I Am A Wife

I love and cherish my role as wife.  I believe that as wives we are called to love our husbands, and that that love should be second only to our love for God.  I play an important role in my husbands life.  I am his friend, his playmate, his encourager, his helper, his lover...  The list could go on, but what you need to know is that this is a blessed role and influential role.  

Your relationship with your husband is the most intimate relationship you have.  It needs to be a safe place for both of you to grow, to change, to hide away from the world.  Nobody else in the world has the power to build me up as much as my husband, and nobody else has the power to rip me to little shreds.  In turn I have that same influence.  I chose to share my most intimate self with him because I love and trust and respect him and know that he will not harm me with my vulnerability.

I choose to serve my husband however I can.  I'm not talking slave, seriously, do you know me!!!  But I do choose to try to put his needs above my own.  I make this choice out of the love in my heart & desire to please him.  I obviously fail often at this too, because I am selfish human being, but this is what I try to focus on.

In the bible women are called to respect their husbands, but likewise husbands are called to love their wives.  We had a discussion once where I asked him, "they say that men crave respect & women love.  What do you think of this?  Do you crave respect more than love?"  Shane replied that the two are mutually entangled.  That if you love someone you will respect them.  They are not two separate things, they are in fact two complimenting things.  If you truly have one than you will have the other as well.  Obviously, I am no expert, but this is our experience and it rings true.

I strive to make our home a place of retreat, comfort and love.  Notice as much as I would like to say quiet & peace I have found I cannot daily achieve this with 3 silly kids!!!  But a safe place to come home, and know that however crappy your day was that you are appreciated, loved and believed in, I can do that.  I chose this man for that very reason, he is the best for me, and I want him to know that our home is a shelter from the world, not just for him, but for our children and myself as well.  It is not a place to attack each other, it's not a place where we are told we are not good enough, it is a place of love, acceptance and laughter.

We extend each other grace.  I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I don't get everything I set out to do done.  I forget things, sometimes important things, like milk!!!  But in all my mistakes, disappointments and times of pure ugliness I have never been made to feel less than.  My husband has easily extended me the grace that I need so very much and I try so hard to extend that same grace back to him.  We are in this marriage together, we love each other deeply and are wholly invested in a beautiful future together.  There is no other choice for us, our lives were meant to be lived together, we were destined to grow up together and God put us together to challenge, mature and love each other and those around us.  In all our human imperfection!!! 

What Thoughts Keep Me Up at Night

Life beings in your mother's womb.  God made women  to bare children.  He made our bodies to stretch and grow with life.  Then he made our bodies to sustain that life.  But as natural as nursing is it was not so with my first child.  I had to figure out what I was doing and he had to figure out what he was doing.  Then with my second two it was as natural as breathing.  I cherished the midnight hours, sitting in my children's room, sustaining and filling them in a way that only I could.  Breast milk is not just milk, it's perfectly tailored to your child, their exact age and their exact needs.  Women are amazing.  What is even more amazing is how having children and breastfeeding actually improves a woman's long term health.

I'm not really sure why I'm sitting here talking about breastfeeding and women's bodies...  I just couldn't sleep tonight and was reflective.  Then I got to thinking about what life was like a few years ago and what it will be like a few years from now.  Reflective... 

I loved those quiet midnight hours.  Sure I was tired, but my kids slept through the night really early, so they were a short time for me.  I remember snuggling them to my breast thinking how this could be our last midnight rendezvous.  Now my only midnight rendezvous are with myself and not being able to sleep, or the occasional sickie, or the dreaded long dream (aka "I peed my bed").  Now I peek in on sleeping children and pray in the midnight hours and wonder why I cannot sleep.  

Children changed my body habits.  Before I had children I never woke up in the middle of the night, not even to go to the bathroom.  I slept hard, didn't hear a thing...  Now I hear everything, I sleep so light that sometimes I wonder if I've slept at all!!!  Well, I do know I've slept, but still!!! 

I think of the stages that I've left behind and they are a bittersweet time...  I would not want to go back, I'm just not wired that way.  And I love every new stage more than the last.  I'm not kidding, I am so serious.  I love watching my kids grow up, I love their personalities and the things they say.  I love the school years! In fact, when I thought about having kids, this is what I thought about, the school years.  They are so fun and learning new things all the time.  I like to revisit where we have been in pictures, but no, I don't want to go back.  Life was meant for living, moving forward, growing older and wiser.  

I have seen life and death in my life.  I have seen success and failure.  I have seen love and hatred.  I have laughed and cried.  I have seen good and evil.  I do not always fully understand the details of what I've seen.  I cannot answer the questions that come with all this heartbreak in the world.  I cannot tell you why an evil man has plenty and a godly man nothing.  I cannot tell you what bends a man to violence.  I cannot answer your, "why me?".   My only answer is why not you?  We were not made for this world.  And we cannot comprehend the world that we were made for with our finite human brains.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.  And now that I have written these ones down I'm sure that many more will flood my mind as I try once again to go to sleep.     

 

Where I Belong

My sons favorite song right now is "Where I Belong". One of his first favorite songs was "I Can Only Imagine". He also has had pop favorites too, don't get me wrong. But those two are the ones that have stuck, he wants to talk about, asks questions about. It made me think tonight, as I'm trying to fall asleep, how we are such spiritual beings. We are born with the innate desire for something more, the knowledge that there is more for us out there. And we are born to worship. You don't have to teach a child how to be joyful, how to smile, how to dance. They just know, they come by it naturally.

Why should this be so surprising to me as I'm laying there in bed. I'm not surprised really, just thoughtful. We are after all made in the image of God. Is it surprising that we desire to know our maker as a child desires to know their parents? Does he not call himself our Father?

Yet, it still amazes me to watch my children. To see the innocence we are born with, our natural pull toward the spiritual. The world so pulls us in the opposite direction and it happens so young and so gradually that one day we are an adult amazed at the depth & understanding a child can have of spiritual things. But really we should be shocked at our own understanding of life, the world... We were after all not made to be like the world, we were set apart, in God's image.

Isn't that why sometimes we struggle as adults? We feel we do not fit or we can be lonely, we desire more. Often we misinterpret what that desire is, we think we're missing something here, but really we're missing that spiritual link. We are needing more, what we don't know, until we remember that we are indeed spiritual beings. We don't belong here, we were made for another world, we were made to commune with our maker, father, savior, friend. Adam and Eve walked with God, literally. Yeah, something is missing. Take this world, give me Jesus, nothing else satisfies this void in me.