Help for Wives

I was watching an episode of I Love Lucy this morning. It was about Ricky not paying attention to her anymore. She found a book that was going "fix" the problem, which according to the author was the wife's fault. Now I am a reformed feminist, so I did not take offense to this. In fact, it reminded me of a book that I credit with saving my marriage. The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan.

A little background...one day at a restaurant my husband looked me in my eyes and said "I can't do this with you for the rest of my life." It wasn't mean or angry. It was just a statement of fact. Well that was my wakeup call. After a silent ride home, with me in tears, I prayed that night for God to send me what I needed to help me "fix" my marriage. The next day, I was at our church cleaning out the library and I found a very old copy of The Total Woman. I took it home and read it. Now it wasn't a bible study by any stretch, but she was a Christian and had applied Christian principles to her marriage and the results were amazing. I did the same thing and my results were amazing. I am not saying we have a perfect marriage, but we don't think the D word anymore. This sent me on a quest to find out what other things I had been doing that were contrary to God's plan and what were the consequences of doing it my way. I will stick with marriage on this post.

Here are the things I did.

1. I made myself "available and ready" for my husband every night for one month. I took a bubble every afternoon and got ready like I was going on a date.

2. I quit questioning his authority and second guessing every decision he made. For one month, I held my tongue.

3. I found things to complement him on every day. I didn't make anything up, I just spent time looking for the good in him instead of dwelling on what I thought was the bad.

4. I let him hear me praise him to the children. I always have done this, just not where he could hear.

5. I applied the Golden Rule. I would want him to find out what made me happy and do it. I have heard often since I started this 6 years ago, that I should stop trying to make him the man of my dreams and start trying to become the woman of his dreams.

6. Take off the mommy hat and put on the wife hat. This is something I still struggle with. Sometimes I get so busy being the mom, that I forget I am also a wife. I am working on it though! One thing I heard in a bible study stuck with me. The leader said "we need to be making memories". Now I always think this about the kids and about our family, but I never thought about it as a couple.

A while back I thought marriage was supposed to make you happy, but in reality I think it is supposed to make you Holy. One of the reasons it is so important to have a Godly marriage is because our marriages represent Christ's relationship to the church. If the wives represent the church, then we should be obedient, submissive, and willing to live for our husbands, who represent Christ.

My prayer today is that God will help me focus on the important role of being a Godly wife. The Proverbs 31 woman is the model God gave me. I may not ever be as "good" as she is, but I can certainly try and with God's help I know it is not impossible.