Relationships need the right ingredients, but we have to bake with God.
If you’ve never tried baking homemade bread, I highly recommend it. It’s delicious and fun and you can make very different breads with very similar ingredients. In addition to giving my family yummy sides for dinner, baking bread has helped me shape a philosophy for relationships.
Relationships are dough.
Flour, salt, water, and yeast are the core ingredients for any bread recipe. You can add sugar, butter, eggs, and milk to change the taste and texture. Some breads bake longer and others shorter. I have made an artisan loaf that only differed from another recipe by needing to cook on a pre-heated pan.
The same formula is true for relationships and, specifically, marriages. There are core ingredients that exist in every long-lasting happy, healthy marriage. Shared values about religion and children are likely the most important. Other things can make the marriage even better like shared interests, hobbies, compatible work schedules, etc.
The thing is, you can put the right ingredients into a bread dough and still have it go wrong in the oven. Artisan bread has to be baked on a pre-heated surface. Loaves have to bake in pans. Rolls bake in their own individual shapes. Men and women are the ingredients that create the relationship dough. God is the baker who puts it all in the oven.
Rising and heating.
Different bread doughs rise for different amounts of time. Some rise for one hour while others are better left overnight. Sometimes you let the dough rise for two hours, shape into rolls, and rise one hour. The baker ultimately decides when to test the ingredients. The baker of our relationships needs to be God.
We all know those couples. One dates for six months and gets engaged and married in the blink of an eye. Another dates for ten years before putting a ring on it. Some relationships have to “rise” for a long time while others are basically ready to “bake.” But sometimes, leaving the dough on the counter too long or too short spoils the bread.
The same is so very true for relationships! When we do not orient our marriages towards God, we often spoil the good in our relationships. We can rush in too fast without letting the dough of our relationship rise. Or, we can leave our relationships in limbo so long it spoils the good ingredients we put in.
It takes time and practice to learn how to best blend good ingredients into perfect dough. Sometimes it takes much longer to create a good marriage. But anything is learned faster when it’s taught by a master teacher. God is that master baker trying to teach us. If our relationships are made for Him and not for ourselves, we learn how to begin baking the perfect marriage bread.
