As I promised in a recent post, I would like to address the area of wives blessing their husbands. In preparing this, I found several great posts that have also addressed the topic, and I encourage you to do a search online with the words, "ways to bless your husband." You'll be pleasantly surprised. Many of these posts featured lists of things wives can do to show their love including making favorite things to eat, leaving notes for them, and so forth. Many involved providing the creature comforts that make a man feel cared for and loved. Those things are absolutely important. I just want to add that like our love for the Lord, the things we do flow from something much deeper in our hearts. What God desires, first and foremost, is fellowship and communion with us, and that is what most spouses desire as well. The rest is icing on the cake.
I had several conversations with Tom about this and asked him what he thought were ways wives could bless their husbands He gave it some thought and one night, I typed notes from the points he made over the course of several days.
1. It pleases husbands to find their wives still interested in them, all of them– their thoughts, their views and hobbies, even after years of marriage. When a wife asks questions of her husband about these things and seems genuinely interested in the answers, it is a great boost.
2. All the wifely, homemaking things are a great blessing, but they should flow from a deeper intimacy spiritually between the two. Husbands are responsible for setting the tone for this. While there are definite exceptions to this, the majority of women will respond lovingly to a husband who loves, honors and cherishes her. When there are roots put down of trust and unconditional love, the tokens and daily reminders are the natural outgrowth. A husband, then, needs to be aware that his wife's ability to bless him starts with his own treatment of her.
3. The gift of understanding from a wife is critical. When a wife puts the best construction on things her husband does, it removes that underlying tension from a relationship, and a cycle of forgiveness and understanding is put into motion. Again, husbands are responsible as the head to begin this cycle. Women can't do this alone.
4. Allowing your husband to sometimes have time to himself for his interests is a blessing. Everybody needs some time to putter and think things through while they engage in some interest or hobby without being made to feel guilty. Wives, of course, need the same opportunity.
5. A wife's support in decision making is one of the biggest blessings a man can have. As head of household, the husband is ultimately responsible for the decisions made for his home. Having the respect and support of your wife, whatever your final decision, is a great encouragement, and once again, it eliminates a lot of tension in the relationship. Any wise husband will seek the counsel of his wife when making decisions for the family. God gave helpmeets to men for just this reason. Two minds are definitely better than one, and a man is a fool if he decides to be a Lone Ranger in decision making. But the buck stops with the husband, and having his wife's support in this is a big blessing.
6. Having a wife show affection for no reason at all makes a husband's day. A great relationship is the result of feeling wanted and loved by the other, and that is fostered by random reminders when it's least expected. It is also a great protection for a marriage.
I want to illustrate point 5 for a moment. When our family moved to South Carolina three years ago, we had high hopes of building a different kind of a life than we had here, with more time for family and with involvement in a wonderful church we attended. It didn't turn out as we had hoped in several ways, and it quickly became apparent that Tom was very unhappy there. He had several reasons for concern, and they weren't minor. With the children in one of the best Christian schools in the country and having just settled into a comfortable home in a lovely neighborhood, however, I was not wanting to move back to Wisconsin at the end of that first year. It wasn't that everything was so great for me there-I hadn't even made a friend, but the thought of the upheaval and stress of yet another cross country move was hard to take. I dug my heels in and made what I thought was a logical case for staying put. It was wrong of me, but I persisted to the point that Tom was made to feel like the bad guy for uprooting us. I was miserable, because I knew I should let him do what he felt was right. He came to me one night and said, with a clenched jaw, that we would stay put. I looked at this wonderful man who had given and given and who had asked for so little from me all the years of our married life and I just crumbled. I immediately told him that I was wrong, that I would do whatever he wanted and that I was looking forward to moving back where my family was, which was true. Tom's jaw unclenched and the tension from weeks of quiet conflict was lifted. God helped us sell our house in 2 weeks in a stagnant real estate market, got us back to Milwaukee and into our new home in record time. Best of all, that terrible feeling of being at odds with Tom was gone. In the end, I can see how God knew best and worked through my wise husband. I would have done irreparable harm had I stubbornly insisted on my own way. Submitting to the loving leadership of a husband, even when you disagree, is always right.
In conclusion, I've been thinking about the picture that marriage is of our relationship with Jesus Christ. When we have husbands who, however humanly, love us and care for us, the response of a wife is to love back and to think out ways to bring a smile to the face of her beloved man. In the same vein, we should think of how we can please our Savior who gave his very life blood for us. I think of that act of consummate devotion when Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and broke the expensive vile of perfume on His feet. Her heartfelt devotion caused her to be memorialized in the Scriptures for all time. When we take the time to talk with our Savior and to learn of His will for us in His Word, we can be like that Mary of so long ago. As we live our lives in our homes with our earthly husbands, may that spiritual parallel always be uppermost in our minds.
