Confessions of a Goal Oriented, Trying-to-Change Wife

Some moms “take” life, and other moms “tame” life. One is reactive, the other is proactive.

Me? I vacillate between proactive and reactive depending on a number of factors. I guess that makes me inconsistent…or flexible. My heart is to want to build.

Inside the four walls of my own home is my chance to change history.

I am not talking about doing great things in the eyes of the world or anything you’ll read about later.  I am talking about doing great things in the sight of my family.

Thing that make them happy.

Yes, I cook, clean, homeschool and repeat. But these things don’t mean happiness for my family.

In my quest to get things done (read: taming the mess), I can overlook my loved ones. I work around them, over them.

Efficient work becomes the goal and our family life starts to feel “functional” instead of relational.

I have to tame myself, so that I will be relational. I have to tame myself to “take” life as it comes.

This seems to come easily for my husband. As a matter of fact, many times I find myself irritated with him because he has a crowd of kids around him as he works…and this slows things down so much.

In the busyness of life, I forget WHY I am doing all of this in the first place.

• I am creating a happy childhood for my kids.
• I am cultivating a pleasant environment for my husband.

Christ wants me to serve, yes, and serving is good and needful. But serving should be relational, just like serving Christ should be relational. Serving should be done with the well being of others in mind.

Do you really strive to make your husband happy? I don’t always. (It is almost easier for me to focus on making my kids happy. True confession.)

But I am supposed to be Peter’s love. Ya know, the have fun, laugh, kiss, embrace, live life side by side, go out for walks kind of lover that he married. But I have things to do…for OUR kids.

In all these years, I have somehow morphed into an efficient, tidy, menu planning, homeschooling, let’s not be late and keep us on schedule, kind of second mother. Yuck.

Yes, I cook and make meals for Peter, but I need to do little extras for him, like picking up a few things at the market that I know he’ll enjoy.

Special things.

And yes, I clean around this house non stop, but what my husband likes is for me to sit and spend time with him. (“Take life” rather than tame it.) That really makes him happy. Really. Sitting.for.hours. (and by sitting, I mean sitting and talking…as I try not to think about all of the things that need to be done, but are not getting done because I am sitting.for.hours. Oh. I said that already.)

So I want to PURPOSE to make him happy and be his friend.

I enjoyed and needed these quotes:

“No matter how poor the woman’s home is or how hard her husband’s lot, the true, selfless woman will cheer his heart, and so lighten his burden. May the quote of Shakespeare be constantly on her tongue: ‘My heart is ever at your service.'”

and

“Woman’s entire existence, in order to be a source of happiness to others as well as to herself, must be one of self-sacrifice.

The first step in this royal pathway to all goodness and greatness, is to forget self.

Self, with its miserable little cares and affections,

       is the root of all the wretchedness we cause to others,

              and all the misery we endure ourselves.

Every effort we make to forget self,

                         to leave self behind us,

and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with                            whom we live with happy,

                    is rewarded by inner satisfaction and joy.

The first step to becoming unselfish is to forget one’s own comfort in order to seek that of others;

the next, is to forget one’s own pains and suffering, in order to alleviate those of others.”
by Noelle (Wheeler) Goforth

“[A wife] should always care more to please him than any other person in the world. She should prize more highly a compliment from his lips than from any other human lips. Therefore she should reserve for him the sweetest charms; she should seek to bring ever to him so new surprise of loveliness; should should plan pleasures and delights for him. Instead of not caring how she looks or whether she is agreeable or not when no one but her husband is present, she should always be at her best for him.

Instead of being bright and lovely when there is company, then relapsing into languor and silence when the company is gone, she should seek always to be brightest and loveliest when only he and she sit together in the quiet of the home.

Both husband and wife should ever bring their best things to each other.”

~JR Miller

Question?

Do you tend to take life or tame it? Or do you vacillate like me?

Do you sometimes get so busy that you forget WHY you are working in the first place?