To Be Discreet ~ Chapter Eighteen

Years ago, we let someone use our car for a couple of months since they needed one while they were in the area. When they brought it back to us, the front windshield had a crack all the way across it and there was absolutely no gas in it, plus they never offered to pay for it. My mom taught us better than this. She taught us that we were always to leave something better after we've borrowed it or stayed somewhere. If we stayed in someone's home, she would make sure it was even cleaner than when we got there. When you are discreet, wise, and kind to other people, you will reap the benefits throughout your life.* We reap what we sow and we to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. I have never forgotten the way they left our car. People don't forget when they have been treated unkindly. No, I don't hold it against them; I just remember how inconsiderate it was of them.

Once I had a neighbor who was continually asking me for things. Many times she didn't return them. She was not a considerate neighbor. Part of discretion is being considerate of others and not using them. When you borrow something, do you always return it and in good condition? If you stay in some one's home, do you help them and make sure you have left the bedroom and bathroom you stayed in clean and tidy? Most people don't like to feel used or unappreciated. This isn't a quality that makes good friends or leaves good memories in people's minds.

A woman of discretion is gracious and thankful. One Christmas Ken bought me something I didn't want and I let him know. I was not being gracious or thankful. I was being rude and inconsiderate. So what if I don't like a gift I am given. I should show appreciation and thankfulness to my husband for buying it for me. A woman of discretion doesn't want to hurt her husband's feelings and is thoughtful. She builds him up, instead of tears him down. Your husband's choice of stoves {or anything else that he has bought you} is a statement that he is trying to express his great appreciation of you and to please and delight you. Your countermanding his choice, even if it were a better choice, speaks to him about how little you value him, more than it does about how you value the dollar...your actions seem to say that you think of yourself as being somewhat wiser and him more of a fool...It is time to start practicing reverence toward your husband.*

Finally, a discreet woman builds up her home, instead of tearing it down with her own hands. Debi lists twelve questions that a wife will ask her husband that tears her home down. In asking these questions, she has determined that she is wiser and knows more than her husband. She uses these questions to manipulate her husband. A few of the questions are: 1. Do you feel comfortable spending that much money buying that ____? She doesn't think he is wise enough to decide this on his own and needs to question his decisions. 2. Doesn't this activity you are engaging in grieve your spirit? She is being his Holy Spirit instead of winning him without a word by her submissive and godly behavior. 3. Why don't you ever read and teach me and the children the Bible? She has taken the leadership position and decided what her husband needs to do instead of allowing the Lord to lead him.* 

If you are always questioning your husband in the way that he lives his life, you are tearing your home and marriage apart. He is a grown man and doesn't need a mother telling him what to do anymore. Be his help meet to him, instead of his mother. Be a woman of discretion with your husband and everyone else in your life for this is how a godly woman should live her life; thinking of others more highly than herself.

As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout,

 so is a fair woman which is without discretion.

Proverbs 11:22