True Happiness consists in making others happy. – Hindu Proverb
I’m sure that you’ve noticed that your car will require a tune-up or its performance gets shoddy. You have to repair your house on a regular basis or it will begin to fall apart. You have to mow your lawn and weed your garden it will become overgrown. We know that we have to do this in order to make it nice, pretty and pleasant to live in and make use of.
So knowing this, why do we believe we do not have to perform regular maintenance and tending to our marriages? We often spend more time taking care of our possessions than we do our relationships. Relationships are more like your garden, your home and your car. You have to perform regular maintenance and you have to clear out the weeds and the debris or the relationship will fall apart.
Tending your marriage also shows a care for your own self-image. Our marriages are important to us and by extension we should be important to our marriages. By caring for our marriages, and ourselves we get to reap the bounty of it. There’s an old story that illustrates the point better than I can. It’s about a farmer who lived right on the edge of town right off the main road.
One day, while the farmer was mending his fences, a wagon came rolling up. It appeared to be a new family moving into town. There wasn’t one single space anywhere on the wagon that didn’t have a box strapped to it or a blanket rolled up or a frying pan hanging. As the wagon got nearer, a man on the wagon called out.
“Howdy. We’re thinking of relocating to this town. Do you mind me asking what sort of folks live in these parts?”
The farmer called back, “What were the people like where you came from?”
“Not a kind bunch,” said the newcomer. “They’d stab you in the back just as soon as look at ya.”
“Well, that’s exactly the kind of folks you’ll find here.”
It wasn’t more than an hour or so later when another wagon approached, looking much like the last. It was another family looking to put down some roots in town.
“We’re fixing to move into town. We were wondering what kind of people we’ll find here,” says the man sitting in the wagon.
”What were the people like where you came from,” asked the farmer.
“Oh, they were wonderful! Any one of ‘em would give you the shirt off his back,” said the newcomer.
Then the farmer said, “Well that’s exactly the kind of folks you’ll find here.”
This is a familiar tale, but the farmer understands self-image and tending to personal relationships. He understands that we see the world as we are not as it is. If we are moving from one relationship to the next, we will find what we left behind at our next stop.
The advantage we have when it comes to our marriage is that we are we. You are you. Your marriage is yours. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. When we are proud of ourselves, when we understand that no one else has our marriage. No one else can have our marriage. Then we can understand that no matter how ordinary we are, no matter how average – our marriage is incredibly unique.
We should tend to this uniqueness. We should embrace that which is unique. We should provide our marriage with the maintenance, the care, and the loving hands to pull out the weeds that can choke out the growth in our relationship.