I am currently in the middle of reading three books, Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney, The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian, and The Duties of Parents by Jacobus Koelman. All three of these have been greatly encouraging me and informing me in my wifely and motherly duties.

Mahaney quotes Elizabeth Elliot  from her book Love has a Pprice Tag, "A wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to perhaps eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it by very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy."  I thought it was a wonderful reminder for us wives to not focus so much on our husbands short comings but rather learn to embrace them and love them for them.  I am trying to think of one thing each day that I have always seen as a short coming of my husband and am changing my thoughts concerning it to be that is one more thing that adds to my love for this man, he is not perfect and neither am I and I love him inspite of his faults just as he loves me inspite of mine!!

This chapter has fit perfectly with my 30 Day Challenge of Encouraging my Husband. Mahaney along with DeMoss has opened my eyes to a few truths that I have some how missed.  Today I am praying for the Lord to enable me to be creative in Encouraging my husband and to see past his faults and laugh at them for they are silly. Let me give you an example: dirty socks laying on the floor two inches from the dirty hamper! This really sends my nerves crawling and instead of nagging him, like I have for the past 5 years about it, I made up my mind to embrace it and pray for him to pick up his socks....:0). Then that day when I was taking inventory of the house, guess what I found by the bed but dirty socks! But this time instead of being filled with irritation I was filled with laughter, and I just picked them up and put them in the hamper and on I went.

JOYfully in Him,

Kelli