If you’re anything like me {the joy filled wife}, when you ponder the infamous characteristics of Proverbs 31’s “Wife of Noble Character,” it’s hard not to feel like you’re falling painfully short of the ideal. In our striving to be the helpmeet God intended us to be, it’s not always so cut and dry trying to live out these principles in a 21st century world where there are so many distractions and scenarios to contend with. There seems to be a finer line and a tighter rope we women walk in this day and age as we face the detriment that the feminist movement has brought about and how it has impacted generations of women by blurring the lines of our clearly defined Biblical role in marriage and family.
SETTING THE SCENE
My husband is the owner of a company. He is a visionary, a command
man, and a dreamer through and through. He not only welcomes challenges, but he
thrives on them. He is a man in constant pursuit of victory. My husband’s
primary love languages are Quality Time and Acts of Service. The Acts of
Service portion of my husband’s love language is manifested in two ways: Home
Management and Company Management. My husband thrives in orderly environments
where things are kept up to his standards and level of expectation. His mind
becomes chaotic if he walks into a home that’s dirty, untidy, and void of a
prepared meal. He wants his household managed well and to walk in to a peaceful
environment surrounded by happy faces. He wants to know that there will always
be clean socks in his drawer and that his suits and ties aren’t spending
week-long vacations at the dry cleaners. My husband holds me to an extremely
high standard as a wife and mom and, although it can feel overwhelming at
times, it has made me a much stronger woman.
PRIORITIZING & TIME-MANAGEMENT
When it comes to business, my husband is a Visionary that
deeply desires my participation in every project he is working on. He also
craves my feedback. He feels neglected if I am not playing a significant role
in the growth of his company and sharing in both his successes and failures. He
has told me on numerous occasions that the moral of the company is
significantly higher when I play an active role in the day to day. But how to
fulfill my husband’s wishes and still live out God’s design for me as keeper of
the home?
Back in the olden days, most families ran some sort of
business. From ranching to farming to owning a deli or a local pharmacy, every
member of the family participated in some aspect of the work that needed to be done to earn a living.
The husband’s job was usually to do the grunt work and the majority of the work
that needed to be done away from home. The wife took care of the household and
was responsible for teaching her children by having them participate in chores
and errands to help keep things running on their end. Back then, children knew
how to work hard from a very young age because they participated in the work
done at home. Today, many children grow up never learning the value of giving
their all and working toward a goal. My husband and I never wanted our children
to grow up lazy or entitled, so, along with lots of fun and learning, one of my
jobs is to teach our children how to work hard.
As you can imagine, managing both a household and a company
well is a tall order. With the priority being for me to be at home during the
daytime with our children, my husband and I decided to have me spend a couple
of hours in the evenings after dinner conducting company interviews and working
with any females in the company that need training. My husband uses this time
to spend special Daddy time with our kids. They look forward to that time so
much. After my meetings are complete, we pray with our children, put them to
bed, and spend an hour together before heading to bed ourselves. We take
Sundays off to spend time together as a family outdoors and at church.
Except for an errand or two that my husband may ask me to
run with the kids after breakfast {a great opportunity to learn people skills},
my husband handles all the daytime business work. That will change in the next
year or so when he will be transitioning most of the daytime work to someone
else and take a step back and mostly oversee things
SACRIFICING
My participation in the growth of my husband’s company was
so important to him that, when we came to the conclusion that maintaining a
home of our size made it extremely challenging for me to help him during this
time of growth and transition in his company, he solved the problem by moving
us into a home ⅓ the size of our previous one. As you can imagine, that took me
a significantly less amount of time to maintain and freed me up to show my
husband love and respect in the way he wanted it most. I could have complained
to him about downsizing, even though I know it’s only temporary until after the
transition next year, but I was grateful that my husband took my concerns to
heart and made a way for me to show him respect by partnering with him, without
neglecting my responsibilities at home. Every marriage and situation is
different, but we serve a wonderfully wise God who is able to sort out even the
greatest predicament to accomplish His will in our marriage and life.
In closing, I want to say that one of the best pieces of
advice I ever received regarding time management is from my mother in law. She
told me, “If you want something to get done, give it to a busy person.” We’ve
all heard that a body in motion stays in motion and a body at rest has a hard
time getting going. That’s why it’s so important that we truly follow Titus
5:2’s example and stay busy at home. When a person is not busy {and
particularly a woman}, gossip, dissatisfaction, impure thoughts, depression,
anxiety, and laziness tend to be a bigger struggle for us. Especially
depression and dissatisfaction. That’s why I personally stay away from wasting
my time on social media and surfing the web. My time has more value and I feel
better about myself when I’m not wasting a lot of time doing unproductive
things. On the flip side, I am also careful not to overbook my schedule with
outside activities.
TYPICAL DAILY SCHEDULE
1. Get the children up early and ready for the morning/day.
2. Put the kids in the car and turn on praise music after
Daddy prays for our day.
3. Get to the location of our first errand 45 minutes
early so we can sit in the car and practice Bible verses, verbally discuss our
objectives and schedule for the day, and then I do my personal devotions while
the kids read quietly by themselves.
4. Strive to complete errand(s) within 1 hour and set a
goal with the kids of how many people we are going to smile at, be friendly to,
or give a sincere compliment.
5. Let the kids run around at the park for 30-45 minutes.
6. Head home and put in/take out a load of laundry before
making lunch.
7. Kids complete schoolwork while I do some heavier house
cleaning.
8. Kids go down for a nap and I spend that time responding
to company voice mails, texts, emails, putting away laundry, prepping dinner,
working out, etc. If I have finished all of my work and have extra time before
the kids get up, I will spend a little bit of time reading, commenting, or
writing on a couple of blogs. That is the only “me time” I really ever spend
online at this phase of life.
9. Play with the kids, read a story, continue prepping
dinner,
and have the kids help me with remaining housekeeping.
10. Prepare and eat dinner as a family and then I get
dressed
for business and my husband spends time with the kids.
11. Once I get home, I quickly do the dishes and then
we
pray with the kids and put them to bed.
12. My husband and I
spend time together and then go to bed.
She looketh well to the ways of her household,
and eateth not the bread of idleness.
