Love Doesn't Keep Score

Last night while we were watching the finale of Last Comic Standing, I got a cramp in the bottom of my foot. I was tempted to ask Randy to massage it for me and then I thought, "I should give him a foot massage."

When we were in Spain it was an everyday ritual for us to massage one another's feet. A necessary ritual, because 20 kilometers a day, with 40 pounds on your back, day after day (this sounds like a joke we'll tell our grandkids one day -- ending with "walking uphill in the snow with 5 euros to our name") takes its toll. But the foot massages since that trip haven't been nearly as frequent.

This is the part of the story that is important though -- I not only thought I should give Randy a foot massage, I actually gave Randy a foot massage.

How often do we think of nice things to do for our loved ones, or nice things to say, and never follow through? 

So without a word I grabbed Randy's foot and began to rub. He made some appreciative noises and said, "What did I do to deserve this?" And I responded, "Nothing."

Which is both true and not true.

Randy does special and ordinary things for me every single day. Which makes it easier for me to do special and ordinary things for him every single day. But the things he does aren't the reason I do the things I do. And the things I do aren't the reason he does the things he does. If they were, then they wouldn't be born of love, and the one of us would stop as soon as the other of us failed to follow through.

First Corinthians 13 says, "Love keeps no record of wrongs." Another version says, "Love doesn't keep score."

Some of you may have a chore chart on your refrigerator where your kids earn stars or smiley faces for following the rules, getting good grades, doing their chores or simply being nice. 

But sometimes I think we have the same kind of chart in mind for our partners. Each day we "keep score" of the things they did to make us feel loved by giving them smiley faces, and each day we scratch out those smiley faces with permanent markers when our feelings get hurt or we don't get what we need or think we deserve. Then how we treat our spouses at the end of the day depends on whether we've given them more smiley faces or more black marks. And our charts are nothing like Verizon where your minutes disappear at the end of each month, but more like Sprint where those things carry over for the lifetime of your marital contract. 

This way of loving is completely out of line with our Bible verse above. We may not agree with the new rules in tee-ball where no one keeps score and everyone wins. But that is exactly how God tells us to treat our marriages.

If you've found yourself attached to this idea of a chore chart for your marriage, I encourage you to do this: imagine (or create one if you are a visual person!) a smiley face next to your partner's name. Not just today, but every day. And don't wait until tomorrow to put that smiley face on his/her chart. Fill in that chart for the rest of the year with a smiley face, because love doesn't keep score, love is not easily angered, love always believes the best, and love never fails.

Today, as we remember 9/11/01, we are especially mindful of how important it is to tell the people we love how much they mean to us. But let's not relegate the lessons of that day to once a year. Let us honor September 11 by asking God to help us love our partners in this life every single day.