Don’t give everyone in your life the best of you, while only giving your family the rest of you.

Mother Teresa once said, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Is this time that we live in, I see so many wives hurting, and husbands hurting, and children hurting. This world has a way of drawing families further and further apart rather than bringing them into the one place that families were intended to be-home. The chaos and the business and the selfish desires of hearts are tearing families apart. It used to be working forces and home. No technology- where families actually knew each other, where they talked, and where temptation wasn’t there. Children had their parents and wives had their husbands and husbands had their wives. Now in so many cases that I see four people may live in the same house and barely even know each other. Divorce rates are rising, children are growing up in single parent homes, and still so many people would rather take the easy road out, the more comfortable road that hurts worse in the end, the selfish road, than to do something about it. Usually there is a giver and a taker, but what would the world be like if we had two givers?

So, what if we looked at it this way?

I’m sure you haven’t ever pondered on the cause and effect of not putting oil in your car, right? Not rotating the tires and not keeping all of the parts up to date? We don’t have to ponder because we know what would happen! It would run for a little while until one day it just quit. And you’d have all that regret of wishing you would have just done such simple things to take care of it rather than watching it fall apart.

Sometimes it’s not always pleasant or comfortable. Sometimes it takes more time than you have in a day, and sometimes you are tired and just don’t feel like it. Many times, and most of the time, you’d rather be doing something completely different that suited your own desires, wouldn’t you? Do you want a car that runs well that thrives and that you can trust to carry you through life, or do you want a car that lets out fumes on the brink of breaking at any moment possible? Knowing that you could have done something to make a difference before it’s too late?

Well that’s the same as a marriage. It’s up to you as to how well your marriage grows or falls apart simply based on the effort that you CHOSE to put into it and who and what you let lead your family. It’s a choice. A daily one and sometimes down to a momentary one.

So many people think they can just let it run it self and then ask why it has problems? Or they don’t understand why it’s not running right when they haven’t done what it takes to keep it running right.

We all have selfish hearts and fleshly desires sometimes. It’s what we chose to do with that. It’s become an egotistical and entitled world where people go around only serving themselves, when our purpose on earth is to serve others, especially when it comes to the ones closest to them. I can’t help but question how different the world would truly be if it were a little less selfish. How many people would be hurting a little less, how many more genuine smiles would we see, and how contagious would the happiness become.

Marriage is a blessing from above. That person is a blessing that was chosen for you and you made vows to cherish and protect that person through the good and bad days. And not vows for one day, but for everyday here on this earth. Marriage is the sacrifice of always putting your husband/wife above your needs before all else besides God. It’s spoken over and over again in the bible. We aren’t perfect, we are all broken, but we can strive everyday to be better and better at loving those put in front of us first.

You have to love it and you have to serve it. You have to polish it. Places where it’s dented you have to give it a little tender loving care, even if you didn’t cause the dent, you made the commitment to make it yours. Places where the paint may be chipping, add your own special touch to make it look and feel alive again. Don’t let that flat tire keep you stuck where you are.

You can listen to a car and hear how well it’s running, and so can you hear the hearts of the one you love if you’d only take time and sacrifice your own wants and needs for a moment to hear theirs. It’s amazing what you hear when you just listen. It boils down to priority and consistency and right and wrong.

I’m a product of a father who wasn’t at home and I know the pain that comes from it, but I also know the value that it instilled in me to make my family priority to ensure that they don’t ever have to feel that hurt. I’ve seen grown men and women still hurting from absent fathers and mothers. Parents that would take care of other people, desires, and things above their own families. Some repeat that influence not even realizing it because that’s all they ever knew and did just as their fathers and mothers did and some made a promise to be everything that they didn’t have.

The ironic thing, you will ALWAYS find it easier to cherish what you have and watch it grow than to put focus elsewhere and watch it fall apart. There is nothing worse than regret, knowing you could have done something to change it. There are 2 choices, which choice will you pick? Stop running other people’s races watching yours lose and start winning at your own. Don’t talk about it, be about it. Lip service won’t get you far, but a heart that stands behind his wife, husband, and family through action and presence always will. Talking about how much you love your family is one thing, but being there is a whole other life-line. As I always say, I’d rather love too much than to be the one that didn’t love enough.

And don’t forget… Cherish the people and family that you have, someone is out there praying for those very things.