8 Love Lessons, Part 2

When our kids were little, we had one car. I (Mike) would take the bus to work. One day I went to use the car, and it was a mess! There were Happy Meal wrappers on the floor and graham crackers and gummi worms stuck everywhere. I lost it!

I walked in the house and said some things I shouldn’t have. Then Debbie got mad. She said, “The way this arrangement works right now is that the house is my responsibility and the car is your responsibility.” So I went out to the car, gathered all the trash and junk, took it in the house, and dumped it on the living room floor. I said, “Now it’s your responsibility.”

We just started laughing. How stupid that we would both be that selfish!

Love lesson: Love doesn’t hold a grudge. When we’ve blown it with each other, a worldly kind of love would say, Move on. Don’t admit you messed up. But God’s love says, Go make it right.

When we’ve counseled couples, inevitably one spouse will complain, “But I’m always the one to make the first move.” When we think that way, it makes the situation worse. But the Bible says, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).

A newly married couple came to me (Mike) for counseling. They were ready to call it quits. As I listened to their story, I said, “Let me cut through all this, and put it bluntly. Right now, both of you are just being selfish. If you start honoring each other above yourself, like the Bible says, a lot of this stuff would go away.” They looked at me like, Should we hit him now? But after a few moments, they said, “You’re right.”

I told them to list ways they were being selfish and share that with each other. Then they would conversely say, “We’re going to start doing this a different way, even though we don’t feel like it.”

They’ve now been married almost 16 years. Every time we see them, they say, “We’ll never forget that time in your office. You told us not to be selfish and to start faking it like we really liked each other. And we really like each other now.”

Love lesson: You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourself. You should not look to your own interest but also the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). That’s a golden rule for marriage.

Love leads us to be honest, but gentle. We don’t use inflammatory words that will automatically throw up a wall, such as You always and You never. Those are seldom true, and they damage a person’s emotional health. Demeaning words can squash love quickly and painfully—especially when they’re said in public.

We were talking with a couple at a party a few years ago when the wife started listing her husband’s shortcomings. While she made it sound funny, we watched her embarrassed husband seemingly get smaller and smaller.

At the beginning of our marriage, we made a covenant never to say demeaning things to each other.

There was one time when Mike was telling about a vacation we’d taken in August. I thought, We took that vacation in September, not August. But I didn’t say anything until we got in the car. I told him, “You were wrong on that one. It was September. But I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

Love lesson: Love watches out for the other person’s self-esteem. What’s more important, getting an insignificant fact straight? Or honoring my spouse by watching out for his self-esteem?

Several years into our marriage I (Mike) noticed Debbie doing little, seemingly insignificant things for me, which she never mentioned. If there’s one piece of pie left, she’ll leave it for me. Or if there’s a fat, fluffy towel and a skinny towel, she takes the skinny, worn out one.

In Romans 12:10, Paul says to honor each other above yourself. To honor means to say, You’re worth so much more to me than I am to me. Peter talks about honoring when he writes, “Husbands, treat [your wife] with respect as the weaker partner” (1 Peter 3:7). Not inferior. I think of it this way: I’ve got an old coffee mug. I couldn’t care less if it rolls around the floor of my truck. But if I did the same thing with a china teacup, I’d be in trouble. Peter’s saying treasure your wife as something that’s valuable.

Love lesson: Treasure encompasses respect, honor, submission, and service. It’s a two-way thing. We want to feel as though we’re really worth something in our spouse’s eyes.

Sometimes you do everything you can as far as it depends on you, but the other person won’t walk at the same pace and things don’t get rebuilt. Seek help. Seek God. Ask for his strength to love. Always.

In Ephesians 5 as Paul writes about marriage, he says, “I’m talking about a great mystery here. I’m talking about Christ and the church.” When you have a healthy marriage it reflects to the world, This is the way God loves. This is the way the Trinity interacts, with selfless, honoring, sacrificial, approachable love. As a married couple we can reflect that to the world better than we could as individuals. Maybe that’s why God put the two of us together.

Love Check-Up

Since love is the “highest goal,” I regularly do a heart-check to see how I’m doing in the love department. I look at 1 Corinthians 13, and take out the words love is and insert I am. After I read this passage I ask myself, Are these things becoming true of me?I am patient and kind.

I am not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.
I do not demand my own way.
I am not irritable, and I keep no record of when I have been wronged.
I am never glad about injustice but rejoice whenever the truth wins out.
I never give up, never lose faith,
I am always hopeful and
I endure through every circumstance (NLT).

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Mike Breaux is a teaching pastor at Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois. Debbie Breaux is a Bible study leader.

Copyright ©2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Marriage Partnership magazine.