Serving Your Mate

How do you view your marriage? Is it a great experience being united with your best friend? Or is it fairly good, at least most of the time? Then again, maybe your marriage is in a perpetual free fall war zone.

Sometimes marriage is revealed for what it is when we do not get our own way. "My husband just does not understand me". "My wife always wants me to go shopping with her and makes a huge fuss if I want to play golf with the guys instead. Can you believe it?" Sound familiar?

The lack of contentedness in marriage sometimes is attributable to selfishness. I know, no one is really "selfish" who is married. Really?

A marriage is predicated on serving one's mate which is a vital way of communicating love. There are some poor souls who are so dilute in their thinking they that an act of service would make them subservient to their mate. (Sorry, guys, I am talking about some of you.) />
Serving is never about not having any drives or interests that may deviate from one's mate. Rather, it is about making your mate a priority.

Note: If you are prone to play the role of a martyr, then your service is virtually worthless for it reveals that you were trying to manipulate the other person. Ladies, there are some wives who have been known to finagle and scheme plans into getting their own way a good portion of the time. Manipulating your husband will usually annoy and eventually facilitate alienating him. Not a good game plan.

Think for a moment of the biblical account of Ruth and Boaz. That is such a beautiful illustration of how a husband and a wife may serve each other in marriage. The love they had for each other resulted in setting their own needs aside long enough to fulfill their mates needs. One final thought: when people who know you view your marriage, do people see your marriage as serving each other or as one or both serving your own interests?