Sep. 20, 2009 - Maintenance Pt. 2
Good morning eveybody!!
Please forgive me for the tardiness of this entry. I just realized that I never posted the next part of my maintenance series. So here it is.
Maintaining Our Relationship with our Husbands
Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 admonish husbands to love their wives. Titus 2 instructs older women to train younger women to love their husbands. The marital relationship is so important to God that He instituted one of the Ten Commandments in regards to it. Entire cities were destroyed over sexual immorality, so clearly God hates that, but He specifically instructed again marital infidelity. Many proverbs warn again adultery. In God’s mind adultery is as bad as been a complete fool. Marriages are that important.
I should tell you, I have been married for 20 years. I won’t call them wonderful, because many of them were not. I still love my husband more than life. I know that marrying him was the best thing I ever did. We have fou
r wonderful children who say they hate to see us kiss in front of them, but I know they like that more than when we have fought in front of them. My husband and I are both temperamental, passionate people. We are that 10% of the population who actually marry someone with their same temperament. If we can keep it together any couple can.
People have enjoyed saying, “Marriage is a 50 50 deal.” The truth is it’s really a deal where everybody needs to give 100%! We all need to work at it. It is not easy. Feelings of love are temporary; happiness is fleeting; disappointment is inevitable. There are things, however, which we can do that will increase the joy in marriage. If couples are willing to work (nothing strenuous, just continuous) then it’s not that difficult to have a happy marriage.
The first thing that must be done to maintain a marriage is for each partner to maintain their relationship with God. Image God s sitting at the top corner of a triangle. The husband and wife are sitting at each of the lower corners o the triangle. As the couple moves independently up the side of the triangle towards God, they are inevitably drawing closer to one another. The best discipline to make this happen in your life is daily time with God. It’s is so important that I will repeat what I said last time.
In my house, we call them quiet times. These are times when we worship the Lord, read The Word, and pray. This needs to happen every day. The first and second commandments tell us to have no other god before Him and to worship Him. The psalmist admonishes us to meditate on the Word. Certainly, what was true for David when he only had The Law is true for us today. Most of the apostolic writings talk about prayer. Jesus himself taught his disciples how to pray. Every one of these disciplines is important.
For more details on how to do these things, please see my blog entry from last week, entitled Maintenance.
Just like daily time with God is necessary to grow that relationship, daily time with our husbands is important. Life is busy. There are so many things to do in a day that it is easy to skip the things which aren’t urgent. If our husbands aren’t screaming for our attention, it’s easy to think they don’t need it. Don’t believe that for a second. They always need our attention, even when they don’t realize it. It only takes a few minutes to focus on our husband and ask him about his day. If you have never done this before, it may take time for him to get used to it. Don’t give up! If you are interested in what he has to say, even the most introverted or grumpy husband will be happy to share with his wife. The key is to actually BE interested. It’s not impossible. My husband has worked as a furniture salesman, a warehouse manager, a swimming pool cleaner and repair main and a car painter. I am an artist and musician with a love of computer programming and education. I didn’t care how hard it was to break a patio table top, but he did, so it became valuable to me. Because I love him, cars became canvases in my mind. Once I did that, we were both painters, artistes both of us in our own right.
The last maintenance item I want to suggest is meet needs. This is a broad topic. Everybody has needs. We need food. We need clothing and we need shelter. There are other needs that only a spouse can meet. Gary Chapman talks about the “Love Languages.” These are the needs that make us feel loved when they are met. I cannot give you a neat little list of things that are your husband’s love language, because every husband is different. Mr. Chapman and others have written book after book on the subject. Some examples are, touch, words of encouragement or praise, time together, gifts, service. My husband loves touch, so I make it a point to touch him whenever I am anywhere near him. I touch his arm, or run my fingers across his shoulders as I walk by. Sometimes I pat him on the head (I like the way his spiky hair feels). At night when I’m dead tired and have not energy to “pay attention” to him, I slide my foot across the bed till it rests on his leg because I know he’ll interpret that as “I love you.”
Make a study of your husband. It won’t take long for you to figure out how to light up his face. What makes him seem more relaxed? What takes his attention away from what he “always” does? What does he say he really likes? Once you think your know what he wants, start small. If you try to do too much at once, you may not be able to continue. Touch his arm when you walk by. Thank him for working hard to support the family. Make something he especially likes for dinner or an evening dessert. Sit with him for a few minutes while he watches the TV. In the famous words of some advertising guru, “Just do it!”
One final note for those of you whose schedules are really crazy or whose marriages are being conducted long distance. Remember that even if you don’t see your husband every day you can still invest in marital maintenance every day. Call him, e-mail him, text him or write him a quick note which he can read when he gets back. My father was in the Navy as I was growing up. He was out of the country 6 months out of every year. There was no internet, email, or text messaging so my parents had to communicate via mail. (You know what I'm talking about – notes, written on paper using an ink pen and sent on an airplane across the world, where a helicopter would carry them to the ship where my dad lived.) They are now enjoying retirement together after 45 years of marriage. I can’t help but believe all those years of writing letters had a big part in making that possible.
