Ladies, this is what your husband wants more than (just about) anything. PS: It’s something you’re gonna really love, too.
On the fruits of being of a relaxed woman…
For some reason I keep shying away from writing about marriage.
I mean, it is the topic I know more than most things. I was married to an incredible and yet imperfect man for 14 years before brain cancer took him. I’ve been married to an incredible and yet imperfect man for just about 3 years, after breast cancer took his first wife.
Marriage has been the heartbeat of my adult life.
It has been the cause of my greatest joys and greatest sorrows. I have discovered who I am through figuring out marriage. I have lived vows from beginning to end.
And I plan on doing the same again.
Alex and I have many conversations about marriage. We talk about all the things we wish we knew before and all the things we wish others knew now. We desire to show people how to have an incredible marriage, no matter what happens in life. In sickness and health, for better or worse.
But for some reason, I freeze when I try to write about it.
Maybe it’s because I have been married twice and sometimes, to me, that fact is still weird. Maybe it’s because I feel both marriages are so full and full of God’s providence and love and yet so incomplete - for my future with Mike was cut short and my past with Alex is nonexistent.
But, despite all that, it’s what I desire to talk about.
So I’m going to start putting those fears aside. Fears of murmuring and comparison, fears that I will bear too much of myself. And instead I will let God use my imperfect story, and imperfect love, to tell of what real intimacy is and why marriage is the ultimate icon of God Himself - that window that lets us peer into what His love really is.
What your husband wants in his wife…PS: it’s something you’re really going to want, too.
Since I am a wife and not a husband, my perspective comes from this angle.
And today I want to tell you of something I learned (always too late) and have applied in my marriage that has been a new foundation of how I approach who I am as a wife. It helps me order my day and has been a great gift to Alex (and our 7 kids). In fact, this very thing has been shown to be what most men want from their wives. It’s not hard to do, in fact it will be a very freeing thing you can discover as a woman.
So, from a wife who has lived and loved through just about it all, trust me on this one.
He’s gonna LOVE it. And you’re gonna love it, too.
A relaxed wife. That’s what he wants.
I have always prided myself on being able to “do it all.” I mean, I NEVER wanted to do it all, and yet I found myself as mom and dad, as a woman who could buy a home, handle her ailing husband’s business, be a caregiver while homeschooling, and on and on.
When Alex and I got married, I wanted him to see all the amazing and wonderful things I could do, too. I thought that if the laundry was all done and bills handled and our home was peaceful and kids were happy and dinner was amazing that he would love me more and we’d be happy.
Except my personal downfall is that I try to do everything, and more than that I try to do everything perfectly. I’ve been able to let go of a lot of that, but my worth was still tied into what I could offer. Since I was a homemaker, what I could offer was my home and my kids, and I lived to make those be the best offerings I could give.
To top it off, I wanted a really good marriage. I wanted to be happy when Alex got home from work, to be cheerful and joyful, to be kind and affectionate.
Except in trying to prove my worth as a wife and a woman, I failed to actually be the wife and woman my husband needed (and wanted) me to be.
He didn’t need me to do everything.
He needed me to relax.
