"She watches over the ways of her household."

I've been looking at Proverbs 31 a little lately, (about the virtuous wife) and one verse has really been sticking out to me. "She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness."

To me, at this moment in my life, it is speaking about financial stuff. Wes asked me before we were even married if I would manage our finances. That was one thing that really stressed him out, and he didn't think he could handle it. I agreed to do it, but I haven't always been very consistent.

For instance, we're pretty tight on money right now, and have been for a while, though some times are a little less tight than others. I've tried a few times to put us on a cash system - it's so much easier to know how much you have and how much you're spending when you can actually SEE it! Cards make it hard to keep track of - at least for us. We're more likely to go over on spending if we're using cards, because it's convenient and you can't tell when you're running out.

Anyway, I never was consistent enough with making withdrawals and keeping track of income and outflow to see how much we could spend and how much we could save... so we've had some trouble putting any money back for savings. This is something I would really like to get better at, and after reading that verse, I'm happy to say that I have added "check on finances" to my weekly list in my homemaking organization notebook. Every Monday, along with my other tasks, I will now be checking on our bank account and looking at our income and outflow, making sure things are on track and calculating how much money I can withdraw for us to use for groceries and spending.

To me, it's a way that I can "watch over the ways of my household." It's also a way that I can honor my husband, by doing what he requested of me to the best of my ability and by not being inconsistent with it (which would show that his requests are not a priority to me like they should be).

My motherhood goals for 2012

I know that January is already all but gone, but hey, it's never too late to set some good goals for the new year. And knowing that I'll be much more accountable to any goals I set if I write them out, especially if I write them where others can see them, here are mine. I originally intended this to be a list of my goals in motherhood for the year, but now that I think about it, these are good goals for every area of my life - particularly for learning to become a better helpmeet to my husband.

1) Be more patient.
2) Be more focused. (More fully there - more in the moment and not just always getting ready for the next thing.)
3) Be more organized. (With meal planning, laundry, homekeeping, activities with the girls, etc.)
4) Be more content.

So there they are. I think these are the kind of goals that honor God (I surely hope so anyway!) and they are certainly things that I would like to improve in. So. All right, I guess that's it for this post.

Loving Your Husband - Introduction

So, here I am finally getting back to my blog, and I have no idea what to write about. So I thought I'd introduce a new category - Loving Your Husband. My favorite blogs always include something about loving your husband, and it's something I'm passionate about, so why not include it here? And after all, what better way to learn surrender than by getting married? Lol.

Seriously, though, I think that's one of God's main purposes in marriage - to teach us selflessness. There's a certain, uh... a certain level or depth of selflessness that can be realized in marriage that I don't think can be found any other way. There's just something about being unbreakably bound to someone that teaches you that you've got to give if you want to get anywhere together.

I've heard that one method of teaching young horses to give to pressure on a lead line is to tie their lead line to a donkey or mule's halter and release them in a pasture. Donkeys and mules have stubbornness issues - they prefer to plow through pressure rather than yield to it. So when the young horse tries to walk off, or when the mule walks and the horse doesn't follow, the mule just keeps pulling and drags the little horse along behind until it learns that if it follows and yields to the pressure, it can keep the line slack and stop the halter from pulling on its face.

I've never personally halter-trained a horse using this method, but I know enough about horses and how they learn to say that it would definitely work. Now, I'm not intentionally trying to liken our husbands to mules... that's not the point. The point is that when you're tied to someone, you might as well learn to work as a team and to follow the other one's leadership, because when you do, things tend to go a lot more smoothly.

Not that surrendering your own wants is always easy. What if the horse wants water? He has to wait for the mule to go to the trough, and yeah, that kind of sucks. But hey, it's not the end of the world. And anyway, in marriage at least you have the capability to make suggestions and requests.

I do totally believe that God designed marriage to be a relationship where the husband is the clear and defined leader and the wife's role is more of a supportive and helping role. Hopefully that doesn't offend anyone, but if it does, I'm still saying it, because I really do believe it with all my heart. That doesn't mean I think men are better than women or anything like that. I think we're equal but simply have different roles. Two people can't lead - there's always eventually going to be a clash of interests, and someone's going to have to be able to make the final decision or you're just not going to get anywhere but in a very long fight.

So yeah. Surrender. Sometimes it sucks but it's way worth it for what you get in return. Love, joy, patience, closeness to God.

I think I kind of went off on a tangent there, but now that I think about it that does fall under the category of loving your husband. After all, one of the main ways we can show our husbands that we love them is by being willing to surrender to their leadership. This is a great display of trust and respect and I think most if not all men really need to feel respected in order to function at their best.

Okay. Well, it's getting late, so that's all for now. Hopefully I won't let it go so long between posts this time. :) And maybe one day I'll get around to transferring some of my hand-written journal stuff over here. Okay, seriously. Signing out now.