Running on fumes after a long work week and a day filled with nonstop tech issues, I was utterly depleted. 

But now, I had to pivot, because an afternoon kindergarten birthday party was looming and a present needed to be hastily wrapped, all while debating the virtues of what to wear to a trampoline park with my 5-year-old (no, a pink tutu isn’t entirely appropriate for this social occasion). My 8-year-old was offering a detailed description of the cafeteria drama from her third-grade day, which I just had to pay attention to, because someone has to help her navigate the idiosyncrasies of other 8-year-old girls.

As a gnawing headache began creeping into the right side of my brain and our grumpy old dog began barking from the laundry room, my husband Tom walked into our home after his workday with a giant grin on his face that disappeared when he saw his wife standing there, exhausted.

He didn’t have to ask much, just a two-word question: “No spoons?”

“No spoons,” I mumbled back, the tape dispenser now conspicuously empty right as I needed one last strip of adhesive to wrap the extra LEGO set I’d dug out of the closet for the party. 

Without a word, my husband whisked our 8-year-old off to the back of the house to continue her conversation — and in the process somehow negotiated a different, less tulle-based outfit with our 5-year-old. 

“Be back in a couple hours,” Tom said as they walked out the door. “Get some rest.”

There was never any doubt in my mind I’d married a good man. This only stood to reinforce it, because he knew, with just a moment’s observation and two simple words — “no spoons” — that he needed to step in and carry more of the load for a while.

We both learned the “spoons theory” from social media. The idea is that, every day, each person has a set number of “spoons” to shovel through activities, choices, work, responsibilities, and life in general. You make decisions to do this or that task based on the number of spoons you have and how many spoons it may take; and throughout any given day, your spoons are used up, sometimes by choice and sometimes by circumstance. 

We found this visual idea helpful, so we casually began incorporating the “spoons” terminology into our daily life, almost jokingly at first. Washing dishes after dinner: one spoon. Bathing and getting kids ready for bed: probably two or three spoons. Laundry to be folded: one spoon if you could listen to a podcast while doing it, two spoons if you let a child help. Mowing the grass is a spoon gaining activity, we decided (because: quiet, outside, alone). Cleaning the garage? No spoons left after that. Call it a day. 

With this very loose spoon-ranking system, we developed a simple code: No spoons left meant the other spouse has to kick into high gear — no questions asked. And if it happens that you both run of out spoons simultaneously? Time for a total reset.

When you build a life with someone — sharing space and time, growing resources and making a home, having children and raising a family, and ultimately pursuing holiness together — you commit to a “give it all you’ve got” approach. 

We’re called to be all in with marriage, seeing your spouse as the one whose holiness, whose health and happiness, whose own love of the Lord is the priority. And so, when the one you love most and share everything with has nothing left to give, you have to use your spoons in service to the house, the home, and them all the more.

In a marriage, where the score sheet doesn’t exist, you come to see that when you give entirely without counting the cost, you are sacrificing, serving and saving the other — and loving them to the full, just as Christ loves his Church. 

Marriage is sometimes described as a 50-50 proposition, but in reality, a 100-100 mindset is a surer path to happiness. 

By taking on the shoveling of both little and big things with the spoons you’ve got, you’re laying down your life. It may not seem all that significant to just take the kids to the birthday party and let your wife have a few quiet minutes to reset and recover, but it is a gift of self, serving the other without measuring what you’ll get in return. 

That Friday afternoon, my husband left me at home to take a short nap and go for a quick walk, and after that little reset, I prepared dinner. By the time he and the girls got back, his spoons were all gone (understandably), and mine had been replenished. He’d given the gift of himself, and now I could carry the load that was left. 

Because in a marriage, it is not just a back-and-forth, a give-and-take. It is simply, and with a desire to love fully and serve entirely, a give-and-give.