I looked through the kitchen window and saw my wife Lisa sitting in the sun on a lounge chair, two ice packs covering her right leg and hip. She was wearing her glasses and reading a book, and my heart melted at the sight of her. How I love that. woman! Our 40th anniversary is coming up in two months.
I opened up the sliding glass doors and said, “I really love you.” Lisa teared up. “Thank you,” she said.
Sorry for such a maudlin opening, but allow me to provide the context. It’s gratifying when something you’ve been teaching for decades really does come true. By this time, I’d been Lisa’s nurse for a week. She had a total hip replacement, and the surgeon called me at the end of it to tell me how bad her hip was. The surgery took twice as long as he expected, but he wanted to do an excellent job of clearing everything out and putting everything back together, so he took his time.
Lisa lost a good bit of blood, which wipes her out. They were able to replace half of it, but I could see from Lisa’s face she was still feeling the loss when the nurses thought she could leave the surgery center (just two hours after the surgery). I took one look at her and thought, “No way.” But I’m not a medical professional, so I let them try. However, when they sat her up, I maneuvered myself to her side, and sure enough, twenty seconds after they got her to stand, she fainted in my arms. I’m so glad I was there.
“We got a bagel!” I heard a nurse call out, and several came to her aid.
Wanting to know what was going on, I looked up bagel as a medical term and realized I had misheard. It was “vagal.”
We finally got home after 8:30 pm. I took care of her with my oldest daughter, icing, getting Lisa’s supplements and pain medications going, and all that. I finally got to bed around 10:30. I was up at 12:30 and then 2:30 to help Lisa out with new situations. I have a difficult time going back to sleep, especially when my wife is hurting, so I didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night—even though I preached a Good Friday sermon that afternoon.
Lisa is very good at tolerating pain, but her discomfort actually grew as the days passed, which the surgeon said was unusual. Any sermon prep and writing had to be done in fits and starts, maybe twenty to thirty-minute blocks between icing and resting and the like. So my vocational life was being blown to bits.
But here’s the thing: as the days passed, the more I served Lisa, the more I kept feeling so in love with her. I haven’t used these words before, but the way I’d put it now is that emotional love is fed by physical love—and I’m not talking about sex here (though I have nothing against sex, it’s obviously not a part of what you’re doing with someone recovering from surgery). By physical love, I mean serving them physically, taking care of them, letting their needs come before your own, and even perhaps sacrificing some of your vocational or recreational needs to make sure they’re okay.
The world looks at this quite differently: “I’ll serve you if I feel love for you.” My thinking is, I’ll love you more after I serve you. Serving you helps me to love you and to keep falling in love with you. Didn’t a wise man once say it is better to give than to receive? He might have known what he was talking about…
Here’s something I wrote in A Lifelong Love, which first came out a decade ago, confirming that my experience isn’t unique. It might even be typical:
Having just heard me speak on marriage, the sixty-something woman was already in tears by the time she inched to the front of the line. She had a story to tell, and she kept wiping away the tears until she could tell it.
“What you’re saying is so true,” she began and then paused to contain herself. “I’ve worked at a hospice for twenty years. Caring for people is what I do. Yet somehow, it never got transferred to home. I resented doing the very things for my husband that I spent my whole day doing for others.”
After another pause, she went on. “Until, that is, my husband got cancer. After the first operation, he stayed home for six weeks, and I stayed with him. It was the best season of marriage we’ve ever had.”
Think about this: when describing “the best season of marriage we’ve ever had” she didn’t choose the honeymoon, the young years when they were strong and vibrant, the exciting years when occupations opened up, the tired but thrilling years when the kids arrived. She had many highlights to choose from, yet this woman chose the season of her husband’s cancer as the best season of marriage they had ever had.
Why?
“Pulling tubes, cleaning sutures—I’m a nurse, I can do all that—I finally began doing for him everything I’ve done for everyone else, but I had never served my husband like that the entire time we were married. But now I was. It changed my heart. It changed the way I looked at him. And, serving him like that, it just drew us so close together.”
Most people think their marriages will improve when their spouses step up. This wife said her marriage improved when she stepped up. I’ve never read a marital book that talks about building romance by pulling medical tubes and cleaning sutures on your partner, but this dear woman had stumbled onto a powerful truth. She entered into love, Jesus style, and she passionately proclaims that it’s a glorious love indeed.
Are you serving others more than you serve your spouse? Husbands, it goes without saying here that any sense of chauvinism, any sense that your wives are there primarily to serve you, goes completely against the spirit of biblical love. When Paul said to love our wives like Christ loves the church, he was calling us to be the leader in service, not the leader in privilege. Are you leading like that? And wives, do you find yourselves offering nurturing care to others outside the home with a sweet spirit but resenting it when you’re offering similar care at your own address?
You don’t have to wait for surgery or cancer to try this out. Take on what would generally be considered your spouse’s chore. Maybe pick up after them without being bitter or complaining, fill their gas tank, make their morning coffee or tea, or surprise iron their clothes. There are a thousand different ways this thought—love grows by loving—applies.
My friend Kevin Harney started making the bed every morning (his wife’s least favorite chore). He added an important caveat: he prayed for Sherry as he did so, sanctifying his attitude. Reluctant service or resentful service won’t help you keep falling in love with your spouse. Worshipful service will.
I know throughout my writing career, I’ve gotten some things wrong. But this one, I really think I got right. Love grows when we love.
This is exactly what I needed to hear! I know by practicing this I will turn around my attitude for the better and more important love my husband better!! Thank you!
Such a beautiful reminder... our heart follows our actions so many times. Thanks for writing!