Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Your Spouse is Not Your Enemy

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One of the statements that stuck out to me the most when Matt and I attended the Weekend to Remember marriage conference is this:

Your spouse is not your enemy.

When your spouse does something to hurt you or upset you; when your spouse is thoughtless or inconsiderate; when your spouse forgets to do something you asked him or her to do; when your spouse makes you mad or causes you pain; when your spouse doesn’t seem to be on your side…

You need to remember that your spouse is not your enemy.

The enemy is your enemy. Satan is the enemy. The enemy doesn’t want your marriage to survive. The enemy doesn’t want your marriage to be strong. The enemy doesn’t want your marriage to make an impact for God’s Kingdom.

Your spouse is your teammate in this war against the enemy. The enemy wants to tear your marriage apart. You and your spouse are in this marriage together and you are not enemies. You may not always see everything the same way, you may not always agree in every situation. You may feel like your spouse is choosing to be your enemy. But no, that isn’t true. Your spouse is not your enemy.

No matter how tough your struggles, no matter how terrible your pain, no matter what your spouse does or doesn’t do…you must remember that your spouse is not your enemy.

Recognize the enemy when he tries to attack the teamwork of your marriage. Do not focus your thoughts around your spouse when you are hurt or upset, thinking that your spouse is the enemy. This will get you nowhere, except to keep you hurt and upset.

Instead, focus on prayer to the One who is holy and righteous, and much more powerful than the enemy. Focus your prayers on asking God to preserve your marriage, to strengthen your marriage and above all, to defeat the enemy.

May you be blessed as you and your spouse work together, letting God strengthen and protect your marriage against the enemy. Praise God for His unfailing power and for the hope He brings to your life and to your marriage!

I wanted to remind you that we’ve set up a Heavenly Homemakers Group, which enables you and your spouse to attend the Weekend to Remember conference for HALF PRICE!! The normal price per couple is $318, which means that by signing up with the Heavenly Homemakers Group, you and your spouse can attend for only $159!

By signing up under the Heavenly Homemakers Group, you can attend the conference at any time or location that works for you. We don’t all have to “go as a group”. This is just a nice group rate option Family Life offers to encourage more people to attend. Feel free to share this information and link with your friends!

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Resentment is a Choice

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Bitterness. What a fun thing to experience. It eats at you, distracts you, causes you to lose sleep, makes you feel angry and keeps the hurt feelings right at the surface of your heart.

We’ve all had our feelings hurt at one time or another. People have sinned against us. They have been thoughtless toward us. Some have intentionally been mean or hurtful to us. Others have treated us with disrespect. Some have made us feel like a little piece of dirt that is worth nothing more than to be tossed out to the wind.

None of that feels good. None of that causes us to smile, to be happy or to feel loved. Hurtful words and actions from others are painful to endure, whether they were intended to cause pain or not. 

It’s okay to be angry. Anger is a God given emotion and a natural feeling after someone has wronged us.

But we don’t get to run a bath full of anger and soak in it.

Most of the time, when I am angry at someone…they are completely clueless that they have hurt me or made me angry. I’ll have countless “conversations in my head” with that person in which I effectively set the record straight, and oh so eloquently let them know how right I am and how wrong they are and boy do I let them have it! In my head. Over and over. And over. What a completely unproductive use of my time and brain power.

This is where bitterness creeps in. 

It’s hard to let go of anger. I hold onto it because I want to “punish” the person who hurt me. Instead, all I’m doing is punishing myself, making myself physically sick with the cancer of bitterness. 

The way I see it, I have three choices:  I can choose to go to the person and resolve the issue, forgive and move on. If I truly can’t bring myself to go to the person and work through the problem of my hurt, then I HAVE to choose to just let go of it. 

Otherwise, I’m making the third choice…the choice to be bitter.

Clearly, resentment is a choice. We didn’t choose for someone to hurt us, but if we remain unforgiving and ugly-hearted, we are choosing resentment. 

We are not allowed to say, “Everything he has done to me has made me SO BITTER.” Nope. He may have hurt you, but he didn’t make you bitter. You chose to be bitter. 

Deciding to let go of bitterness and forgive…it’s hard. It’s painful. It’s gut-wrenching. It takes much prayer and an absolute surrender of your self.

And then it’s freeing. So, so freeing. 

Oh the ways God can use us when our hearts are free of bitterness! And oh how we are stuck in a trap of ugly, painful memories when we choose not to let it go.

Resentment is a choice. What will you choose?

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I’m writing this post generically, because there are so many people in our lives we can become resentful toward. However, I’m also categorizing this post in our Becoming a Better Help Meet series. If you are choosing to be resentful toward your husband, can I urge you to repent? It’s easy to let bitterness become a part of you when/if your husband continues to hurt you, or fails to listen to you and meet your needs. All of those actions and attitudes hurt…there’s no doubt about it. But don’t choose bitterness. You’re  hurting yourself and you’re hurting your marriage.

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Being a Better Help Meet: Choose Your Friends Wisely

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Who are you spending quality time with? (I mean, besides your toddler and The Cat in the Hat.)

Are you choosing your friends wisely? 

I think it is very important to spend time with lonely people, hurting people, needy people and struggling people…because people need people and we all at one time or another are lonely, hurting, needy or struggling. This post is not suggesting that you ignore all people who have nothing to offer you at this moment. God calls us to reach out and love on his children.

But what I’d like to suggest to each of us is that if you’re interested in keeping your marriage strong and together, it is wise to spend time with people who can help you and encourage you in those efforts.

Look around you. Who has been married for many, many years? Who outwardly adores her husband? Who speaks kindly of her husband? Who has gone through difficult marriage struggles and landed on her feet beside her man? Who will help you hold your marriage together?

And I’m not just talking to those of you whose marriages are barely holding on. I’m talking to all of us.

Do the people around you engage in “husband or men bashing”? Do your friends prefer to do their own thing, leaving their husbands out of the picture? Do your friends hold marriage as sacred? Do your friends encourage you to put your  husband first? Do your friends challenge you be a devoted wife…no matter what?

You wouldn’t ask financial advice from your broke, scatter-brained uncle, right? Neither should you seek godly marriage wisdom from someone who truly isn’t equipped to offer it. 

Choose to surround yourself with people who can show you how to love. Develop relationships with women who can encourage you as a wife to be the best godly helper that you can be for your husband.

On the flip side…no matter how old you are or how long you’ve been married, make a decision to be a good example to young girls and younger married women around you. Show others how much you love your husband and how grateful you are to be married.

Seek mentors. Be a mentor.

I do believe this is exactly what Titus 2:3-5 is all about. :)

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children,  to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

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Warning! Facebook Can Be Destructive To Your Marriage!

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Let me just get all the arguments out of the way right now. Facebook can be great and is a wonderful way to connect with people. I am rarely on FB, but have found it to be a super way to “find” old classmates, see pictures of friends and family, learn news of babies born and read of ways I can be praying for people I love. (For the record, by “old” classmates I totally mean “young” classmates because wow, we are all so incredibly youthful. I should have said former classmates, yes?) 

Facebook can be purely innocent and can offer a wonderful connection to the outside world, especially for moms who really just need an adult to commiserate with them on a day that the poop got smeared across the piano keys while the cell phone simultaneously got dropped into the toilet. 

Facebook in and of itself is not evil. Are we clear on that?  This is not a post telling you to avoid all appearances of FB and woe to the person who  updates her status or changes his profile picture. I’ll even go so far as to encourage you to hit my “like” button so that you can be a fan of Heavenly Homemakers on Facebook if you so choose.

However, just like everything that can and should be used for a good purpose, Facebook has been a party to destroyed marriages. It’s sneaky and subtle and can creep up on a person before they realize that damage has been done. Sounds just like the way Satan works, doesn’t it? 

I’m pretty sure most people do not log into Facebook with the plan to get too close to someone who is of the opposite sex and cross any boundaries that should not be crossed. But I’ve seen it happen and I’ve seen divorce as the outcome. It’s heartbreaking and it’s gut-wrenching and I’m here to beg you to please be careful.

If you choose to be on Facebook, I think it is important to be very selective in deciding what you post. I’ve seen gals post information about their bras, about their bodies, about the fact that they’re getting ready to go take a shower. It may seem innocent, but for REAL…that is too much information to share with all of your “friends”.

Also, please be careful about your Facebook conversations with others, especially with people of the opposite sex. It’s somehow much easier to say things on screen that we would NEVER say to someone’s face, which of course makes it much easier to cross lines we know better than to cross.

We have to work daily to protect our marriages.  Facebook is just one small example that has been on my heart lately. 

Hey…here’s an idea! How about using your Facebook status updates as a way to build up your spouse? Share with your “friends” something great that your husband did or a reason you’re proud of him. Nothing says, “I love my husband, everyone else back off!” like a wife who can’t stop saying great things to others about her man.

See? Go check this out.  I just updated my Facebook status to say something great about Matt. Easy as that, I’m doing something positive for my marriage and using Facebook for good. 

If you’re a Facebooker, can I challenge you to do the same? :)

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It’s Not About You

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Matt and I were privileged to attend a weekend marriage seminar last weekend put on by FamilyLife.com. It was their video version, called The Art of Marriage. I’m so thankful our church hosted the event.

Marriage truly is an art, isn’t it? When we allow our Creator to sculpt our marriage, it is so beautiful.

One of the biggest lessons we heard over the weekend was not something new to us. And yet, it’s always good to be reminded about one of the key tools for making your marriage run smoothly.

The long and short of it (and Laura’s paraphrased and blunt version) of the lesson is this:  Get over yourself already.

We shouldn’t get married to please ourselves. We should get married to serve the person we love the most.  Ultimately, getting married means that you’ve chosen to become a loving servant to your spouse forever. And if children come along, you’re signing up to serve them forever too. Yep, years and years of serving others. Sounds tough…but it doesn’t have to be. It’s all about letting go of yourself and choosing to serve cheerfully.

I thought it interesting that one counselor pointed out that we all say these vows to our spouse on our wedding day:  “I promise to love, honor and cherish you until death do us part.” But what our hearts often mean is, “I want YOU to love, honor and cherish ME forever.” (And then we also expect our spouse to be able to read our mind so that they know exactly how they should perfectly love, honor and cherish us…but that’s another article for another day.)

No…when you got married, you promised to take care of and nurture your spouse. No matter what. Even when it isn’t easy. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re grumpy. Even when you don’t feel like it.

See, because your marriage isn’t ultimately about YOU. 

If Jesus would have made his time on earth about HIMSELF, I’m very sure He never would have died for me and He certainly wouldn’t have healed all those sick, needy people that kept following Him everywhere. Why in the world would he? He may not have been in the mood…He may not have felt like it that day…He may have just needed some “me time”. But no…He chose to serve. He chose to love unconditionally. He chose to die. He chose to live for others, which praise God, includes you and me!

If you’re sitting there thinking, “Wow, she’s right. My spouse really needs to read this so he’ll/she’ll stop living for him/herself and serve me better” –  Stop it. Consider yourself bonked on the forehead. :)

It could be that your spouse is selfish (I wouldn’t be surprised since you and I are both quite selfish in nature). Your needs may not all be met. You may be wanting more out of your marriage.

But your healthier, more wonderfully sculpted marriage begins with your choice to be a loving servant.

As soon as you stop living for yourself and really start focusing on meeting the needs of your spouse, your marriage will become more joyful. Your spouse may then become more of a loving servant to you as well. 

Beautiful!

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The Great Marriage Flirt

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“Hey there,” I say to my husband as I come into the room where he is mudding and sanding the drywall. “Now that is lookin’ good.”

“Thanks,”  he says as he reaches down for more mud.

And then I say, “Oh, and those walls aren’t looking too bad either.” 

Now that stops him mid-mud-smear. Obviously, I wasn’t talking about the walls the first time. {giggle}  We share raised eyebrows and sly grins, as the kids run in and out, oblivious to what I just really said. That makes it even more fun.

Flirting with my guy is one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. I can’t help it. He’s fun to flirt with. It’s such a simple way to connect and to share smiles in the midst of hard work and crazy schedules. I love being his number one girl. I love being the one who puts the smile on his face. My flirting always makes him smile – especially when it takes him by surprise.

Once a marriage is well underway and perhaps kids join the mix, we can sometimes feel lost in all the paper work and bills and gymnastic classes and carpooling and grocery shopping and dirty diapers and broken dishwashers. Somehow, we may not even remember how to flirt because really it feels good enough just getting your hair brushed some days. 

So don’t make this flirting thing complicated. Just do small things to keep your marriage fun and lively. Simply relax and enjoy your husband and the relationship God gave you.

A simple smile straight to him goes a long way.

Flirting isn’t always about sex. It rarely is, in my opinion. It’s really about connection. Sharing something special between just the two of you. Having those secret messages that float over the dinner table when neither of you can get a word in over the hubbub of one child banging his sippy cup on the highchair and another child sharing the most exciting part of her day with daddy (the part about how Curious George climbed a tree after a kitten and couldn’t get down and the fireman had to come and the Man with the Yellow Hat said…). 

If you’re just being “work partners”, trying to get through each day without losing your heads…something needs to give. You and your husband are more than just work partners. You’re more than just friends. You’re more than teammates. 

You’re lovers. Forever.

Enjoy being together. Smile. Bump into each other “accidentally”. Wink. Sneak a kiss. Email or text him something “sassy”.

Flirt.

It’s fun. :)
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What are your thoughts? Does flirting with your husband come naturally to you or is this something you try to improve upon?

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Becoming a Better Help Meet

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Remember this series? The one about marriage that I started almost a year ago? Did ya think I forgot to finish it? 

I promise I really didn’t forget…I just have so many topics I love writing about and somehow this series kinda got off track back in October. 

And yikes…I promised that while writing a series on being a better help meet to our husbands that I would write about THAT subject. You know, that one important subject that is quite important to address when we talk about a healthy marriage? It’s not that I am afraid to talk about THAT, but wow, I’ve sure done a good job of avoiding the topic for almost a year, haven’t I?

I plan to pick this series back up in January and finish it off sometime before 2012. Hopefully. I even plan to talk about THAT. So stay tuned and in the meantime, I wanted to share all the links for the posts I’ve written on the subject up to now:

Any particular marriage topics you’re interested in me writing about? I mean, besides THAT?

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What My Husband Needs (I mean your husband, well…you know what I mean)

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You’ve read many of the books or heard much of the “good wife” advice that I’ve heard right? That advice that states that I need to greet my husband at the door each night when he comes home from work looking refreshed and lovely because otherwise I’m not showing my love for him. Apparently I’m supposed to be wearing the sweater he loves (always) and have my hair curled and pretty (at precisely 5:05)…the house is supposed to be clean and if I’m not mistaken, I am supposed to kiss my husband for a full minute (One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…) immediately when he walks in from his hard day at work. I also need to train my children to run in and greet him (what, in the middle of our kiss?!) so that they can show their Daddy how much he means to them.

But wait, there are other books that tell me that when a man comes home from work, he needs a good bit of time to wind down before he is to be bothered. He should be allowed to go “into his cave” all by himself with no one to touch him or ask him how his day went and I am certainly not to begin telling him how my day went until he has had exactly 47 minutes (or whatever) alone in his cave and is ready to give me his full attention.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to kiss him in the cave or not. 

Is it just me, or is there a little bit of contradictory marriage advice out there? And while I think that so many of the aforementioned ideas are great and possibly valid, I can often feel overwhelmed with all of the “good advice” and feel like I just don’t measure up because I can’t do all of those things.

I would like to suggest that each of us, as wives, need to look at what our individual husband’s needs and desires are and focus on meeting those needs.

My husband personally doesn’t care if my hair is curled and lovely when he walks in the door. (Thank goodness, since as we all know, I rarely have time to curl my hair and you will often find a good bit of flour in the wisps falling into my face.)  He actually appreciates the fact that although I do care to keep myself clean and neat (flour in the hair being an exception), I don’t spend much time primping in front of a mirror every day. He doesn’t expect the house to be perfect and he doesn’t really have a cave. He would probably love it if I kissed him for 60 whole seconds (…Twenty-Four Mississippi…) when he walks in the door, but there are usually four loud and excited children who beat me to the door and if all I’m able to do is look up from my biscuit dough with a crooked smile…he still knows I love him.

Because I show him in ways that HE needs. 

It doesn’t matter what all the other husbands need.  All that matters to me is what MY husband needs. 

It’s good to listen to advice from Godly people and to read good Christian books on marriage. There are some fantastic words of wisdom to learn from. But take that advice and communicate with your husband about what he needs from you. Knowing that you’re doing just what your husband needs feels a whole lot better than trying to meet the needs defined in a book.

And now…just because I just really want to…I’m going to find my husband and practice the infamous 60-second kiss. (…Forty-Seven Mississippi…)

How about we call it “The Kississippi”?

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Chatting With Lisa Whelchel (about marriage)

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I’ve read Lisa’s ideas about parenting…I’ve read her thoughts on friendship…but I’ve never read her insights on marriage. And so I asked…

Me:

I’m currently writing a series on my blog encouraging wives in their journey as a help meet to their husbands. What is something practical you’ve done to help your husband be a better father, husband, man of God?

Lisa:

Well, can I share something with you that I wish I would have done better and understood earlier? 

It’s about balance. I’d read all the books about being a great help meet and I implemented all the right things. But somehow as I was offering all that I thought a good wife should be…I stopped offering myself.

If we change ourselves too much to be their help meet, we can make it too easy for our husbands and they can’t grow. We have to be honest – that’s what being a good help meet is.

Laura’s follow-up thoughts:

Eek, my notes as I scrawled frantically during my interview with Lisa were beginning to look rather scary at this point. I was trying so hard to listen well and write at the same time, but your guess is as good as mine about what I meant when I wrote, “use uhs as a good opp”. Huh? If you recall, this entire interview took place in fifteen minutes time. There was not time for neat penmanship.

Anyway, what I THINK Lisa was wisely saying to us is that being a good help meet doesn’t mean that we’re to just completely give up on what we need and desire in our marriage, just to make our husbands happy. We have to be honest and tell our husbands what we need, otherwise they can’t grow into the husband God desires them to be. 

I think that there are wonderful “be a better help meet” books out there, but I do often feel overwhelmed and inadequate after reading them. That’s part of the reason I started writing my own series about becoming a better help meet…to try to be real and practical…hopefully, sort of. 

So yes, being a good wife doesn’t mean that I should give up on who I am so that my  husband’s world will happily and smoothly go around. It does mean that I sometimes give up what I want. It does mean that I put his needs before my own. It does mean that I love him with all my heart and work very hard to meet his needs.

But meeting his needs may mean that I challenge him to improve his life and to work to better meet my needs. I’m only truly being his help meet if I am helping him become a better man of God.

I think this help meet thing calls for a lot of prayers for wisdom.

What do you think?

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Becoming a Better Help Meet: Remind Yourself!

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Today I just want to share a simple little thing I do to remind myself all day that I think my husband is awesome!

This all came about rather innocently. I didn’t intentionally create this little exercise so that I could remind myself of how much I love Matt. It just happened, and then I realized how cool it was. It’s profound…are you ready?! 

I set one of my computer passwords (one that I use frequently) to say something great about Matt.  I was feeling giddy one day, and I needed to set a new password…and so just like I was in junior high writing “I LOVE MATT” on the side of my notebook between classes, I set my password to say it.

(“I LOVE MATT” isn’t the password, by the way. What, do you think I’d just tell all of you one of my passwords?)

(Or maybe it IS the password and I’m just telling you it isn’t just to throw you off.)

(Wow, I just forever keep you hopping, don’t I?)

But don’t you remember those feelings you felt back when you and your husband were dating and you couldn’t stop thinking about him and you wanted to carve your initials together into a tree? And tell all your friends about how great he was? And write his name on stuff?

Somehow life takes over and reality sets in and we as a couple become comfortable and not so giddy anymore. That’s mostly okay. We don’t really have time to sit around and sigh and daydream.

But having my password set to remind me all day long that I LOVE MATT (or something else, or not), has been so super neat. Like, totally.  (That would be me reverting back to junior high lingo.)

Typing in the words reminds me several times a day of how much I love my  husband. And in the middle of a very busy life full of activity and just…busyness…those reminders are a valuable treasure.

So, just a suggestion:  Set up a password or two to say something great about your relationship with your husband. You’ll appreciate the loving reminders!

LAURA AND MATT FOREVER XOXOXO

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