Community Brew / / Marriage

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!