Happy Wife Wednesday! Today, I am the wife!
At the close of 2015, I wrote this post, 5 Things I Learned in 2015 and 6 Resolutions for 2016! Today when I was searching for inspiration on what to write today, I scrolled through old blog posts and landed on that post. I read my 6th resolution for 2016, “Be a Wife”! I elaborated that I wanted to not just become a “wife” as in aprons and dinners, I wanted to find balance, to strengthen my faith, serve as a partner, be an encouraging best friend to Nick, and figure out how I can improve our lives as we grow our family!
I realized I had been silent on the topic on my blog these past 5 months! I have definitely been working on it! Let me share.
Marriage is work, but not in the way I expected! I have heard it said before, but who knows what I was truly thinking it would be. When we got married, I became more interested in how to strengthen my faith and how I could use that faith to impact our marriage. There is a deep desire in my heart to want to give my all at being a wife and I am positive there is a way to do it. I quickly acknowledged that it would be an evolving process. I acknowledge that I will forever be growing as a wife and learning how to be the wife that my husband needs during each season in our lives.
That desire in my heart stems from hearing a lot of negativity surrounding marriage. Even as a newlywed I am told, “Just you wait, _______ will happen!” fill in the blank with words of discouragement, frustration, or negativity. I will be honest, it scared me. So, me being me I worked to find an answer and worked to find how I could avoid filling in the blank with anything less than JOY and EXCITEMENT.
My reading first lead me to Proverbs 31, giving the description of a worthy woman. “An excellent wife who can find? For her worth is far above jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.” Proverbs 31:10-12
I have studied it, using it as inspiration. The second stop on my excellent wife train was in Ephesians. I listened to a sermon from Mission Bible Church called A Willing Wife and was blown away. It was just what I was praying for. Some type of guidance on how to live out my role as a wife. The sermon ((The following week was about husbands)) gracefully taught on how a wife is to support her husband, how the husband is the leader, and how a wife can generously pray for her husband! Another verse, Titus 2:3-5, hit my heart strings. “…encourage the young women to love their husbands, love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind…”
I guess the type of “marriage is work” I was expecting was what color to decorate the bedroom and what side of the drawer the forks should be on. What I have discovered is it, for me, is a lot more deep than that. How can I be my best for him? Finding new ways to be supportive, thoughtful, and balanced.
In addition to strengthening my faith and purpose, I am learning to create more work life balance. Both Nick and I work full time jobs, our business with Advocare is growing, and I am at a constant battle with myself to be more productive and intentional with my time. I have had to intentionally work on phone free times together. It is easy to get lost in the emails, texts, saying yes to others over ourselves, and even my blog. However, I am working to prioritize my time in our marriage. I look for new books to not only grow my faith, but myself as well. I figure the more sure of myself I can be, the more confident I can be in my job as a wife!
This was a difficult post to write as it made me feel a little vulnerable. I am far from a naive newlywed. Instead, I feel as though I am on a wife on a mission to redefine what the __blank____ means in “just you wait ____”! I have faith in how marriage was originally designed and I have faith in my role as a wife to support my husband as he leads our home and family!
What are some hurdles you have had to jump in your own marriage? What new things have you had to learn or incorporate?
