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Greetings and welcome to my post. It is December 2014 and this is the time of the year in which we pause and focus on giving gifts to one another. As you know, all the big retail shops & internet shops are hoping you will buy, buy, and buy all the wonderful discounts on various items they have posted on their respected websites. So it is December and it is Christmas and it is natural to focus on buying someone an item as a gift.

So let me ask you to consider an alternative gift to someone you love or someone who is important to you this year that you cannot buy on line, at a retail store, or any other half dozen places in which you shop. This year let me invite you to consider giving these four gifts: Love, Honesty, Faithfulness, and Compassion.

This year, what if you went to the person that you love (maybe your spouse, child, friend, and sibling) and really try to give them something as an act of love that is not packaged in a box or as an item? People may want and like gifts but what they need is your friendship love. Seek to give them something they need.

So maybe this year your relationship with the one you love has not gone so smooth. The two of you have had a rocky time or challenges in this relationship. But deep down, despite some of the hardships, you still want to love them. Your desire is strong. So this Christmas, why don’t you give them friendship love? You see, when we don’t see what we love about another person or when our love disappears or fades away, we need to hold onto friendship love that really does build a healthy relationship.

Friendship love begins with really wanting to seek the best for the other person. Friendship love has nothing to do with conditional love in which we love because someone else is giving us or gratifying us at the moment. Instead friendship love focus on what is good for the other person.
So what are some practical ways to show and give this gift to someone this Christmas? Why don’t you buy four 3X5 index cards and on each of these cards write out a way in which you desire to love them as a friend. One card could say that you will do all the chores for one week around the house. Another card says you will drive them anywhere they want to go to for a week acting as a chauffeur willing to take them where they want to go.

Maybe another card would be for you to offer them 25 hours of your undivided attention. This would mean you would not let any distraction or any other priority in your life prevent you from focusing just on them, listening to them, engaging and participating in what they want to do, and not what you want to do.

Finally, maybe the last card would be an activity this person would love to do and you would go with them despite the fact that you know you may dislike or not prefer to engage in this activity. On this index card, you could tell them they could pick any three activities that they could choose and you would go with them, with no complaining or criticism, and hang out with them or be with them for these 3 activities.

All four of these 3×5 index cards are examples of friendship love. It is really saying to the other person how much this person means to you, how much you do want the best for them and you do want to seek what they want due to you valuing them and focusing your concern on the other person. Try to give this gift, friendship love, this year. It is not something you can buy at the store and believe me, once you do this, the other person will look back and view this as the best gift you could have bought for them. Thanks for reading.