Putting Yourself Last

If you feel the need to spice up your marriage, make sure you don't leave out the key ingredient

Gary L. Thomas

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If you've read one of the "how to add life to your marriage" books and your relationship is still floundering, try something new. Check out how you and your spouse are growing spiritually. Have you spent as much time thinking about how to become more like Christ as you have on how to spice up your marriage?

I don't believe couples fall out of love—they fall out of repentance. I'm convinced that when couples commit themselves to growing in the virtues taught by Christ, there's little chance for their relationship to fail. When you're focused on growing in humility, gentleness, patience, love and generosity, you're creating the building blocks that nurture and maintain intimacy.

Actually, humility is a great place to begin. Peter urges us, "Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another" (1 Pet. 5:5). I'm afraid most of us spend more time worrying about our outer appearance than we do about the inner clothing of humility. But I'm determined to do better at clothing myself in a way that will strengthen my marriage.

What Humility Looks Like

When my wife and I got married, I was shocked at how different two people could be. It showed up in the little things—like where we'd keep our medicines and spices. To me, it seemed inherently wrong to store Pepto-Bismol next to the vanilla, but that's the way my wife's family had always done it.

We also had widely divergent eating habits, which weren't a big deal until we had kids and one of them complained at breakfast, "How come Daddy's cereals have toys and ours don't?"

These differences shined a light on my pride. A proud person never thinks to question something he's always thought was right. He doesn't feel a need to see a divisive issue from someone else's point of view—he simply wants to win the argument.

What does this have to do with humility? If you look in our cereal cupboard now, you won't find any boxes with toys. I had to admit I was wrong for passing on an unhealthy eating habit to my kids. Thank goodness for the give-and-take of marriage, which forces us to understand another person's perspective.

But humility is more than just being able to admit being wrong. It isn't thinking less of ourselves; it's thinking less about ourselves. Obsessing over what you aren't makes you as self-absorbed as the person who obsesses about what she is.

Humility is placing others above ourselves. Jesus was humble, yet he never pretended he wasn't the Son of God. He never claimed that his mission in life wasn't important; he just used his power to serve and love rather than to dominate and manipulate.

A proud person doesn't want to see things from someone else's point of view—he simply wants to win the argument.

Humility gives us the strength to accept who we are, respect others and escape from an egocentric worldview in which we expect everyone (especially a spouse) to bend to our demands and desires. Humility is the Christlike spirit of becoming a servant. Humility is essential to marriage because without it, two strong egos do nothing but butt heads.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1999, Winter

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