At our wedding, I read my vows and referenced how I would strive to be the Proverbs 31 wife for him. (You can read my vows by clicking here!) Now, here we are a year and a half into our marriage and have I been the Proverbs 31 woman?
I've tried. I've tried hard. Just when I feel that God has a stronghold on me and I am doing great! The devil himself somehow comes into the picture and jerks me into another direction. I am by no means perfect, in fact, total opposite. I try so hard to keep a gentle, loving spirit like my mama has. But I have a short fuse when it comes to certain things. Sometimes I feel like I show anger more than love.
On our honeymoon, we were exploring Helen and God had set up this honeymoon and this moment just so I could have this. I was in a store and I just happened to look at the bottom of a rack. It was a book called, "Secrets of The Proverbs 31 Woman". I almost fell out right there in the store. What are the odds of this book coming into my life when I had just finished the day before telling all our family and friends that I was going to do whatever it took to be this wonderful example of a woman to my farmer.
Now, let's go to last week, I was ill. I was moody and for no reason at all. I was hard to live with. I won't go into details but I got angry with my farmer and pouted. I came home from town and pouted the rest of the day. I sat down and I noticed a book in my "book box". On top of the junk in my box sat "Secrets of the Proverbs 31 Woman". I picked it up and found the last page I had left off on.
The devotional was titled, "Let Love Flow" and the first sentence was "How often do you tell your husband you love him?"
I thought to myself, "All the time!"
I continued reading, "It's a simple habit to form- and the more often we say the words, the more secure our husbands will feel. It's a habit that pays off in other ways as well. Sometimes we get into vicious circles where we snap at our husbands. . . they feel hurt and exasperated, so they give an angry retort. . . we're hurt by their angry voices, so we go on the defensive. . . and the circle goes around and around until something or someone break it. But we can choose to form "loving circles" instead. Psychologists have found that the more often we express love, the more loving we tend to feel. This productive and kind cycle strengthens the feeling that inspires the words, and on and on. We don't have to wait for our husbands to be the first to start these loving cycles. The more we express our love to our husbands, the more likely they are to respond with their own expressions of love, forming another beneficial and creative circle to replace the vicious circles we all fall into so easily. Marriage is an opportunity to let God's love flow through us. Our culture usually looks at things differently; most people spend their lives looking for ways that others can be of use to them. We may have entered marriage with that same attitude, expecting our husbands to make us feel loved,, rather than seeking opportunities to demonstrate our love to them. Often, we wait to be told we're loved before we'll respond. Even within the marriage commitment, we want to know we're secure before we'll lay our hearts out where they might be hurt. But that's not the way God loves. God's love is completely vulnerable. There are no self-protective barriers around it. It gives without thought of return. It doesn't wait for us to love God back. It simply pours into our lives, no matter how often we reject it and turn away from it, no matter how many times we're too focused on our concerns to even notice it. What would happen if we tried to love our husbands that way?"
If that doesn't make you think, what will? How many times have I forgotten to SHOW my love for the farmer and just said it hoping it would be enough?
So here I am in the kitchen after reading that and I am cooking dinner. The farmer comes in saying he's not feeling well. He goes to the guest bathroom and that was the beginning of an entire night of being sick. He had a full-blown virus.
Something told me that this was my chance to show him love. I've been sick a lot in my life so I know what's comforting and what's not. I took some pointers that I had picked up from my mom over the years and I grabbed a wet washcloth and headed to the bathroom armed with the washcloth and a glass of coke. For some reason, coke has always had a soothing effect on my stomach. For the rest of the night, I showed him love in the best way that I knew how. I tried. I tried hard.
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