Good
morning my dear readers!
Today
I am linking up with my lovely blogging friends Rachel and Madison for their
Community Brew! I have just loved getting to know these ladies as well as the
ladies I have connected with through this awesome link-up.
Today the topic is
one of my favorites… Marriage. I know I blog about marriage a lot here at Bliss
and Blunders but that is because I just feel so passionately about my marriage
and the value of marriage. It is the biggest blessing in my life so naturally I
love to talk about it. You can check out a few more of my posts about marriage here.
All
you ladies who are single or engaged please stick around! You are in this
season of life for a purpose and I would love to hear about it! It wasn’t that
long ago that I was also in your stage of life. I remember the joys and pain
that it brings!
These
are two of the verses that we are looking at today with the topic of marriage.
Ephesians
5:22-33
“For
wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the
head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his
body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit
to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just
as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and
clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to
himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish.
Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife
actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares
for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his
body. As the Scriptures say, “A man
leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united
into one. This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ
and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves
himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
Marriage
is the greatest gift God has ever given me. To be able to share life with my
husband and for us to be ONE is the most beautiful and practical way I can truly
see and demonstrate the gospel. The relationship I have with my husband is not
always easy and it is usually hard work but it is always beautiful, raw,
intimate and special. No matter the season or the moment or the argument or the
celebration. We are ONE flesh and one team in this crazy journey called life. {Sorry
for the cheesiness}
1
Corinthians 7:32-35
“I
want you to be free from the concerns of this life. An unmarried man can spend his
time doing the Lord’s work and thinking how to please him. But a married man
has to think about his earthly responsibilities and how to please his wife. His
interests are divided. In the same way, a woman who is no longer married or has
never been married can be devoted to the Lord and holy in body and in spirit.
But a married woman has to think about her earthly responsibilities and how to
please her husband. I am saying this for your benefit, not to place
restrictions on you. I want you to do whatever will help you serve the Lord
best, with as few distractions as possible.”
I
am going to tackle one of the suggested questions that Rachel and Madison gave.
What is
God teaching you about being a wife?
What
a wonderful question this is. The answer is… a lot. God has taught me a LOT
about being a wife and all that it entails. The crazy part is I know that I
have even more to learn! A couple of the truths that God has been teaching me
in my first years of marriage are respect
and encouragement.
Respect-
It is no secret that men value respect more than anything else. It is the way
God designed them and one of the ways that they feel most loved. When I first
got married I asked as many married women as I could what it means to be a
respectful wife. I was dying to know because I honestly had no idea what
respect looked like. Some of the things that they told me were to never talk badly about him to other
people and submit to his leadership.
The first example has been very important in our marriage. I have made it my mission
to never complain about my husband to anyone and to always try to build him up
to others. Now, that doesn’t mean I never share the struggles in our marriage
with anyone. I have a few very close friends and mentors that I have shared
some of the struggles we have had for the purpose of wisdom and insight. I go
to these women seeking advice not for the purpose to complain. They listen to
me and give me wisdom on how to respectfully deal with whatever we are going
through. They also are always honest with me and will tell me if I am not
behaving appropriately. I love that! It is just like in the verses from Titus
that say,
“Older
women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor
enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the
young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible,
pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the
word of God will not be dishonored.…”
Titus
2:3-5
My
husband also feels respected when I submit to his leadership. When we are
discussing something or trying to decide on something and in the end I submit
to his leadership, he feels so respected and feels like the leaders. That is my
goal. I want him to feel like he is the leader of our household and that I
respect him enough to trust his leadership. He is not always right about the
decisions that he makes BUT since he made them, it is always easier for him to
deal with them. You can read more about submission here.
Encouragement-
Encouragement has been such an important thing about our relationship and it means
SO much to him. Plus it is one of the ways he most feels respected.
Encouragement can be simple things like telling him he looks smokin’ hott or
big things like telling him how much you appreciate his leadership in your
relationship. One of my goals is to strive to live up to the Proverbs 31 woman
and that is one of the ways that I can do that. I know I am never going to be
perfect and I am never going to live up to the standards that she created but I
am going to try and encouragement is one of the ways I think I have really
grown in. I always try to have a happy face on when he gets home from work and
I try to never ask a million questions or bombard him with business the first
chance I get when I see him. I love to tell him how awesome he is and thank him
for loving me so well. Plus it is always fun to tell him how sexy he is. He
loves that. Hehe.
So there you go! One of the truths I have learned about marriage. I am so thankful for a husband that is my best friend. He is someone I can enjoy my days with and someone that will be there with my when life gets hard. God has blessed me and I am SO thankful.
Have a beautiful day!
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