Keep it 100

I have a guilty pleasure. Don’t judge me, ok? 

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I like to watch The Bachelor. And not just The Bachelor, but every spin off and every aspect of the franchise. I’m talking Bachelor, Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, Winter Games; you name it, I’ve watched it. I’m not proud of it guys. Please still be my friends…

Anyway, a really common theme among contestants in these shows, is when they talk about wanting to find a 50/50 partner in life; a teammate if you will.

As someone who has played team sports, most of her life, let me just tell you, this is not how teams work. 50/50 does not make a successful partnership. Half of each partner, does not make a whole. If you are going halfsies on everything, you are setting yourselves up for failure. This goes for any relationship, teammates, family, friends, significant others, spouses. Are we all going to be 100%, 100% of the time? NO! Because try as we might, we are not actually Christ Himself. But that is precisely why 50/50 will never work. If 50% is your bar; your best, on your best day, to meet that relationship half way, then your bar is too low, my friend. What happens when you have a bad day? God didn’t call us to go halfsies in love. He called us to be all in, 100%, and He showed us what that meant. 

He so much as told us that we should give people our all. He gave all of Himself, for us. He died for us. He didn’t give us 50, and wait for us to come the other 50. No! He gave 100! He came all the way. He meets us right where we’re at, and He loves us. 

And in marriage especially, He tells us that we become one. 

If you take two pieces of clay, and slide them together so that they are touching, you have 50/50. They have met half way. They’ve met in the middle. But what are they sharing? They are not sharing anything but that space in the middle where they touch. They are saying, I’ve come this far, but I go no farther.  That is not really sharing a life, is it? That is being equal, being two parts of a whole piece, that refuses to get messy. Those two halves are very easy to pull apart.

But when you take those two pieces of clay, and mold them together, that is when they become one piece. They are no longer standing there, side by side, saying they will meet the other half way. They have joined together. They have given all of themselves to the other, and then become impossible to separate. 

A very wise man, who counseled my husband and me in our premarital counseling, once told us that for a marriage to work, it should be 100/100. Basically, that if I am putting my husband first in my decisions, and he is putting me first in his decisions, we will be as one; not half the time, all the time. This is more then meeting in the middle. It is showing the person you love that you’re willing to come all the way. If you are both doing this, from there then, compromise becomes easy.