Tackling Marriage

As Your Wife’s Fullback…

You Need to be Her Servant.

Total yards. Touchdowns. Carrying the ball. Being in the spotlight. Racking up the stats. All of these things are what we are taught create the best players on the best teams. They are the things that are celebrated, and why shouldn’t they be? Those things win games. They are exciting. And they make fans want to watch the game. It is not a surprise, then, when looking at decorated athletes, to find that (through 2013) the Heisman Trophy has been awarded to a quarterback, running back, or wide receiver 75 of 78 times (including earlier players listed as halfbacks or an earlier version of fullback). The Super Bowl MVP Award has been given to one of those three positions 39 of 49 times. The NFL season MVP Award has gone to one of those three positions 55 of 58 times (And, actually, those 55 winners have all been quarterbacks or running backs). In our culture, gaudy stats and huge wins equal awards and accolades. But ask most of those award-winners why they were so successful, and many, if not all, of them will say that their teammates had much to do with their success. This is especially true of running backs, who are very much reliant on others to succeed. If tacklers are not blocked, that running back isn’t going anywhere, no matter how fast he is. It is common to hear about running backs buying gifts for teammates or taking them out to a fancy dinner because they had a successful season. And there is one position that serves the running back more than perhaps any other: the fullback. The fullback drives ahead of the running back, ready to block anyone and everyone out of the way so that the running back can get into the open field and do what he does best. His primary responsibility is to play for somebody else’s success. He serves the running back without worrying about his own stats, his own accolades, or his own trophies.
One of the best fullbacks of all time was Lorenzo Neal. He played for seven different teams during his 16-year NFL career, but no matter where he played, behind his blocking, his team’s running back broke 1,000 yards in eleven straight seasons. During the sixteen seasons in which he played, he gained only 807 yards and scored only six touchdowns. Not exactly awe-inspiring. But perhaps most telling about Neal were his two years with the Tennessee Titans. During the 1999 season, Neal carried the ball two times for one total yard. The following season, he carried the ball only one time for -2 total yards. But what did the Titans’ running back, Eddie George, do? In those two seasons combined, he rushed for 2,813 yards and 23 touchdowns, and was named 1st Team All-Pro in both seasons. And it was not a coincidence that Lorenzo Neal was helping him. Neal took the field every week ready to do his job and serve however he could so that someone else could find success and be put in the spotlight. Men, as your wife’s fullback, you need to be her servant.
Servanthood is not something that our culture admires or encourages. Putting someone else ahead of yourself is almost a foreign concept to many in our society. “Look out for yourself!” we’re told, and “How can you love others without loving yourself first?” Actually, though, the only way you can truly learn to love yourself is by loving others first. Serving others is one of the greatest things we can do in this life, which is why it is a common theme throughout the Bible. It begins in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve look first to their own interests and what they want, rather than serving God as he instructed them. Their impulse was to serve themselves, instead of serve God. After the people of Israel are led out of Egypt, God gives Moses the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), which first tell us how to love and serve God, and then tell us how to serve each other. Jesus himself explains the whole law as being dependent on these two ideas. ““You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
In fact, many of Jesus’ teachings include the idea of servanthood. One of the most famous stories in the Bible is found in Luke 10, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan stops to help a man who has been robbed and beaten, and not only tends to his wounds and helps him to an inn where they can help him, but even pays for the man’s care out of his own pocket. The story takes on even greater weight when Jesus implies that the two men who previously passed by the hurt man and did nothing will not inherit eternal life. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus tells the disciples in Mark 9:35, “And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all’” and similarly in Matthew 23:11-12, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”