I have always loved cooking. And good food. So, of course, when I was a new bride, I wanted to impress my husband with a home cooked meal.
I settled on a dish that I had loved growing up – chicken and dumplings. I looked up a recipe that seemed pretty close to the way my dad used to make it and got to work in the kitchen.
My husband called and I answered the phone with my flour coated hands and relayed the menu for the night to him. He said he loved chicken and dumplings. “This is going to be great!” I thought. “He will be so happy!” My heart was singing and my mind was dreaming of the wonderful evening we would share over my first home cooked meal.
We sat down at the table and he stared at his plate “what is this?” He said, looking rather confused.
“Chicken and dumplings, just like my Dad used to make!” I said proudly.
“Oh, I thought you were making it like my Mom’s recipe.” He said.
“What? How is your mom’s recipe any different than this?” I asked.
I sat there at the table over my plate of Czechoslovakian inspired dumplings with sour cream sauce and listened to him describe a totally different dish. His Mom’s dumplings were more rectangular and thin, mine were fat and round. Hers were more like pasta; mine were more like hacky sacks. Her sauce was more like delicate gravy: mine was a tangy thick cream. The two could not have been more opposite.
It was my first introduction to the harsh truth that every married couple finds out – we were, in fact, not “perfect for each other” after all. We didn’t even like the same food! Gasp! How could I compete with his mom’s cooking? She’s like a master home chef!
The week after that I made one of the best decisions of my married life – I called my dear mother-in-love and asked for her recipes.
One of my husband’s favorites from that list is a casserole called Franks and Beans. It has been called “man food” by some and once you read the ingredients of canned pork and beans, canned biscuits, hot dogs and crushed corn chips, you know why. The first time I made it, I hated it.
But last night as we gathered around the dinner table with this same culinary creation on our plates, I marveled at myself because I actually liked it this time. Craziness!
Being a Christian is all about dying to ourselves. Most of us would freely admit that. But when it comes to marriage somehow the tables turn and we expect this other person to conform to please us instead of laying down our rights to serve them.
I am convinced that if we seek to serve our husbands even in the small mundane things that may not be our preferences (like making “man food” for dinner) that God will change our hearts. And apparently our taste buds too!
