Dear Sister in Christ,
Are you, your husband or both constantly frustrated? Do you maintain a crazy hectic schedule? Does he or you work way too much? Do you have a hard time having a FUN conversation anymore?
There is a solution.
Let me ask and challenge you with a few questions:
Are you making your house a HOME that is relaxing, safe and inviting for your husband?
1. Are you embracing, submitting to God’s plan for your family?: Embracing the highest-honor job of fulfilling your role as your husband's wife and (possibly) mother of his children. Happily allowing your husband to fulfill his role as the head of your home, as your husband, and as the father of your children, unchallenged by you)? Allow your husband to make important decisions. Support him even when you may not want to because you are doing your best to fulfill your role of help-meet; supporting and following your God-given head, your husband.
You may have experienced a change of attitude (internal) reading your Bible or a Christian Guidance book. However, did God reward you for your attitude change? Probably not. However, if you continue to seek His guidance to not only change your attitude, but change your actions too, in submitting to and honoring your husband then you will experience the reward of a healthy marriage, operating as God intended it to.
Are you committed in honoring and submitting to your husband as you were when you were first married? Do you REMEMBER the PEACE and Happiness you experienced growing in your home? You experience His Peace in your home when you were truly working, persevering diligently to embrace your submission and honoring of your husband in attitude and action.
2. Are you keeping life as organized, SIMPLE, and non-complicated as possible? Men need a neat orderly home. This is just how men are. Men spend their entire lives trying to simplify life. . . yes, many would be content to live in a log cabin secluded in some remote region of the world, eating venison and beans. Yet, we women seem to have a very difficult time declining placing new activities and commitments in our family schedules. Have you pondered why you have such a hard time creating a quiet simple schedule?
If you don't think there is anything you can cut out, consider challenging yourself to put on the RIGHT attitude, and at a break in the busy-ness, ask your husband what he thinks you should cut out of your schedule (be fully ready to immediately accept and act on his suggestions, don’t go into the ring with your gloves on! You are not allowed to get offended.) I GUARANTEE he already has a list in his mind. Be sure you create a safe atmosphere for him to share his thoughts with you, and he will. (My husband was over-burdened this last fall and thought he could not possibly cut out anything. An instructor challenged him to do this with me...I did not have to think for a moment, I already had a list in my mind that I had been wishing he would just "cut out" of his schedule. . . our spouses often see more clearly than we which schedule demands do not reward us adequately for their full cost.)
Have you made a schedule of when you will be available for extra-curricular activities? Please seriously consider planning with your husband one or two weekends a month to be open for extracurricular activities. In this manner, your husband and children will always know your priority is family. Additionally, those who seek your wisdom will appreciate you living in a consistent manner with your teachings, seeing you refuse to wreck your family schedule for one activity after the next. Consider the second and fourth weekends of each month or another firmly set schedule. Be firm. Your family and your friends will love and appreciate you that much more . . . and I’ll bet you will enjoy the consistency (especially when you have crazy weekends that leave you ready for a couple weekends in a row guaranteed to be at home!).
3. Have you asked yourself what you “control” that will really help your husband and children the most?
Our children can do it ALL these days. Sports, ballet, karate, church groups, homeschool groups... However, their progress in becoming healthy educated children, teenagers, and adults, will be GREATLY limited if they do not experience PEACE at home. Is your home peaceful? The atmosphere in our homes directly reflect the relationship we have with our husbands.
Do you create PEACE between you and your husband? . . . Or do you COMPETE with your husband?
It is right and good to pour ourselves into serving our children and our friends. It is honorable to sacrifice for others less fortunate. However, in doing so, we tend to neglect the two that need us the most (Our own person and our own husband). Though, we are actually the same person, as the Bible states: Two shall become one flesh. You have probably neglected your own physical flesh by eating poorly and not exercising. Though the primary rule Home Hospice Nurses teach the loved ones of a dying person (or any very needy person) is to "Be sure to take care of the caregiver because you cannot help anyone if you are not healthy yourself". In this case, the "care-giver" is you and your spouse. You have probably neglected you (at least physically, possibly in other avenues too), have you neglected your husband too?
4. Is your relationship with your spouse priority over ALL other aspects of your life, yes, even over your children, siblings, parents, the poor? God demands for this to be so. God demands this because He knows that everything (and everyone) else in our lives will be effected negatively if our spousal relationship is neglected and positively if our spousal relationship flourishes.
If the kids don't play three sports this year, so Daddy and Mommy can financially afford to have getaway weekends occasionally to insure the health of their husband-wife relationship; your children's physical, educational, and spiritual health (as well as all of your other children's, your siblings, friends, etc.) will consequently grow exponentially in the PEACE that will surely increase in your household as a direct result. Additionally, your children and people you contact will witness how a marriage is supposed to look, further assuring their own successful marriages to come.
1. Does your home provide respite (an environment that is relaxing, safe and inviting) for your husband?
2. Is your home “safe”? . . . Or is your home a battlefield for first place?
3. Are you doing EVERYTHING that you can to create PEACE in your home?
*** Are you making YOU relaxing, safe and inviting for your husband? ***
In His Guidance, Love and prayers,
Mrs. Lori Schmidtke
Reading: The Adventure of Being a Wife: Climate-Creator
