Welcome to 28 Days, 28 Ways: Investing in Your Marriage! All month long I’ll be sharing ideas and tips for investing in your marriage. You can find a list of all the posts here.
My mom makes the best spaghetti. I’ve always loved it and my daughter loves it too. The smell of freshly chopped onion and green pepper sizzling in a cast iron skillet with butter. Oh. My. Word. Every time we go to my parents’ house, we want spaghetti.
As a newlywed, I followed my mom’s instructions to make one of my favorite meals for my husband. I carefully chopped the onions and peppers. I browned the lean ground beef and slowly added cans of tomato paste, tomato sauce, and whole tomatoes. The sauce simmered on the stove as I prepared the noodles, a salad, and yummy garlic bread.
We sat down to eat and I noticed Scott picking at the spaghetti, pulling out all the vegetables and making a pile of them on the side of his plate. You see, I’d failed to consider his loathing of onions, peppers, and tomatoes in my meal planning. He graciously ate the spaghetti and some bread, ignoring the salad he also doesn’t like.
And I realized something — I was never going to be able to fix spaghetti the way my mom does, at least not and expect my husband to eat it. I’ve learned to fix a yummy sauce with onion powder and herbs and pureed tomatoes and we have spaghetti at least once a month at the Underwood Abode. But the bigger lesson was learning to sacrifice my preference for his. Spaghetti sauce isn’t a huge deal. At least not compared to showing my husband he matters to me.
Marriage is about sacrifice. And sometimes those things we give up are huge … but most of the time, it’s the small sacrifices we make — leaving the vegetable chunks out of the spaghetti sauce, picking up his socks from beside the bed every morning, waiting to watch the DVRed episode of Downton Abbey until he’s not home — it’s those little things that make the days more pleasant. It’s the things we do so often we forget they are even sacrifices that can make a huge difference in the foundation of our marriages.
You probably already make these small sacrifices. In fact, you probably do it more often than you realize. But look for ways you can be intentional about placing his interests above your own. The biggest sacrifice we make is really all the tiny ways we lay aside ourselves and choose him. It’s worth it! {And my mom fixes me spaghetti the way I like it whenever I visit!}
What small sacrifice can you make today?
Cheering you on!
TL
[…] Make Small Sacrifices […]