There’s a very popular book out there called “The Five Love Languages” - positing that every person has a different way they feel and express love - a different “language” if you will. These languages are described as physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, giving, or service.

I’ve always thought this idea made a lot of sense. Some people will clean your house for you, but never tell you that they care about you - to them, cleaning your house IS telling you that they love you. Other people will buy you extravagant gifts, as their way of telling you how important you are to them. It’s important, when loving someone, to be aware of how they need to “hear” love - otherwise, no matter how much we love them, if  we’re loving them using our love language and not theirs, they may not feel loved at all.

So I get it. I even agree with it. But recently I’ve been thinking that it’s sort of reductionistic. If your love language is giving, I’ll search out the perfect gift for you and feel that I have loved you well. If your love language is quality time, I’ll carve out a niche of time just for you, and again, feel that I have loved you well. And it goes on and on.

While I think these “languages” are important, I don’t know if any one of them - or even all of them - can really let a person know deeply how loved they are. They can become an “action” to “do” - tell my wife how beautiful she is // take my daughter out to dinner // buy flowers for my girlfriend // spend the day helping my friend move.

And the sad fact of the matter is, you can do all the right things with precious little love in your heart.

Or, you may really love the person, and yet all that doing still feels hollow.

In thinking about this, I realized that more than anything else, I want to be known. I think this is part of being made in the image of God - the desire for deep, indwelling intimacy goes far beyond touch or gifts or words or service or time. And for deep, indwelling intimacy, there must be deep knowledge.

A friend asked me once, “What is intimacy?” I thought of all the common definitions - deeply knowing another person was the one that immediately sprang to mind. Yet even that misses something.

I think maybe intimacy begins with a deep knowledge of yourself - and then offering that deep knowledge to another person. When that person offers back their own deep knowledge of themself, you have a dance - perichoresis - intimacy.

In dancing together, this kind of intimate knowing deepens - now you know yourself deeply, but you also know this other person just as deeply. And in the dance, the knowing always deepens. When you’re in a truly intimate relationship, you’re not just discovering more about the other person. You’re discovering yourself.
I knew I was falling in love with Mike when I realized that I could be more myself around him than anyone else I knew. I could be more myself when I was around him than even when I was alone.

Too often, I think, we settle for less than intimacy - not just in our marriages, but in our family relationships, in our friendships. We settle for “acts” of love - the five love languages - without ever acknowledging our deeper, more essential desire to be known.

To let ourselves be known is to let our guard down - to be vulnerable.

Helping someone clean their house doesn’t require vulnerability.
Hugging someone doesn’t require vulnerability.
Spending “quality time” with a friend can be great fun - but doesn’t require vulnerability.
Buying a gift for someone doesn’t require vulnerability.
Affirming someone doesn’t require vulnerability.

To be vulnerable with another - a spouse, a friend, a relative - requires that we walk into our fear. Our fear of being known - what if they don’t like what they see? Our fear of deeply knowing this other person - what if I don’t like what I find?

And yet, when this deep knowing is not a part of the relationship, we feel dissatisfied. Empty, somehow. Let down, even though we “know” this person loves me and I love them.

What does knowing love look like?

Like I said earlier, I think it begins with knowing one’s self deeply. At some level, introspection and even brutal honesty are part of the path towards intimacy. You cannot offer to another what you don’t even know is there.

Relationally, well - I’ll describe what it would look like to me. Love, to me, is someone who will read a book that's important to me - not because they'll like it // agree with it //identify with it, but because they want to know me better and try to see what I see. It's someone who will take the time to understand the complexity of my health situation and, even though it doesn't apply to them at all, learn a little bit about thyroid/adrenal/pituitary issues - so that they understand what I'm dealing with on a daily basis. Love is asking me questions, figuring out "what makes me tick". It's someone watching a movie with me that impacted me or made me cry - even if it's not their cup of tea. I feel most loved when someone reads my blog, enjoys my pictures, knows what my daily schedule looks like, asks me what I'm thinking about....when the details of my life are known.

Love doesn’t necessarily understand, or validate. It doesn’t necessarily share a belief system or a worldview.

Love - knowing love - wants to know. Wants to know everything, even the things it doesn’t understand or agree with, because more than anything that kind of love wants to know you - the deep you, the real you, the you that you might not even know is there all the time.

Knowing love invites you to dance.

It invites indwelling knowledge of each other.

It is the way we live from the image of God within us, the way we incarnate Christ to one another.

Why?

Because he wants to dance with us. He wants to know us. Every detail of our life matters to him. He loves every nook and cranny of who we are.

And he invites us to know him in the same way.

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" John 17:3

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You can read the other entries in this series here:

Dancing With God
Influence