The Fruit You Serve: A Relationship Analysis

Are you more preoccupied talking about and complaining about all of the things that your husband does wrong? Have you found it difficult to even imagine anything redeeming about him? Anything that you're grateful for towards him? Do you struggle to recognize anything that he actually does right half the time?

What if I told you the solution to address your misery is rooted in a fruit problem? Today I want to confront you about the fruit that you've been serving. This fruit being the key to the sweetness that you really desire out of life.

Today’s story comes from an episode of my own life. I was dominating at work, and performing quite well. Yet I was struggling in my marriage. I really just felt lonely and frustrated with everything that was wrong with my husband.

I mean, you name it, I had a problem with him.

 

And so I found a small group Bible study, a women's group that met Friday nights. This was perfect, because I was longing for connection and an opportunity to let my hair down after saving the world all week. I showed up every single Friday. Each week, I was a little more willing to open up about the anger and frustration I had been hiding for so many years. This continued for several months—my complaining and crying about my husband’s wrongness. But then one day, the small group leader hit me with a compassionate confrontation. She directly challenged my own mess. She redirected my focus to consider how I was constantly complaining. For crying out loud,  I was so hyper-focused on the misery of my marriage, I didn't even have anything good to say about my own child.

And that sat with me in a very, very painful way.

But I was so tired of hurting. I was so exhausted of struggling that I welcomed the pain of that compassionate confrontation with a final hope that something in my life would change for the better. With a fresh perspective, I finally decided that I didn't need my husband's participation in making things better in our relationship.

Mangoes are my favorite fruit. I planted a mango tree in my mind, emotions, and thought patterns. I decided, You know what? I'm gonna become the person that I would want in the relationship.

What ended up happening over time, my tree began to produce mangoes. My husband smelled the mangoes. He recognized that he liked the sweetness of mangoes too. And he began participating in cultivating the same fruit that I was serving him.

As I often share in conflict resolution strategy, you don't always need to wait for the other side to change their position in order for things to get better for you. That is the victim perspective of conflict.

There's always something you have power to do, always something that you can begin doing now.

For most of us who have been in any type of long-term situation, there is a painful history. Enough has happened that there's some unforgiveness or some resentment that settled in. Enough has happened that you bring it up every time things get heated because you still feel like you've never got justice or redemption for the pain you experienced.

But you could begin serving a different kind of fruit. Rather than serving resentment, serve forgiveness. Rather than serving accusation, serve quiet confidence. Rather than serving threats of leaving or abandoning the relationship, serve assurances that you're committed to your original vow and your promise to weather the storms—for better or worse.

And see if changing the fruit that you serve does not begin to produce good fruit and sweetness from life itself towards you.

 

Be blessed and encouraged,

Judge Char