What's Your Goal for Your Marriage?
Depending on the topic your answer may widely vary and depending on the answer (if you are honest), it may be quite revealing. What if this is the question.
“What is your goal for your marriage?” Now, before you start rehearsing all kinds of glorious answers, I am only going to give you two options.
A. The goal for my marriage is to “work” with my spouse so that we can learn how to meet each other’s needs.
B. The goal for my marriage is that I learn how to meet some of the most intimate needs of my spouse.
If you answered A, you may have missed the slight shift in the answer that leads away from the exact question. The question asked, “What is your goal?” Not your spouses, and not the two of you together. The reason that A is not the best answer is because we can only have a goal for something that we can affect, we can own. My goal can not be based on something that I can not control. I may have influence but not control.
The B answer is within my control. It can be my goal. I can learn how to meet some of my spouses most intimate needs (spiritual, emotional, and physical). I can do this even if my spouse does not respond well, even if they shut me out, or are not interested. This goal is not dependent on them, only on my willingness to embrace this. This does not mean that I do not desire for us both to learn how to minister to each other and meet needs that we are designed to meet with each other. I think most of us long for this; we desire and yearn for this kind of relationship.
The B answer also reminds me of two significant things:
· Only God will meet our deepest needs for a secure love, and significance. When I know and really get this, then I can come from a position of having my core needs meet. I am not looking (falsely) for someone else to try and meet those needs.
· Then I can choose to embrace this wild idea: My spouse is the one human being that God has called me into a oneness with that allows me the privilege of meeting some of their most intimate desires and needs in a way that only I can.
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For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. Galatians 5:13, NLT
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When I fail to remind myself of these truths, I can find myself really liking answer A. It seems much fairer and more equitable. Shouldn’t we both work on things. Why should it just be me? What about my needs… (The spiral is easy to start down)? But when I remind myself of the truths, then the B answer is the one that I want to have as my goal. No, I will not always meet my goal, and at times I can lose sight of my goal but when I do, I want to remind myself of the truth and why it is my goal.
You know why? Because God has called me and he has called you, if you are married, to be the one that gets the privilege of ministering to your spouse like no one else in all the world can.
~Carla