? I need to talk to you about Aaron. He’s not doing too good in a science class.” And you say, “Wait for the commercial.” And then while the girls are dancing and the beer ads blare on the screen, you turn around, “Yeah, what do you want?” And you try to work in a conversation on your way to the refrigerator and back. That’s not uninterrupted time. 

But what would happen if instead, you got up and went over to the TV, punched it off and came back, sat down on the couch and looked her in the eyes and said, “Honey, we need to talk about that. Go ahead.” After her heart throb settled down, that’s uninterrupted time. Another way to say, “I love you.” 

Janet: We have really been busy this Spring traveling, especially Steve. In fact, there was a four-week period in which he was only home one night. And about last Fall when we saw Aaron’s school schedule, we realized this last week would be his Spring break. And we determined way last Fall that during this Spring break, we would go as a family down to southeast Idaho as part of our Idaho history tour.  

But Steve would be coming home Monday night and we would leave Tuesday morning. When he got home Monday night I could see he was just exhausted, like a zombie, in fact. So, I said, “Hey, we could just not go on that trip. We could at least wait a couple days.” And he thought about and said, “No, we really need the time together. You and I need it and so does our family. If I stay home, I’ve got this pile of correspondence. I’ll get all these phone calls and I’ll get really busy again. We won’t have any time together. It’s now or never.” 

So, the next morning, we got up and got ready and took that opportunity for uninterrupted time together. That was a sacrificial way for him to say that he loved us.

 Steve:  Maybe your mate says to you, “Why don’t you ever listen to me?” What they’re saying is, “I need some uninterrupted time.” Another way of showing love is through acts of service, doing things you don’t have to do, instead of just doing things on their Things To Do list. Sometimes that’s hard for me. I’m a busy person and like to do all my many projects.  

But I remember one time I finally had enough sense to try a little more acts of service. Janet was out speaking so I came in one night to fix my own dinner. And I always have the same thing when I have to fix it myself. I have a bowl of Cheerios. Frozen blueberries on the bottom, Cheerios, and cold milk. So, I got out the Cheerios and there were bugs in the box. Now that’s serious. 

Then it dawned on me that Janet had said something about bugs getting into the food. So, I did something I’d never done before. I went out and got some shelf paper, the no bug kind. Then I took everything out of the shelves and put new paper in all of them. Then, put all the dishes back and when Janet came home I didn’t say anything. She went to get a glass. Of course, I had in the wrong spot. That’s when she noticed. She said, “You must really love your wife.” I said, “Why?” “Because you didn’t have to do that.” 

That’s what an act of service is—something you don’t have to do. A lot of people show love through acts of service.  

Janet: My birthday is February 23rd and I spent that day by myself this year, completely alone. It wasn’t planned that way. We had planned to be in Florida at that time, to spend time at the Epcot Center and Disneyworld and all because we were speaking at a writers conference the first part of the week, then a family seminar the rest of the week. So, we figured on about two weeks.  

But right before we were getting ready to leave, we had the early arrival of our first grandson. The mother, our daughter-in-law, had caesarian and was needing to recuperate. Her own mother was recovering from heart surgery, so couldn’t come to be with her. So, I felt I needed to be there to help care for that baby and my daughter-in-law. So, I didn’t go on the Florida trip which meant on February 23rd, on a Friday night, there I was all by myself. Aaron had gone to a slumber party. I was eating stale popcorn and had rented a movie. After I got it home, I realized I’d already seen it before. So, I really felt very sorry for myself.  

And then, about 7:30, I got a phone call. “Hello, is this Mrs. Bly?” “Yes.” “You don’t know me but I’m here in Florida at a conference and your husband told us that this is your birthday tonight and if you’ll just wait a moment, I’d like you to hear something.” Then I heard a big crowd of people singing, “Happy Birthday” to me. At the end the guy said, “I have a message for you. I wanted to say Happy Birthday and congratulate you for your grandchild and we also want to tell you that your husband is behaving yourself.” 

Ten minutes later I got another call. “Hello, Mrs. Bly?” “Yes.” “You don’t know me, but I’m here in Florida at a conference …”  This went on all night. I had at least six different calls and either a single person, or a couple, or more people would sing to me. And they had the same message every time. An unusual time of an act of service when my husband told me via other people that he really loved me. 

Steve: Yeah, I just gave them my phone number and said, “Would you please call my wife and wish her a Happy Birthday.” Saying “I love you” in a different way. You can do that through touch. Several things come to mind. But I’ve never used this in an example before.  

Jan’s a very warm, wonderful wife but in public she’s very reserved. We hold hands in public. That’s about it normally. So, we were holding hands one night walking through an aisle in Kmart. A very romantic scene. In fact, we were close to the flashing blue light when I grabbed her and kissed her on the lips.  

Now wasn’t that the first time you’ve ever been kissed by the flashing blue light in Kmart? A new way of saying, “I love you.” 

Janet: A few weeks ago I was looking through the mail and I saw a letter from my sister. I immediately grabbed it and read it first. I’m the oldest of eleven children and I have a sister who lives in eastern Montana and has been going through a very difficult year. She has had everything happen to her imaginable—health problems, financial problems, one thing after another. And I’ve been so concerned and caring about her. And we’ve done what little we can do to help them. So, I ripped open the letter to see what’s going on and I couldn’t stop crying. 

Steve said, “What’s the matter?” “Well, her daughter tried to commit suicide.” Just one more thing and I couldn’t handle anymore. He reached out and hugged me close for a long time. Another way to say “I love you.” 

Steve: Another way to say “I love you” is through the sharing of adventures. Those special times that they want to do that you might not be particularly interested in but you do anyway. 

Jan was a trooper this year. Not only did she wear her boots but she traveled with me the first week of December to Las Vegas, Nevada, which is not a place she likes to go at all, and she sat with me through several days of the National Finals Rodeo. That’s a way of saying, “I love you,” and I appreciated that. Tell us about it. 

Janet: When Steve came to me about a year before that and said he wanted us to get away for a few little fun times at the first of December after our busy Fall schedule. I had lots of things in mind and I had some things to suggest to him. But he mentioned right away, “We could sure get a good deal on these tickets.” 

For the whole nine months of waiting to go on that trip, I regretted it. I thought that being with a bunch of rowdy cowboys for three days was not my idea of having a real fun time with my husband. But it really wasn’t that bad after we got there. I kind of got into it some. But here’s the thing. When you share in your mate’s adventure, watch for a surprise, something you hadn’t planned on. 

You see, concurrently with that National Finals Rodeo, you can go out to the fairgrounds and they’ve got hundreds of booths, selling all kinds of wares. I found some scarves and earrings and we both found all kinds of fun things. We almost came that close to buying a rocking, bucking bull for our little grandson. 

Steve: Sharing in your mate’s adventures and one last thought about this idea of loyalty. Jesus said, “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:9). If He said that obviously that means that people can separate but we shouldn’t. To separate means to rip apart something God has done.  

Now, loyalty means that you just don’t let that happen. Uncompromising loyalty means that you cannot imagine the one person without the other. They come together as a set. 

Not too long ago I was in south Florida. I really like south Florida along the coast especially where I am a hunk. Everyone is seventy years or older. I’m the youngest guy on the street. But I was down there speaking to some churches and the other speakers and I were eating lunch in a restaurant. We were talking and I like to look at people as they come in and imagine what their stories are. 

An elderly couple entered the restaurant, and I watched them slowly cross the floor to a table. They were very well dressed. The gentleman had on a light-colored suit, a little black bow tie, and shiny patent leather shoes. His wife wore a beautiful dress with pearl necklace. He had a walker and she held onto his arm. When they got to the edge of the table, I noticed that she stopped and waited and parked his walker. Then he came over and held her chair for her as she sat down and pushed forward. He came back around and sat.  

I listened out of the corner of my ear as the waitress bounced up and said, “Well, how are you today? My, don’t you look handsome!” And his wife turned and said, “Yes he does.” They visited a little more then the husband looked up. “Today is our anniversary.” And the waitress said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. How many years?” “Sixty-three years.” Then he turned to his wife. “She gets better looking every year!” And she just blushed a smile. The waitress took their order and went on. 

I kept watching them during the meal. And they looked after each other. I noticed the lady reached over and took the red linen napkin and wiped off his face where the food didn’t quite get in the right place. At the end of the meal, they stayed there and I continued to watch. Finally, he got up first and came around. She waited as I’m sure she’d done for years for him. And he pulled the chair and she stood. She took him by the arm and they were walking slowly to the cash register.  

Then they stopped in the middle of the lobby, probably to rest. But he reached around with his gnarled hand and patted her on the bottom. And she said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Now, you cut that out!” Then, they scooted to the cash register to that same waitress. She smiled and said, “I hope you two have a good year.” The wife just smiled. “Oh, I’m sure we will, honey. I’m sure we will.”  

That’s what loyalty looks like after sixty-three years. Can’t imagine one without the other. That’s a way of saying, “I love you.”  

There are different ways to say “I love you.” Maybe you’ve been ignoring one of those or forgetting about it. Maybe as you think through those different ways there’s a weakness. “I need to strengthen that.”  

When you’re first married, you spend a lot of time saying “I love you” in one of those ways. But lately you haven’t been doing that. Maybe it’s time to refresh those ways and say, “I love you more and more.” 

Let’s pray … “Lord, we can’t convict our own selves let alone someone else. But your Holy Spirit can. And, Lord, we pray your Spirit will touch us to find a new way we can say “I love you”{ for our mates. And we pray, Father, that we’ll be willing to do some things different than we have done before. For we pray that in Jesus Name, Amen.”