No Place Like Home

Audio By Carbonatix

We live in a performance-based culture. What do I mean? For the most part, I’m saying that many of us feel compelled to earn our way into the hearts of people. Sometimes, it’s difficult for us to simply be ourselves and feel that we are loved and accepted. It has sort of been ingrained in us since we were infants.

We are taught to perform from an early age. As parents, we often smile and applaud our children when they do something. They raise their hands when we say, “So big!” and we clap in appreciation of their effort. They crawl, stand, walk, or start riding their bike, and we are their biggest fans, clapping and smiling at their achievements. And it’s all very normal to do that as parents. Children need encouragement.

As toddlers and young adults, our performances continue to be marked by trophies, certificates, ceremonies, and other measurements. Again, this is not wrong. It’s part of how we learn, grow, and continually strive to improve ourselves so that we can reach our goals in life.

The only problem with living in a performance-based culture is that we sometimes don’t know how to just be—to stop performing and still feel accepted and loved. We can often confuse performance with the measure of someone’s love for us. That’s why parents not only need to applaud their children when they’ve achieved a remarkable milestone, but also when they are just being themselves. Parents need to tell children they’re loved when they’ve done nothing to inspire those words.

The same is true in a marriage. While that union should be one of unconditional love, it’s difficult when we are often told that we have to work at our marriage. It’s possible we promote the need for performance without realizing it. That can show up in how often we talk about how much our wife is or isn’t doing. Nobody marries a perfect person. Nobody. Do we accept our spouse’s faults and missteps as an imperfect person, or are we always measuring how far short they’re falling and then showing our displeasure because of it? How often do you tell your wife how much you love her for her personality traits, like her humor, integrity, sensitivity, or kindness? Or is your expression of love always connected to something she did?

While it’s normal in a marriage to experience some disappointment, we also have to make sure we are loving our wives just for who they are, apart from any achievements. This will especially become important as we age—when our bodies may no longer function as they once did and we can’t do the things that used to earn us praise. We will need to trust that our wife believes we are enough simply because she loves us.

Of course, we should continue to celebrate and encourage children and spouses when they do things that we are grateful for or that they’ve worked hard for. But let’s also remember to mention how much we love them for them. Part of the reason we say there’s no place like home is because it is the place where we should be able to be ourselves and feel loved. Remembering this will help you win more often at home.