Throughout the summer months, I’m going to participate in the Works for me Wednesday carnival because there is a percentage of ya’ll that want to actually hear about Starlite.

Why you are not satisfied with me and my Imaginary Boyfriend, I cannot explain.

Also — it is difficult to do Well Said Wednesday when no one around me is saying, um, well said things. Most of my college girls are gone for the summer, leaving me with a couple of puppies and a roommate who continues to insist on sending me text messages in Spanish.

Speaking of Katie, if there was a Well Said Wednesday this week, she’d probably have won it. She came into my bedroom the other night, looked around at the mess (I’VE BEEN BUSY, OKAY?) and uttered only one word.

Unfortunately, I can’t list it here.

She then said “Are you ever gonna clean up this junk?” And I said “Yes, jerkasaurus.” And then she said “Good. If you need an example of what a clean room looks like, feel free to check mine out.”

Whatev’.

ANYWAY, back to ministry. I am a big fan of people loving the people around them. It is especially important for that love to come from family. But a lot of times, it doesn’t. And so we, as Christians, need to step up to the plate and start loving.

My tip is to embrace whatever love language you give from. (And yes, I also can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. Love language? Oh my.) I’ll give you an example based on, um, me. Because that’s all I’ve got for you. I apologize.

My love language (there it goes again!) is giving gifts. I love to give people things. Love it. And so, I show my love to people around me by giving gifts. And putting thought into it. And, on occasion, actually wrapping the gifts myself paying one of our broke Starlite college girls to wrap it for me.

I don’t have a lot of picture examples I can show you from Starlite, since I don’t post the girls’ faces without about 457,389 pages of signed legal documents, but I went through my own pictures and came up with a few to show you:

When my bff Ashley had her last birthday, I decided to recreate her 12th birthday (which was right around the time we became bff’s). I planned a day full of things we would have done on her 12th birthday had we of had cars and money. We went to lunch at our favorite restaurant from back then, made bath products at a do-it-yourself store and even went to Target (obviously).

For her gifts, I had collected several things over the previous few months that I thought she might like. “I” wrapped them all in coordinating paper and ta-da! She had a gift to open at each place we went to!

I do a similar thing for all the bridal / lingerie / wedding showers I go to for my former Starlite college girls (AND HELLO I GO TO A LOT OF THESE SHOWERS). Here’s a picture of my gifts from the last one I went to, which was for a girl who started with us when she was a freshman in college:

My cousin Cate, also involved with Starlite, graduated from college recently and we went out for a fun lunch together to celebrate. Here’s her gifts, pre-wrapped:

One of the projects I’m working on right now is putting together a collection of baby gifts for a friend from college who is now going through an unplanned pregnancy. She’s pretty much on her own and I hear the loneliness in her voice every time I call her. So over the past week or so, I’ve purchased several different small baby gifts — maybe a pack of onesies or a cute toy. I planning to wrap them all tonight and go ahead and put them in labeled shipping boxes / envelopes. I’ve got them planned out to where I can send her a package every two weeks until her due date.

Demonstrating my love through giving gifts is expensive, of course. But I’ve chosen to make sacrifices in other areas of my life in order to be able to purchase small gifts, especially for people who are in a position where they truly have needs.

I also like to give in secret, especially if I’m doing anything for any of my current Starlite leaders (so we can guard against jealously and any form of dependence issues). Allison, our other employee, is really good about this as well and helps me make sure that our college girls always have food, money for gas to drive home, etc.

We demonstrate this to the girls we serve in Starlite, of course. Everything we do — from the weekly programs to the massive sleepovers — is completely free. One of my favorite ways we bless them is to set up a complete spa — manicures, pedicures, hairstyles, makeovers, etc. One year we took things to a new level by providing something “else” in the rooms where the “spa services” were taking place. For example, in the hairstyle room, we had a chocolate fountain with pretzels and other treats that the girls could have. In the pedicure room, we had pink punch in pretty glasses with umbrellas sticking out of them.

I can’t wait until we get closer to Christmas so I can tell you more about what we do for the girls then. We have a couple of donors who give a specific, very generous gift to us at Christmas so that we can give every single girl we serve — from 3rd grade on up to 12th grade — her own gift. We (obviously) purchase in mass quantities, but in order to get it shipped here, wrapped, sorted, etc. we typically begin working on this in late September. Isn’t that unbelievable?

While I love to give gifts, getting them isn’t as big of a deal to me. I’d much rather watch someone get a gift than open one of my own. Unless said gift is coming from the makers of Sunny Delight. In that case, Sunny Delight makers? Give on, my friends, give on. I am a ready and open vessel to receive of your giving.

So tell me — what’s your love language (okay, I just laughed out loud) and how do you share it with the peeps in your life?

More importantly, does your love language involve giving away Sunny Delight by any chance?

Listen, you never know who could be reading.