My husband, Brad, and I recently celebrated our 5th anniversary. I know that in the grand scheme 5 years isn’t much, but it’s been a blessing to share life together with all of the ups and downs that life throws our way. We’ve laughed looking back on how former students of mine unsuccessfully tried to set us up in the lunch room. We mourned together saying goodbye to more of our grandparents. We’ve been blessed also with the joy of bringing two of the most wonderful children into the world. I’m sure many of our elders could offer better advice, but in this short amount of time one lesson stands out. Marriage is a partnership, but it isn’t always 50/50.
In an ideal world, we as a married couple would always be able to both give the same amount of energy and share the responsibilities equally, but in reality, we can’t always do that. Sometimes it’s 70/30, sometimes it’s 40/60, and sometimes it’s 99/1. There are different phases of life where one of us is called to give more than the other for the sake of our marriage and children. With both of our children, being pregnant and nursing them took a great physical toll on me and I simply wasn’t able to give 50% to our marriage because I was giving nearly 100% to our children. During times where Brad has been working on his masters degree or late evenings for work, he couldn’t give his 50% also. Some of these periods last longer than others and some for just an evening. It’s not always “fair”, but we can make those sacrifices of our own wants and desires because we’ve made the intentional choice to make the love of Christ our foundation.
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Our own love is flawed, but the love of Christ is perfect. As we continue through this Easter season, it is apt that we look to Christ as the most perfect example of love. His relationship with each of us is also not 50/50. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it will never be 50/50 because he gave us everything through His self sacrifice of dying on the cross for each of us. That’s a 100/0 moment. But because He loves us so deeply, He offered that freely and without any expectation of receiving anything back. We need this example of love in our lives. It is too easy to fall into a transactional way of thinking otherwise. “You give this. I give this. Now it’s even.” When we think this way, marriage becomes less about sacrificing for the sake of the other out of place of deep love and more about “what can I get for myself out of my spouse.”
Ephesians 5:20-33 is often one of those Bible passages that causes ears to perk up in the pews, but a good example of how we are called to live as a married couple. You are likely familiar with this one as it talks about wives being submissive to their husbands, but the second half is the part that often gets overlooked. It goes on to say how husbands are to be like Christ on the cross for their wives. Brad and I laugh about this at times and how he has the “worse” end of the deal. At the root of this though, it calls for both husband and wife to let go of their own desires and wants for the sake of the other and that’s the key to it all. It calls us to strive to both give 100% making the goal not just 50/50, but 100/100.
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Without both husband and wife being willing to give freely for the other, things become very challenging and resentment can fester. With my second pregnancy in particular, I had prolonged morning sickness. It really became “all the time” sickness and I had a hard time doing anything. Daily tasks like doing my work and caring for our older son felt impossible somedays. It would have been easy for Brad to get annoyed or frustrated with me because it appears I wasn’t giving as much. Instead though he recognized it was just a period where I couldn’t give that and he worked to make up the gap. Of course this was not a 50/50 of household duties and definitely not a 100/100, but as we work on getting each other to Heaven, we work to give all that we can. My 100% might look different than Brad’s 100% depending on the phase of life, but at the end of the day we can look at each other and know we gave everything we could.
It isn’t always easy to have this mentality, but we know that this is how we are called to live in our marriage. It isn’t enough to just really love each other. It’s about loving like Christ; freely, sacrificially, and without counting the cost. This doesn’t come naturally and we are definitely not perfect, but we learn more each day to love more like Christ. Our marriage isn’t founded on grand gestures or perfect days, but in willing the good of the other and dying to ourselves. Of course in five years we haven’t learned everything about being married, but if we keep Christ as the center we work towards giving 100/100 and learn the rest as we go.