Thoughts on Love...Puppy Love...

We had quite the doggy pack this weekend at our house. We were keeping my family dogs, Sugar & Missy, while my parents were in Austin. Having all three was quite a handful. Sugar (a bichon frise) & Missy (a pomeranian mix) are both about 15lbs each, while Duke (black lab) weighs in at about 80lbs on his slim days. Duke is convinced that Missy is the most beautiful object he's ever laid eyes on and proceeds to try his version of flirtation out on her every couple hours or so. It's hillarious. Poor guy. He just wants to woo her. He turns his face to the side and looks out the corners of his eyes all crazy-like, pins his ears back, and marches around her awkwardly doing this kind of groaning bark. He will walk off briefly, only to prance back proudly with some huge toy in tow, dropping on top of her like, "Look what I brought you sweetie! There's much more where that came from!" After getting hit in the face abruptly with some enormous toy, Missy usually snaps at him and then sashays off, swinging her little butt tuff in his face like, "As if you could get with this, you big goon!" It's so sweet/sad. It reminds me of the vast differences in love languages and communication styles found in many human relationships. Like the little boy coming over to the girl with the pig-tails on the playground...who finds it appropriate to dump the contents of his sand pail on her. Or the man who thinks its a good idea to buy his wife a weed-eater for their anniversary. Sometimes they don't understand that just becuase it's they're favorite thing and they're so excited about it, doesn't mean it should be gifted to us gals on special occasions as a sign of love and devotion. We can't forget the female's role in our little story. Missy gets so fed up with him that she shows her tiny K-9's in frustration and explodes, leaving Duke clueless to why she's pissed. I think we ladies do this as well. The little girl who skreeches out "You're gross!" to the boy who just passed her his booger covered love note. Or the hormonal lady whose boyfriend asks the wrong question at the wrong time of the month. Our husbands think that spending the afternoon fixing the bathroom door that's been broken for half a year is such a great idea of showing his love...while us wives are frantically cleaning the house and laboring in the kitchen and in preparation for dinner guests that evening. We pop off at him instead of communicating what we really need and leave him wounded in the garage or something. Ahh, it seems we're destined for these types of communication breakdowns...I guess we can blame it on what happened in Genesis 3. ;) But that doesn't mean our puppy love communication styles can't improve. I'm pretty sure that Jesus' sacrifice, the Father's love, and the Holy Spirit's intervening can help us daily grow our puppy love into something better.