When Serving Stops Being Fun

In marriage, or, really, in any close relationship, service plays a key role. Being willing to sacrifice, to serve your spouse, to work together and help each other out is important for creating a strong relationship. And most of the time, when you're not really facing any major struggles in life, that whole serving each other thing is pretty easy.

I mean, when you're newlyweds, and everything is right in the world, all it takes to serve your husband is to get dinner made before he gets home from work. And all it takes him to serve you is to offer to wash the dishes afterwards. Nothing too challenging.

But it's when the times get a little tougher, and the acts of service get a little more challenging, that your willingness to serve your spouse gets challenged--and the very foundation of your relationship can be either strengthened or weakened by how you respond to opportunities to serve on the bad days.

Most of the time, my husband and I have it really easy. But recently, we had one of those days where it wasn't quite as easy as we're used to. My car needed two new struts. So, my husband drove me to school,  telling me that he'd have my car fixed by the time my shift was over, and that he'd make me a smoothie for dinner when I got home. My husband has changed struts on a number of different cars, and he knew that it shouldn't take eight hours to change two struts. Eight hours later--the car still wasn't fixed yet. My husband had put everything back together, and thought he was done. He tried to drive my car, and it was quickly apparent that something wasn't right, as far as he could tell by the horrible noise coming from one of the struts he'd just changed. So, even though it was getting dark, after picking me up from school, he needed to get back to the car and see if he could fix it in time for me to drive it to school in the morning.

One more problem. My husband was hungry. That's usually more of an expected event than a problem. After all, husbands usually are hungry. But I had just worked a late shift at school. We didn't get home till after 8 o'clock at night. I'd had a long day at school--I was falling sick, and had been in pain, taking the maximum amount of pain killers that the bottles prescribed all day long. I'd been expecting to come home to a fixed car and a smoothie. But husband was still working on the car, and, what's more, he told me that he was really hungry, that he wanted meat for dinner.

I couldn't just scramble some eggs in five minutes and be done with it. I determined to make spaghetti--I thought I had a package of already cooked ground beef in the freezer that would speed up the process--when I opened it, I found that it was actually pre-cooked ground sausage. At that point I nearly cried. I was so tired. I wasn't even planning on eating a full dinner--eating a big meal that late at night makes me sick. I'd been silly enough to wear my non-practical shoes to school that day, so my aching feet just added to the rest of the physical pain that I'd been enduring all day long. I really wanted nothing more than to lie down and maybe eat a little popcorn before falling asleep for the night.

But husband had also worked on a very frustrating project all day long, and he was hungry, and it was not unreasonable of him to want a real dinner. That's what I reminded myself as I got the raw ground beef out of the refrigerator and put it in the frying pan ( did I mention that browning meat is my least favorite cooking job?). 

I buzzed around the kitchen, using my rather good cooking skills to keep an eye on the boiling pasta, the sauce, and the meat at the same time as blending up a smoothie and popping popcorn in our air popper. My husband came in the house--thwarted in his purpose of fixing my car by the darkness outside.

That night wasn't a stellar night for either of us. It wasn't my husband's best mechanic job. I ended up having to get a ride from my aunt the next day in order to get to school on time, because Angel had to leave for work two hours before my school opened. Nearly crying over a ziploc bag of ground sausage because I didn't feel like I could bear to stand up long enough to brown a pound of hamburger was definitely a weak point in my career as a housewife. Nevertheless, that night, I was proud of us.

I was proud because, even when the going got a little tough, even when serving each other--using our skills to help each other out and meet the other one's needs, wasn't fun any more, we still did it. If I would have been single, I would have come home from a hellacious school day like that and dropped straight into bed. But marriage requires being willing to serve, and to serve past the point of what's still enjoyable.

That test we faced was just a tiny one. By the next day, both of us woke well-rested and well-fed. My car was still broken, but Angel would fix it the next day he had off of work. That challenge barely lasted an evening. But I'm grateful that our relationship is built on a strong foundation--that even during a not-so-good day like that, we were able to think about each other's needs and keep on going. Evenings like that encourage me to have peace about whatever trials we may face in the future. I'm quite certain that we're going to face tough times that will last weeks or months, rather than an evening--but I also know that evenings like that one are excellent for teaching us how to be faithful and how to serve in the bigger tests that will come.