How does one show appreciation?
Someone I know and care about very much asked me this question. I wasn't exactly sure myself. I have often felt unappreciated, and this led me to thinking...I came across the question on a blog: 'How does one show love?' and the answer below made me realize I consider appreciation and love to be the same...
How do you show others that you care? This is how I answered the question, “How do you show love?”
Light up when you see someone. Listen.
Sit with someone’s pain–especially the
pain you can’t fix. When everyone else
abandons someone, step up and be even
more present. Champion someone’s
strengths. Shine a constructive–but not
critical–light on someone’s weaknesses.
Give the gift of your time.
So if one is loved, if their foundation is full, I think they usually feel appreciated. Showing appreciation comes from giving the gift of yourself, and allowing someone else to be very important to you. It is spending time being with another, and looking for the good in them, and allowing them to impact you at the deepest level. It is letting the other person's cares matter to you, sometimes more than your own. It is seeing their trails, their challenges, and loving them despite their brokenness. It is giving the gift of yourself, time, presence, and learning to give it consistently. Appreciation and love is not something I give enough of to my family. They deserve it. They need it, and I needed to be reminded to give it to others.
Appreciation is not something one gives only from the head, akin to criticism, or analysis, or 'objective' remarks about a situation. I know when I spend time with my kids, if I give them a critique of their work without also commenting on effort, their hearts are sad. If I am listening, but also cooking and not paying attention, or looking at them but not really taking them in, they are noticing. When I speak with the best intentions, but don't take the time to realize where they are coming from, and what they really are needing, they don't feel important. It is not occasional moments of conversation talking to someone that helps them feel connected. My kids keep reminding me of this, if I listen and give them time.
Appreciation comes from the heart, a heart desiring to love, and pour oneself out for another. Where love is sought, it learns the language of another, and cares enough to show it. Love invests the heart, even when it's hard. Family life calls parents to learn how to show appreciation to their children, in the ways those children need it. It's hard because each child needs different things to feel loved. Parents modeling love for each other give their children tools, and hope that love, however hard is possible. They can show that forgiveness when love fails is possible.
In this modern world we constantly have to relearn the language or the grammar of each area of society to function well: technology, health, medicine, education, business, finance ... So too learning the language of how to love others and be there for them is something worth considering. In the world of constant computer gadgets beckoning our mental energy, time and attention, everyone appears to be lead to distraction. It becomes easy to look at people with their complexity as a burden or problem, an annoyance, another time drain which we don't need. People and their problems they bring to us are one more thing we don't have time for in our busy day... Finding a way to remember the dignity of persons becomes harder in the world of checklists, and overcommitment. Even a stay at home Mom who wants to be present can struggle with this. Learning the language of how to listen and be with someone and help them feel loved (especially the weak, the forgotten) is becoming a lost art in our modern culture.
Appreciation comes from the heart, a heart desiring to love, and pour oneself out for another. Where love is sought, it learns the language of another, and cares enough to show it. Love invests the heart, even when it's hard. Family life calls parents to learn how to show appreciation to their children, in the ways those children need it. It's hard because each child needs different things to feel loved. Parents modeling love for each other give their children tools, and hope that love, however hard is possible. They can show that forgiveness when love fails is possible.
In this modern world we constantly have to relearn the language or the grammar of each area of society to function well: technology, health, medicine, education, business, finance ... So too learning the language of how to love others and be there for them is something worth considering. In the world of constant computer gadgets beckoning our mental energy, time and attention, everyone appears to be lead to distraction. It becomes easy to look at people with their complexity as a burden or problem, an annoyance, another time drain which we don't need. People and their problems they bring to us are one more thing we don't have time for in our busy day... Finding a way to remember the dignity of persons becomes harder in the world of checklists, and overcommitment. Even a stay at home Mom who wants to be present can struggle with this. Learning the language of how to listen and be with someone and help them feel loved (especially the weak, the forgotten) is becoming a lost art in our modern culture.
Motherhood is a gift because it helps a woman develop her heart, and learn to love deeply, to give all of oneself. Motherhood invites a woman to learn how to place others first, daily. If you fail once, the opportunity will arise very shortly to give again. The very survival of the child or children depends on the amount of love a Mother is willing to pour out and extend to nurture the body, heart and mind of another. And then once you have given all of yourself, you get to do it again, and again. The weeks and years can become a blur of meeting the needs of others. But in giving, a mother becomes more while she empties herself for others. The work is sometimes exhausting, repetitive, but done with love it edifies the mother and the child. Good mothers carry no diplomas, or paychecks for this stuff. If fact most of it seems to be mocked for its drudgery. Women have no status or standing economically or socially for the many hours investing their hearts and minds to be present and available to little ones. Yet this work of helping another feel loved and whole, and affirmed, and appreciated provided a true reward. Seeing a child grow into a person who is whole and confident brings a joy that is hard to express, and worth everything. Helping another know they are valuable, begins with a child knowing they are loved beginning with one happy bath, watching one tantrum solved, or singing a lullaby on a tired evening and watching a contented child sleeping peacefully. There is a joy knowing you gave everything and seeing your child know they are loved.
I sincerely pray Mothers (especially myself) can learn to give the language of appreciation and love to their children. If you teach a child to use a computer, or learn a foreign language they have skills that help them function better in their society. If they learn they are loved and know this deeply a child will grow up able to understand and receive love, and pass it on within a family and a community. These kids will be strong on a deep level. Without this opportunity there is an absence which results in persons living a life seeking appreciation and love in the wrong ways. They may live their life distracted, seeking successes from a life of superficial achievements. Or worse, they may come across authentic love, and not recognize it, or recognize but be unable to receive it. Life could become a maze of living without the ability to be content, incapable of finding true happiness or love, or the ability to give to others. One could be left always striving for successes, seeking to fill the tank, but operating with a heart with a hole in it. A broken heart, strife, discontent and unhappiness...seems too common today. The more gifted, the more one could lead a life appearing to be successful achieving many things, yet still feeling unappreciated and unloved and unable to love others.
The poverty of love, of a deep abiding knowledge that one is loved, leaves an absence in the heart which affects the whole human person. This lack is a privation which need not and should not be passes from generation to generation. Mothers (and fathers) can provide a foundation of love, of appreciation for children as they form their identities. They ought to do so. They will be rewarded if they do, and saddened if they don't. This foundation is the firm rock for them to build upon. For all parents I pray we may we seek to give our children more of ourselves, more authentic love, and may God's grace fill in the lack where we fail, and where our limited love cannot reach. Grace can show that love which knows no bounds, and the love which never fails. Love makes all things good and true, and wonderful, full and perfect. Grace and love from the heart bring a true appreciation like nothing else.
I sincerely pray Mothers (especially myself) can learn to give the language of appreciation and love to their children. If you teach a child to use a computer, or learn a foreign language they have skills that help them function better in their society. If they learn they are loved and know this deeply a child will grow up able to understand and receive love, and pass it on within a family and a community. These kids will be strong on a deep level. Without this opportunity there is an absence which results in persons living a life seeking appreciation and love in the wrong ways. They may live their life distracted, seeking successes from a life of superficial achievements. Or worse, they may come across authentic love, and not recognize it, or recognize but be unable to receive it. Life could become a maze of living without the ability to be content, incapable of finding true happiness or love, or the ability to give to others. One could be left always striving for successes, seeking to fill the tank, but operating with a heart with a hole in it. A broken heart, strife, discontent and unhappiness...seems too common today. The more gifted, the more one could lead a life appearing to be successful achieving many things, yet still feeling unappreciated and unloved and unable to love others.
The poverty of love, of a deep abiding knowledge that one is loved, leaves an absence in the heart which affects the whole human person. This lack is a privation which need not and should not be passes from generation to generation. Mothers (and fathers) can provide a foundation of love, of appreciation for children as they form their identities. They ought to do so. They will be rewarded if they do, and saddened if they don't. This foundation is the firm rock for them to build upon. For all parents I pray we may we seek to give our children more of ourselves, more authentic love, and may God's grace fill in the lack where we fail, and where our limited love cannot reach. Grace can show that love which knows no bounds, and the love which never fails. Love makes all things good and true, and wonderful, full and perfect. Grace and love from the heart bring a true appreciation like nothing else.
No comments:
Post a Comment