Friday, March 17, 2017

Wifestylin: A Wife's Secret to Happiness

What kind of wife are you?  Are you frayed or braided?  Are you doubtful or decided?  Do you duel with your husband, or dance with him?  Are you an MVP seeking all the attention for your self, or are you part of a Dream Team that edifies your husband and his goals and wishes, as well as your own?  


Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading my way through A Wife's Secret to Happiness: Receiving, Honoring, & Celebrating God's Role for You in Your Marriage by Jen Weaver.  I have loved this book, y'all!  (Just had to throw in one y'all since Jen is from Texas.)   I found this book easy to read as it feels like Jen is just sitting across the table from me, coffee in hand, and sharing her stories and stories of those she knows.  Her perspective is genuine.  She shares her victories and her places where she has fallen short as a wife.  Yet this book is also difficult to read.  At the end of each chapter, I have a lot to process and think through about how I am handling all the blessings that God has given to me in my marriage.

Jen Weaver covers many difficult topics that we don't always like to talk about.  Discussing submission in a relevant way or sexuality in a godly way is not easy.  But she dives right in and makes it feel okay to discuss those topics.  Every page is seamlessly woven with Scripture.  I loved recognizing how she tied critical Scripture points together all in the same paragraph.  That speaks to me of a woman who knows God's Word very well and has earned the right to give a few pointers to other married women.

At the end of each chapter, she offers a brief quiz about how you relate to the concept she presented.  There is no judgment--just a simple tool for self-evaluation.  It gave me a lot to think about and some new goals in how I relate to my husband.  When I look at the "Wifestylin" quizzes, I realize there are some areas where I have gotten lazy or didn't even realize I was doing something that may turn my husband off.  But there are also some areas where I do feel like I have it right.

The whole premise of being a happy wife is communication with God and with your husband.  You are free to be who God created you to be, but you have to know Him.  Be familiar with Scripture--not just familiar with it but KNOW it at a heart level.  Know the role that God created for you as a wife so you can operate within that, not outside of it.  Talk to your husband about everything.  Let him lead and embrace the role that God created for him.  Be a part of his Dream Team, not his competition.

I love the way Jen Weaver said this.  "The blueprint for building a safe haven in our relationship relies on Christ as the cornerstone."  This just really stuck with me, and I thought it summed up everything pretty well.

I highly recommend reading this book and using it as a stepping stone for building your relationship with your husband.  Being married can be difficult sometimes, and it takes a continual renewal to make sure you are traveling down the same path as a team, and not veering apart.

"Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."  Ecclesiastes 4:12