Three Words That Never Grow Old

Three Words that Never Grow Old

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1

Emily sat in our office weeping. She had come for counseling on her own, without telling her husband. “I am so hungry for affection,” she confided in us. “We have been married for twenty-five years, and I know he is capable of tenderness. He shows it to the dog. But . . .” Emily’s voice broke down, and her tears began to flow. She reached for a tissue and quietly said, “I’d just like to hear him say, ‘I love you.’”

Three simple words. So critical to marriage. We take these tender words for granted sometimes, but we have never known anyone who got tired of hearing “I love you” . . . before leaving the house in the morning . . . in a quick message on the answering machine . . . while working in the garden . . . before dozing off in bed. These little words are like nutrients to a marriage. Without a consistent dose of verbal expression, without saying and hearing those words, the soul of a marriage withers.

Think about it. We have over six hundred thousand words in the English language and more synonyms per word than are found in any other language. However, we have only one word with which to express all the various shadings of love. Deficient as English is in this respect, we long to hear the familiar words “I love you.”

Again and again, your spouse needs to hear those words. And it is just as important for you to say them. I (Les) need to say, “I love you,” as much as Leslie needs to hear it. The poet W. H. Auden remarked, “We must love each other or die!” He was surely right. A marriage cannot survive without verbal expressions of love. So pray that the Lord will make your love for each other strong and overflowing.^a

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

—Stephen King

^a 157