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Every morning during growing season, which is pretty much all the time here in SWFL, I make my daily rounds to see what’s popping up. I have come to refer to it as my “tour de fleur”. You can usually find me walking around my lanai from plant to plant with my coffee cup in hand, bending down to paw through the potting soil, or pushing aside leaves in search of new shoots. It seems like most mornings this time of year I get to see green leafy things coming up to be kissed by the sun, and if I take a walk around my neighborhood, I am greeted with a wash of color every morning!
The hobby of gardening, whether it's a large expanse of ground or lots of potted plants sitting in a sunny place by the windows in your house, shows how the Lord longs for our faithfulness during times of dormancy. Lately, the Lord has been showing me how gardening can be a lot like marriage, let me explain this to you.
So much of gardening is work. You prepare the soil by digging, turning, and tilling so you can loosen rocks and weeds for removal. You fertilize and add compost, grit, leaf mold, and whatever else your soil needs to achieve a lovely, rich, loamy soil. Only then can you begin to plant! The entire season can then be spent watering, weeding, pruning, and deadheading your plants. But you count it all joy! Mostly. Sometimes it is a lot of work and you wonder why you have cultivated this colony of needy, thirsty, time-consuming plants. Sometimes you forget to sit back on your lanai with that cup of coffee and just listen to the birds singing in the trees. You forget to close your eyes and take in the scent of those delicate and vibrant flowers. You get too busy to notice and fully appreciate the colorful blooms that surround you as you focus on the weeds, rocks, and slugs that plague all of your hard work.
Marriage can be a lot like that. If you don’t properly prepare the soil before you plant something, then it may not survive. If it does, you really have your work cut out for you, don’t you? If you step into a marriage before you have properly prepared your heart, you are less likely to have a thriving marriage, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t, my friend. Part of having a successful marriage includes learning to rest together. Learning to slow down and enjoy one another. That doesn’t mean that you have to take elaborate vacations together every year; that doesn’t mean that you have to ship the kids off to Grandma and Grandpa’s house every month so you can carve out a weekend or just a night without worrying about what they are getting into while you cook the supper those precious kids may or may not eat. Those things are amazing, and they are helpful, but investing in your marriage is truly so much simpler than that.
I get so caught up in busy things. In doing laundry and picking up after the kids. In washing dishes and making supper and making sure that the kids did all of their schoolwork, I often don’t know how to stop and rest, so God gave me an amazing husband who reminds me that I need that. Jesus didn’t call Mary to sit at His feet so He could be admired, but so she could be refreshed. I imagine that she was probably as stressed out as her sister Martha was before Jesus came into the room. Jesus wanted the sisters to disconnect from their long, arduous days of housework and be refreshed and rested at His feet. Jesus calls us His bride because the relationship between husband and wife is an earthly example of the relationship that Jesus longs to have with us. We long to serve Jesus because He serves us. We love Jesus because He loves us. It is to give and take. It is to love and be loved. It is to rest and be rested. Mary didn’t sit at Jesus’s feet and worship Him, she sat and listened. She spent time with the One who loved her soul.
In this way, we should be doing the same with our spouses. My husband will often call me from the kitchen or whatever room I am in and ask me to sit with him. Usually, we sit in front of the TV, but we also like to read quietly. Whatever he wants me to do with him often requires little interaction, but we are actively resting. Together. We sit on the couch or lounge in our bed at the end of a long day and hold hands or cuddle while we watch a comedy. It seems so simple, but physical intimacy like that is what breeds emotional intimacy. We laugh until we cry at the antics in comedies, bringing joy and happiness into the room. Again, it seems so simple. I am sure that someone reading this might be thinking that I am looking at things through rose-colored glasses. I can assure you, after almost eighteen years of marriage, eighteen years of holding hands tightly as we walk through the fire, this works. Invest in one another in the little moments.
But don’t just keep company with one another during times of rest; do it during times of work, too! My husband always finds his way to the kitchen while I am cooking. I can often find him stirring whatever dish is on the stove, which prompts me to jokingly ask if I am not doing my job well enough. He always responds with a smile that he can't stand in the kitchen without contributing a little stir for brownie points. If he is working on something for the house I sit and keep him company. I bring him a cold glass of sweet tea or hand him tools. Why? Because I like to be a part of what he is doing. I like to give him relief and rest in any way that I can. We could get caught up in all of the rocks and weeds that annoy us from day to day. But what purpose would that serve? He isn’t perfect and neither am I. There are plenty of rocks and weeds both of us toss into our marital garden that we could easily focus on, but we actively choose to remove them simply by investing in one another.
So, today I ask you to find ways that you can drink in the beauty of the garden that is your marriage. The more we focus on our gifts, the more we see those gifts. Don’t be so focused on the tasks of tending to life that you can’t enjoy it. The Lord longs for us to have rich, healthy marriages as part of His plan for us here on earth because they show us how to be in better relationship with Him, our Heavenly Groom. Pour your spouse a cup of coffee or sweet tea and ask them to sit with you for a while. Listen to the birds and just hold hands. Laugh at a crazy squirrel dangling from a bird feeder in an attempt to steal treats. It doesn’t really matter what you are doing, you are investing in each other, even in companionable silence.
Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry. –Tom Mullen
Luke 10: 41-42 The Passion Translation
The Lord answered her, “Martha, my beloved Martha. Why are you upset and troubled, pulled away by all these many distractions? Mary has discovered the one thing most important by choosing to sit at my feet. She is undistracted, and I won’t take this privilege from her.”
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