If I speak with kind and gentle words to everyone about me, but fail to encourage my husband, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I treat others in a warm and gracious manner, yet my husband consistently feels disregarded and overlooked, my life is but a sham.
If I gladly get involved in every aspect of my child’s or grandchild’s life, yet my husband feels alone and lonely, wondering if he will ever again be a priority in my life, I live but a miserly existence.
If the people around me comment on what a nice person I am, but my husband goes day after day hungry for a crumb of kindness from me, the void in my life is deafening.
If I thank the teen at the grocery store for sacking my groceries and the bank teller for depositing my check, yet rarely thank my husband for his provision for our family, something is desperately wrong with my heart.
Love is patient. It easily translates the many ways a man tries to make his wife feel loved: mowing the grass…caulking the drafts in the house before winter…going to work each day. Love understands that a man scales things differently – and the caulking is often his way of tenderly embracing his wife.
Love is kind. It guards the way a husband is spoken to – refusing to allow sharp, demeaning jabs come from her mouth. Love doesn’t bash her husband’s reputation in front of her family or friends, and especially not in front of their children. It doesn’t roll its eyes or recount stories that makes a husband look foolish. Love makes a man feel that his name is always safe in his wife’s mouth.
Love is not rude or self-seeking. It doesn’t compare one’s husband to another. It doesn’t wait for a kindness to be done to her before being kind herself. Love doesn’t allow days to go by without a thoughtful word or tender touch.
It keeps no record of wrong, and refuses to dole out the cold treatment when she feels hurt, misunderstood, or upset. Love lets things go, and doesn’t bring up past offenses. It forgives – even when it’s hard. Love understands that a woman can’t treat her husband coldly, and expect a warm relationship with God.
Love does not delight in evil. It doesn’t force a husband to jump through hooks before respect is given. Love understands a man’s physical needs, and tenderly – and wisely – guards this area of their marriage. Love accepts that men are visual creatures, and doesn’t put them down for being wired this way. Love is willing to be a companion, doing things she might not normally do on her own. Like forging rivers to fish for salmon on a cold, rainy day.
Love never fails. Where there are meals to make and laundry to do, these will one day cease. Where there are committees to serve on and projects to work on, these too will pass. The many pursuits of this lifetime will one day come to an end. But a woman will take into eternity her treatment of her husband on this earth.
When I was a child, I talked like a child…I thought like a child…I reasoned like a child. Now that I am a wife, I commit to putting childish ways behind me. If I look into a mirror and see a marriage that needs help, I will ask God to help us change – beginning with me.
Now I know in part, but one day I shall know fully…I will understand that love was never so much about marrying the right person, as it was about becoming the right person. And that God will never ask me to be accountable for my husband’s actions, but He most surely will ask me about my own.
And now these three remain: Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these…is love.
