I asked Jill to guest post on the topic of serving your spouse. She hit the nail on the head and I appreciate it so much! Take it away, Jill......
When you try on your wedding dress, you don’t imagine it. When you’re ordering the invitations, you don’t fathom it will come. When you’re picking out silverware for your first home together, it’s light years away. I’m not talking about the wedding. I’m not really even talking about the turbulent first year. I’m talking about the Incredible Boredom-- the one that hits after the shiny wears off and stays around for years.
I’m not saying I've dealt with boredom in my marriage the entire time. After all, we've been married for 16 years and they've been the best 16 years of my life. But let me tell you… it’s just been in the last TWO years that I've finally discovered daily, unbridled JOY in my marriage. And while there’s many reasons, I've decided that one of the main reasons why is the simple fact that we've finally discovered that joy comes from simply serving each other. You probably heard that line and thought, “OH GREAT! Just what I needed—one more thing to DO.” But let me assure you, friend. Service, done right, is an overflow of the well of love within you for your mate. And if your well is dry, service can be the very drill that goes deeper in your soil and hits the mainline, causing a bubbling stream to erupt in your soul.
I have a Wonder Woman fetish. I love the chick. She’s glamorous, she’s beautiful, the perfect mix of femininity and toughness, and she was every boy’s dream from my 80s upbringing. I found the perfect WW coffee cup, and every day, I brew my morning coffee in this cup for my commute to work. A while back, one morning, I found my WW cup sitting under my Keurig spout, filled with hot water, prewarming until it met my brew. My sweet husband found a way to my heart that day, using my favorite thing- coffee, and my favorite cup- WW, to melt my not-so-fond-of-the-morning heart. The fact that he first of all noticed my pattern, then stopped his own hectic morning (we have two small children) to make this simple gesture for my heart, made me fall completely in love with him all over again. Is it really about the coffee? The cup? Nope and nope. It’s about how he saw a way to make my already enjoyable vice even richer.
He found a way to serve my heart.
Look around you. What is it that you can do to break up the mundane and interject a little TLC into your spouse’s day? Maybe it’s cranking the car for her so she isn't quite so cold when she gets in. Maybe you can sneak into his truck and have a CD ready for when he cranks the engine, set on his favorite song. How about after dinner, you run him a bath (men like baths, too), pour him his favorite drink, and leave him blissfully alone for 30 minutes? Could you order lunch and have it delivered straight to her desk on a hectic work day? I’m not talking about moving mountains. I’m talking about simple observations that we miss every day because we’re too busy checking off to-do lists to see that most of the time, our mate is the last person we serve… and often the last person we think about.
You know what I know? Deadlines come and go. Houses will be cleaned. Dinners made. Soccer practices attended. Get-togethers enjoyed. Life takes on its own tempo and we jump in. But if we don’t stop, look around, and then REALLY see… we miss opportunities to win our spouse’s heart by putting hot water in their coffee cup.
And thus miss what life is all about.
What wisdom...we can win our spouse's heart by serving them in the little things. I just need to take this one and chew on it awhile! Thank you, Jill!
*Find a list with links to the other posts in this series here.*
I loved this one. I was sick in July. I had walking pneumonia (which I don't understand, I didn't feel like walking anywhere!). I felt miserable and I'm sure I wasn't a pleasure to be around. Both of Chris' parents were sick too. He took such great care of all of us. Little things he did helped out so much. We've been married for almost 6 years and I never really knew how nurturing and thoughtful he was. So, even though I felt like crap and just wanted to be left alone in my pitiful state until I felt better, watching him serve both me and his parents so selflessly was such an encouragement in our marriage. I fell in love with him about a million times again those couple of weeks. :)
ReplyDeleteSo sweet :)
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