It's Not Lemonade Until You Sweeten It

My oldest son loves it when I make homemade lemonade. I add some extras that are not necessarily needed to make it good but just put it over into the extra special. It's really sweet and gets stronger the longer the ingredients mix.

My lemonade is not unlike a marriage.

I start out with the basics, lemons and water. In marriage you begin with an ordinary man and an ordinary woman.

But it doesn't become lemonade until you add the sugar. In marriage this is the love! To become more than just separate ordinary people, you must mix in love. However, just a romantic love won't be enough sugar to overcome the sourness of the human spirit or the blandness of a self centered person coming into marriage. The love must be grounded in friendship and self sacrifice.

The idea that you must fight to not "lose your identity" is one that the enemy has planted in order to destroy. Before you jump to a conclusion I am not drawing, let me explain what I mean by that. :)
I am not suggesting that you lose yourself in your spouse. It's sad to see a classy, strong individual marry and then they morph into this henpecked shadow of a person. What I am saying is that marriage will and should change you into a better person, one who is capable of putting another's needs before their own without becoming a martyr.

When we are saved we become a new creation in Christ. If we fight to hold onto our identity then we are fighting to hold onto an old person and lifestyle. This brings a wedge into our relationship with Christ that changes everything! While you may be saved, you are depriving yourself of so many blessings that Christ has for you as well as holding yourself back from joining Him in HIS plan for your life! Marriage is such a picture of this. When we fight so hard to hold onto our old, unmarried self it may not change our married status but it deprives us of the fullness of blessings that marriage brings! You may be a feisty lemon or cool water on your own but when you come together and add enough love then you can become something more together than you would have ever dreamed on your own!

But there are other ingredients that can be added to a marriage that can raise it to an even more special level. Respect. Appreciation. Concern. Flirtation.

Respect and build up your spouse. Flippant remarks, jokes at their expense, outright putdowns even, are all things that disrespect and tear down the protective walls of your marriage. Bringing your spouse down doesn't make you look better. Remember God says you are one now. So you are really hurting yourself when you engage in ripping them apart, even when you attach an "I'm just kidding" to the end of your statement.

Appreciate the things your spouse does for you and your home. Too often we attach a selfish version of ourself to every appreciative remark. Don't know what I mean? Have you ever noticed your spouse looking tired at the end of the day and immediately the thought entered, "Well, I 'm tired, too! Look at everything I've had to deal with today!" Appreciate how hard he or she works. Appreciate the little things they do to try to help out, even if it isn't the way you do it. You shouldn't engage in a competition with your spouse to see who had it worse today.

Show concern for them. Don't allow your other responsibilities to overshadow your responsibilities as a spouse. Other than your relationship with Christ, your marriage should be the number one relationship in your life. Make your spouse the priority. Remember when all you could think about was when you'd see them again?

And for goodness sake, flirt with your spouse! Do you remember that little thrill you got when you first got together? A look, a smile, a touch could send electric shocks through you. A song on the radio made you think of them. Who wants to go without that feeling just because they hold a marriage license?

You may be saying, "Well, you don't understand, my spouse doesn't do these things. Why should I?" To that, I would say....well, why shouldn't you?

To the wife who makes sure to tell her husband how he isn't good looking anymore like he was when they married....to the husband who jokes about his wife as though she has no common sense....to the wife who confides in her friends instead of her husband....to the husband who enjoys his sports more than his family....to the wife who lives for her kids and their activities but has no time to join her husband in activities they might share....to the husband who looks at other women and sees their attributes but only sees his wife's faults...to the wife that views her husband as a bumbling loser....to the couple who feel trapped by marriage rather than protected and sheltered by it...

If you apply the philosophy of why should I bother, then you must allow your spouse to apply the same philosophy. Why should they bother either? So every time one of you messes up then the philosophy would be OK it's my turn now! You mistreated me so now I will do the same! And you are left with nothing more than a mess. It's funny how we can plainly see it when children act out this philosophy and we are swift to correct them, yet we rarely see ourselves acting it out in our marriage.

 Someone has to be the one to add sugar when things turn sour, to add the extras that will bring vitality and sparkle to a lifeless marriage, to add the ice and cool things down when hot tempers flare.

To bring refreshment when life has worn us down and we just want peace.

I don't know about you, but I want to be that refreshment to my husband. I want to be his resting place. That won't happen if I am not actively becoming that person to him. If I am running around putting him down, making everything and everybody more important than him, making sure he knows I am better than him, telling him he is lucky to have me....is he really going to view me as his peace, the one person he can trust and always count on?

A conversation in a group was going on the other day and I don't even remember now what it was about. I do remember joking that my husband is perfect, for why else would I be married to him! I thought nothing of it for I can make a statement like that and not feel threatened by it. Yet you should have seen the reaction by the other guys! "Man, she just called you perfect!" "You better get that in writing or on tape!" and on and on it went.

No, my husband isn't really perfect and neither am I. But he is perfect for ME.

The longer the ingredients are allowed to mix the stronger and more vibrant the flavor will be. What can you do to make your lemon and water something special? Remember, the best recipes are  not the ones where the ingredients compete with one another but rather the ones that blend together into something wonderful!