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Jesus said, “Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back -given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting is the way. Generosity begets generosity” (Luke 6:38 THE MESSAGE).

The world says, “What about me? What about my needs, my talents and abilities?” There is no argument that you are probably as smart and as talented as your husband, but if you are married, then all that the Lord has blessed you with is to be given out to your family first.

The Proverbs 31 woman creates a world for her husband in which he can be everything that God would want him to be. When you create an atmosphere where your husband can be all God wants—in that mystical, spiritual union where two become one—you become all that God wants you to be as well.

When you are a helper to your husband, you are a helper to Christ. And when you honor your husband, you honor God. In the same way, when you dishonor your husband, you dishonor God.

The virtuous woman honors her husband and he knows he can safely trust her. Girls, you can be a gift to your husband, or you can be a grief. You can be a treasure or you can be a trial.

Remember, that as you pour out yourself for your husband, you are also allowing the Lord to pour back into your life. What a great reward!

I work at a day spa and I have observed a few things that I think can apply to our homes.

To get to the spa, you have to get through a tangled mess of freeways. It isn’t easy to find, especially if you have never been there before. In fact, we ask clients to get there 30 minutes early to prepare.

When they first walk into the doors, they see a pleasant room with girls at the front desk who look nice greet them with a smile. An essential oil fragrance is piped throughout the building, further calming them.

We take the client into their room, and the whole hour they spend in there is all about them. I ask them questions about themselves and I listen intently. For that hour, they are the most important person to me and my focus is on them. And if they are quiet at first and still a bit stressed, I listen and ask questions and sometimes they will pour their hearts out to me.

My mother-in-law had some hard times in her marriage and made some mistakes, but she taught me some things as well. We lived with my in-laws for a while, and every day about 5:00 P.M.—after she had been working around the house and had started dinner—she would go and put on lipstick, and change her shirt. She didn’t need to comb her hair because it was lacquered to stay put.

She greeted her husband with a kiss and a giggle, and had his drink ready. He would sit at the kitchen counter and just talk to her. He hated the freeways and needed time to unwind. I remember hearing her tell him, “Are you kidding?”, or “Oh honey, really?”

He loved it. The approval of the wife is as important as oxygen. Lack of approval is emasculation.

Now girls, how hard is it to light a candle and set a calm mood for when your husband comes home? But even better than that is the aroma of food cooking on the stove. Husbands love that.

We have gotten so used to fast food everything. What a shame, abandoning the gift of cooking for him.

I know I get into ruts, and cook the same five things. But I have a group of amazing friends, many of them great cooks, so we share recipes and I try them on my husband.

When I have blessed my husband with a good meal, it changes his mood if he’s grumpy.

Now my husband needed to have dinner ready when he came home. At that point, asking about his day wasn’t a good thing. He needed to eat first. Whether it is when they get home, after dinner, or after getting the kids to bed, give him your full attention. If he doesn’t want to talk, hold his hand.

Verse 12 says, “She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.” This means not just when he is nice, and not just when he is keeping up his part of the marriage.

When I look at this passage of Proverbs 31, I don’t read that her husband never came home grumpy, that they didn’t disagree, or that he was a model husband. It didn’t say that she did all this for him because he deserved it. What I see is a woman who made a choice to give her husband the gift of herself, her time, and her attention.