Make Someone Happy

A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.

Proverbs 15:13

A CRUEL AND ABUSIVE FATHER TOWERED OVER THE CHILDHOOD OF PAT CONROY, author of The Great Santini and other popular novels. Pat’s earliest memory was sitting in a high chair, watching his mother go at his father with a knife while his father laughed and knocked her away.

Pat went on to attend a military college, where in his plebe year he suffered malicious attacks, degradation, pain, and embarrassment. During this difficult time, Pat got to know a married couple, who provided him with an island of sanity in an otherwise chaotic and hostile world. Pat recounted that during one visit, he felt transfixed by the healthy and adoring attitude the husband and wife expressed toward each other, something he had never witnessed at home. He wrote, “It made me happy to see how much she loved him.”^a

It made me happy to see how much she loved him.

How we love can bring great happiness to others.

While so many couples obsess about whether their spouses are making them happy, many of us don’t realize how we can make others happy by loving our spouses well. We can’t control whether our spouses act in a way that brings us happiness, but we can control how we love—and how we love can bring great happiness to others.

For starters, loving his daughter or son well will certainly bring happiness to the God who created him or her. In the same way that my children’s future spouses can make me happy by being generous with their love and tolerant toward my kids’ faults, so God delights in watching how I treat my wife—his daughter.

We also make our children happy when we treat each other with affection and kindness. I remember one time, while on a walk with my wife, Lisa and I held hands and laughed. Our oldest daughter came up behind us and said, “You two are so cute!” Seeing us love each other put a smile in her heart.

Loving our spouses well will certainly bring happiness to our in-laws, to our pastors, to our community, to young couples desperately searching for hope in their own marriages and thus eagerly on the lookout for role models, and to many others who watch us without our even knowing about it. People love it when they see adoring love, generous love, kind love, and committed love displayed in this jaded, fallen world.

I remember watching the Academy Awards as an Oscar-winning actor paid tribute to his wife during his acceptance speech. I know exactly where this man stands on virtually every political issue, in large part because our views are so radically different that I can pretty much assume we’ll be on the opposite side of any debate. From the public comments he’s made, I doubt we’ll ever vote for the same candidate for president (or even dogcatcher). Yet when I saw him acknowledge his wife—genuine tears filling his eyes, and true, sincere affection in hers—I felt surprisingly moved. This couple’s outspoken political activism may make me nauseated, but their love makes me smile.

This phenomenon—making others happy by our love—has remained true throughout the centuries. Almost three thousand years ago Homer wrote, “There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”