Someone wrote me with a pretty good question. How should a wife pray for her husband? This is a good question because it is one with which many people struggle. 

Of course, it really comes down to what you believe about prayer, and the range of beliefs on prayer is very broad. One can easily find oneself praying all the time for everything, while getting nothing done. One can just as easily excuse all prayer. It is hard to know where to stop. 

Also, it is not really my place to say someone "should not" pray for any particular thing. Prayer is a personal, private issue. It arises not only from what we are told but from what we feel. Prayer is not a repeating of things we are told, but is to be a conscious expression of our hearts. We will sometimes pray for things others find foolish, but so what? Prayer is not about the person for whom you are praying. Prayer is your communication with God. 

This is important because we are sometimes accused of saying people "should not pray" for certain things, when our real focus is on what they "should pray for." If we emphasize praying for someone's spiritual health, we are accused of saying no one should pray for their physical health. On the contrary, we just want prayers to be serious and scriptural. There is nothing wrong with praying for someone's physical health, but it is clear that their spiritual health is much more important. You should pray for what matters in your understanding of the situation.

Anyway, let's begin (for this note) with John's promise that we know we are heard if we pray in accordance with God's will.  "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him." 1 John 5:14-15. So, we begin with needing to consider what God wants in your husband's life. Praying for what you know to be God's will is the best prayer of all. 

God's desires are pretty well known to us. He has said that He wants us to be holy and sanctified in our sexual lives. 1 Thess. 4:2-8. You can certainly pray for your husband's sanctification in that regard. Of course, you also have to make sure that you are not contributing to any failure on his part through denying him sexual satisfaction in his marriage. I am afraid there are a lot of women who pray for their husband's sexual purity while they create the conditions for sin by their denial of their husbands. 1 Cor. 7:1-5. A wife who rejects her husband on Monday and prays for his sexual purity on Tuesday is acting foolishly, like a man leaping from a cliff and then praying that God will grant him a safe landing. 

You can pray for the development of the fruit of the Spirit in his life. Galatians 5:22-23 gives you a list. Be aware, of course, that many of these characteristics may be developed by God through suffering and hard times. However, we know that God wants these things to develop in your husband and can pray for them with confidence.

You can look to the prayers of Paul for guidance. Colossians 1:8-10 is a good place to start. Ephesians 1:18-23 is another good source. 

Pray for the faithfulness of his witness as he works out in the evil of the world. Pray for his maturity and patience and understanding of others. Pray that he will manifest his love for God and for his neighbor in all that he does. 

And pray that he will always know and be certain of his wife's love. You cannot know how important this is in the life of any man working out in the evil of the world.
 
The big thing among young parents today is their reliance on systems of parenting. This is kind of a new thing. We have "Peaceful Parenting" for people who do not want to spank children (as if what parents wished were true mattered). We have "Growing Kids God's Way" which promises small group lessons to teach us "How to help children internalize virtues and values and practically live out the character of God in their life." Yeah, that is exactly how my parents thought when I was small. Not.

We have "Nurturing God's Way," which is apparently different from "Growing Kids God's Way." We have, as well, lots of suggestions from books galore, almost as bad as diet books in how quickly they spring up and die out. We are told to schedule and not to schedule, to punish and not to punish (Peaceful Parenting apparently likes to discuss their sins with them in a logical fashion). We are told to be tough and not to be tough. We are told dozens of things by dozens of people, all of whom want our money and none of whom know our children. 

Settle down and take a breath. 

Parenting is not about conferences or seminars or books. My parents never attended a conference or read a book on parenting (as far as I know), they just raised their children. Your grandparents did not read books on how to be parents, they were parents by the fact that they had children to raise. Your great-grandparents never read books on parenting. In the entire history of the world, no one had a theory of parenting until it became cheap to publish books. 

Parenting is a natural thing that people have always done and, frankly, have always done pretty well. It is our fear that makes us subject to the whims of people like the Ezzo's, leading to them becoming wealthy and us becoming automatons applying rules to our family lives that someone else made up.

We live in a world of fear. We are afraid of being parents. We are afraid of making mistakes. We do not trust God or His Word, we want the Ezzo's or Bill Gothard or Jim Dobson to tell us what to do.  

Reading books about marriage never gave anyone a happy marriage. Reading books about parenting never made anyone a good parent. Parenting is an act of love, toward God and toward your children, and it can be done without timelines and checklists and rules made by people who do not know you or your children. 

Parenting ought to be a pleasure (sometimes), not a duty obeyed by following a book of rules. 


 
 
One of the oddities of this website is that it is about being an Excellent Wife, not about being a good mother. There are dozens of websites about being a good mother and, frankly, scripture does not give us a whole lot to think about in that regard. You cannot construct a long course on how to be a mother, at least not based on scripture. 

But, the reality is that most wives, at some point, are also mothers. Somehow, these two complementary relationships often end up in conflict. Think, for a minute, about all the possibilities. 

You may be the mother to children you and your husband made together (whether by sex or adoption). In this case, you are both equal parents and, we hope, work together. 

You may be a stepmother to children your husband made somewhere else. This is a very different situation, no matter how much you try to be a good mother to those children. 

You may be a mother to a child who is your husband's stepchild. That is, you may have made the child somewhere else and now your husband has the stepparent role. 

You may even be in a family with all kinds of mixes of these situations. Some people, marrying after multiple divorces, may have all kinds of different situations to address and care for. 

Children, in short, are a very complex issue not only because they are small, sinful people with very little knowledge, but because of the things we have done in our lives. 

My brother and I are beginning a class on Wednesday about being a parent. My brother is a pediatrician and a believer and is a good speaker on this topic, with years of experience. 

We will be addressing practical issues (what do you do with a child who cries all the time) and spiritual issues (how do you teach a child about Christ). We will try to address a lot of things that churches often do not address. 

But, thinking about it makes me remember how many issues there are that we each face. It is not possible to list all that we have to consider, but we have to consider a lot of things. Take some time today to think about your children (whether biological, adopted, step, or anything else). Think about how you and your husband have worked together (or not) in raising them. Has this been a source of comfort in your marriage, or of dispute? Have you kept him in mind in all your dealings with them? 

Children are a blessing from the Lord, but not always a blessing in every way. They are kind and cruel, honest and dishonest, guileless and tricky, helpful and wicked. 

They are a lot like us, in fact, which makes rearing them such a challenge.
 
As I noted elsewhere today, we have become overly fond of the idea of "enjoying" ourselves. I mentioned in another blog that my Army son and college daughter, home for Christmas, were regularly asked if they were "enjoying" the Army or college. 

I think a lot of young wives, especially, ask themselves if they are really "enjoying" being a wife. This is too bad, because it is a bad question. 

Actually, they usually are not thinking so broadly. They think about whether they "enjoy" the various things involved in being a wife. If you are a homemaker, you probably do not "enjoy" laundry and cooking and cleaning. Many wives, today, simply don't do those things as much as they ought to, because they do not enjoy them. It isn't fun to fold clothes, it is much more fun to Facebook, so clothes can wait while we Facebook. It isn't fun to prepare a meal, but it is fun to go to a restaurant, so we will eat out. The result is messy homes, wrinkled clothing, and high restaurant bills. Are you happy now?

For some reason, "being a homemaker" has come to be seen as different from a "real job." This is a shame, because the woman who stays home while her husband "goes to work" has very important work to do. She is to do laundry, to fold clothes, to care for children, to keep the house clean, to do all those little things that we know a wife is supposed to do. But those things are not fun. Facebook is fun. Telephoning friends is fun. Television is fun. 

At a "real job," of course, you could not do this. At a real job, there would be a real boss there to push you back to work. Someone would tell you to clean the laundry or wash the bathtubs or dust the dressers, but there is no one at home to do so. And, well, you live there. You do not think of it as work, just as "keeping house" and you do not really care how well you do it, because you can live happily with piles of junk everywhere. 

I think being a wife is much harder than other jobs because the temptations are so strong. There are so many things you could do other than clean, other than cook, other than work with your children, that you do not want to cook or clean or work with your children at all. You want to do what you want to do. 

The Excellent Wife, on the other hand, knows that what she does is very important. It is important that your husband not wear wrinkled clothes to work and that your children have clean clothes to play in or wear to school, so you have to do laundry and do it well. It is important that the family not spend all its money on restaurants or eat Macaroni & Cheese every night, so you have to cook. Not because you love cooking, but because it is your job. 

A person with a job does not enjoy everything about his job, either. And the only satisfaction he gets from doing his job well is a paycheck. As a wife, you will not enjoy everything you have to do, but, if you do it, you will enjoy much more than merely a paycheck. You will enjoy a clean, pleasant home. You will have children who are happy and who look well kept and clean. You will have meals to share. You will have a home that makes everyone's life more pleasant and enjoyable. 

Or you can choose to have a dump. You have the choice. People can live in a dump, but they will not enjoy living there.
 
I write occasionally about the interesting things you can see if you just pay attention. Well, with Christmas coming up, here is what you need to do: watch the other wives.

Christmas gatherings involve family and friends and couples of all ages, so it is a good time to observe how people behave. Do not start this observation with any plans or preconceived notions, and do not make snap judgments. Just watch. 

In particular, watch how the wives behave in regard to their husbands. You will have some wives who pay very little attention to their husbands. You will have some who are very attentive. You will have quite a spread of behavior, but watch.

I watched this weekend at a gathering I attended. There was an older couple there (older meaning 20 years past retirement). They have long ago reached the age where many couples seem almost oblivious to each other, or so we would expect. 

Yet, throughout the event, they were clearly a married couple. Their love for one another was obvious. They did not hang all over each other (as young couples do when first married), but dealt with one another as adults and as lovers. I was impressed but not surprised, because I have known them all of my life. It is a comfort to have a couple whom you know will always be together, because you cannot even imagine them apart. 

Watch the couples among your groups. Watch how they interact, where they sit, whether they ever acknowledge one another. 

Too often, you see what I also saw this weekend, a couple who interacted almost entirely in a negative way. They dealt with "problems" and wifely complaints about multiple things, none of which were important in the situation. 

You would expect (from a shallow point of view at least) that a young couple would be more loving, not less, and that there would be more warmth and passion in their relationship, but it is not alway so. 

Watch. You may be surprised.

Then, ask yourself what someone would think who was watching you.

You may be even more surprised.
 
We keep moving along toward Christmas and everyone is "getting ready." My house is even getting ready for Christmas. It is like a spring cleaning ritual in many houses, as we finally move piles that have sat idly in the way in order to put up some more Christmas stuff. 

Amazing how things pile up in our lives, isn't it? We set something down and just leave it there. We have a box from a printer we bought last year and it is still sitting right out in the open, because we just have never put it away. (By which I mean that I haven't put it away.) We pile things everywhere. 

When we do start cleaning up, we often quit because we are overwhelmed by how much has piled up. It seems like getting it all straightened out would be too much work. It is easier just to move.

I hear the same thing from pastors, some times. They are trying to get a church moving and trying to change some old things that are no longer helpful, but eventually decide it is easier just to leave for a new church or even start a new church, than to change the old one.

The same thing happens in marriages, doesn't it? Sometimes, we have gotten ourselves into a state where there seems to be no way to clean it up at all. We have lied so often. We have been selfish so often. We have put our needs ahead of others, and the needs of others ahead of our spouse, and we have reached a stage where even talking about cleaning it up is too frightening for us. It feels like all we can do is leave and start over.

But it is not too big. Any pile can be moved, if you are willing to move it. Any church can be changed, if you are willing to take your time and the people are willing. Any marriage can be saved. 

As you clean up and spruce up for visitors or just for the look of it, take some time to think of your  relationship with your husband. Clean up some of the piles of bitterness or anger that you have been leaving in place. Straighten up some of the crooked aspects of your relationship with you husband. 

As you see the Christmas lights go on, make up your mind that this will be a time for a new start, a time where loving your husband will become a focus of your life. 

Once, Christmas with him was all you wanted. Let's get back to that stage again.

 
Here is an odd piece of marriage advice -- "Quit listening to marriage advice."

Seriously, the more marriage advice I read and hear, the less I am impressed, because most of it seems to have been written in the "diet book" style we all know.

You are all probably familiar with how diet books work. Someone, somewhere, is either (1) a researcher with an idea or (2) an overweight person who needs to lose weight. In each case, they come up with some crazy idea, supported by some quasi-scientific idea, and they test it. The researcher gets some people or the overweight person eats nothing but grapefruits and prune juice for a year. Wow, the thing works! A book is written and sales are wonderful! Lives are being changed! A year later, people are still overweight and the book is in the cheap bin at Books-A-Million.

In the meantime, a new book by some researcher or formerly overweight person is rocketing up the charts, getting ready for next year's cheap bin. 

And people remain overweight. Why? Because the trick worked for only one person, or only a few people, and not for everyone. 

Marriage advice is similar. Someone (like Marabel Morgan) has an idea that works for her, she writes it up ("Total Woman"), it sells millions, a few people do better, but nothing in the world changes. Because, like diet books, it was based on one person's experience, which does not work for everyone. 

Marriages are not like bicycles. They are not "fixable" with a few common tools and a little common sense. Each married couple is unique. Each is a unique person and their union is a unique union. The "paradigm" that works for one couple may not work for you. The more specific the advice, the less general will be its usefulness. The more general the advice, the more people it can help, but the less help it provides. 

Ultimately, your "marriage" is just you and your husband. And you cannot change him. Seriously, you can only work on you. The only real secret for you is to be a better wife. Sometimes this may mean being like "Total Woman" says you should be, but sometimes it means the opposite. Any advice that is "what he ought to do" is useless to you, because you cannot be him, and worse than useless because all it does is create disappointment in him. 

The Bible gives us great information about being an Excellent Wife. It is not about baby-doll pajamas or scheduling "quality time," but about loving your husband. It is not about sitting down to discuss division of duties, although that may be a part of it, but about loving your husband. It is never about "standing up for yourself," but always about standing firmly with Christ and lovingly with your husband.  

The Bible is a much better guide for Christians than the books either in or headed for the cheap book bin. "Total Woman" was published in 1990 and you cannot find it today, except in used book stores. The Bible is still being published. 

 
One of the fun things about being married is doing lots of things together. We have dinner together and travel together and sit together and visit folks together, and we really enjoy being together. Then, there's shopping. 

It is Christmas season and the shopping question arises again. There is a desire, on the part of most people, to shop together. We all have the idea that sharing in getting things for others is part of being married. Trouble is, we have to shop.

Now, if you have gone totally into online shopping, this is not a problem. But physically shopping often is a problem, because men and women tend to be very different in shopping styles.

Men tend to be "buyers." They go to a store to buy Christmas gifts, they buy them, then they leave. I (speaking of one man) can shop for my whole family in an hour in any good Target store. It just isn't that hard to do. You see what you want, you take it to the counter, you buy it. End of story. A lot of men are like me, some more and some less.

Women tend to be "shoppers." They go looking for presents. They will buy something, eventually, but what they really enjoy is looking at stuff. Lots of stuff. They look at stuff that has nothing to do with Christmas. They look at things they never thought of looking at. They become immersed in the experience of shopping. Not all women are shoppers, some are buyers, but the general rule still applies.

When you go shopping together, one or the other is going to be unhappy. My wife and I almost never shop together, except for groceries, where she wanders anywhere she wants to wander and I buy groceries. We arrive together and leave together. That works out pretty well. 

But going to a mall or a large department store together is very difficult. Someone has to do what they do not want to do, and that is often the husband. He has to find something to do while she shops. He has to find a chair or a bench, or just stand there looking lost. It is very frustrating and kills the "Christmas Spirit" in a man to have to do this. 

So, before you go shopping this season, think about it. Do you really want to shop together? If so, then be considerate of the other partner. Do not spend hours in a store looking at things you are not really interested in buying anyway. Do not expect him to stand around while you plow through a pile of coats or dresses. Take some time off while you shop. Let him buy some things. Seriously.

Most of the couples I know do very little shopping together and it seems to work out pretty well. And this is okay. Nothing in the wedding vows is about shopping together and there has never been a divorce case based on a failure to jointly shop. 

Young couples often have the idea that shopping together is somehow required. They tend not to really know each other very well yet and their passion tends to overcome much of their boredom and frustration, so this tends to be okay. Older couples know that their relationship is not about Target or Macy's or Wal-Mart and that splitting the duties can be a good thing. 

Besides, this way you might be surprised on Christmas morning, even by what other people receive.
 
I think most of us kind of enjoy the holidays, but it can certainly be a time of great busyness. We are two weeks out from Christmas and things are starting to "heat up" a little bit.

In the midst of all the gifting and cooking and baking (and eating), we are also repeatedly told that we are "too busy" doing all the gifting and cooking and baking (and eating). We are told to "be hospitable" but not to "go overboard." We are told that we "celebrate Christmas to remember Christ" but also told "not to forget Christ." We are told that our gifts to others are like the gifts given to Christ, but that we are not supposed to give too many gifts (which seems really odd). 

We are, in short, guilty no matter what we do. We are guilty if we spend to much money or too little money. We are guilty if we invite lots of people over or invite too few. We are guilty if we enjoy Christmas too much and guilty if we do not celebrate it enough. This is crazy.

We sit in churches filled with Christmas decorations to hear sermons about how wrong it is that we decorate too much at Christmas. 

First of all, please remember at all times that Christmas, like all our so-called "Christian holidays," is not something God ordered us to do at all. It has come and gone through history. It is sometimes very popular and sometimes it has been outlawed (by serious Christian rulers, by the way). Today, people think that Christians are the ones who insist on the holiday, but, in fact, it is the most serious Christians who have had the most objection to the holiday over the centuries. 

In short, you cannot "keep Christ in Christmas" because He was never there, except when someone wanted to think of Him in it. The celebration is a purely secular celebration of a day. If you spend any time being upset that lost people do not remember Christ at Christmas, then think about the fact that they don't remember Him any other time either. 

Second, do try to keep your head about you. Christmas is like every other day of your life. Your duty is to love God and love your neighbor. So, how are you doing? It may not be as simple as you think.

For many of us, Christmas is a time of rather undisciplined love. We give more than we should to the people around us, in part because we have lost touch with how to really love them. I can give my children gifts, which is far easier than giving them myself. 

As wives, try to take some of the "busy busy" out of the season, for yourself and your family. Relax a little. Enjoy the time with your family and friends. 

Whether or not to celebrate Christmas is, to be honest, not much of a spiritual question, because it is not really a spiritual holiday (we are past the Old Testament days of feasts and such). But, each day remains a spiritual day on which the spiritual duties are the same. 

Love your husband this Christmas. Love your children. Love your neighbors. Love your God. 

And don't worry too much about the food.
 
Among the things many wives seem not to know is about the importance of a husband and father having some time away from his wife and children. This, again, seems to be a fairly modern problem. Our grandmothers and those of a prior generation seemed to understand that a man needs some time away from his family duties, but my generation and those younger than me seem to miss this entirely. 

It is not uncommon to see a young couple in which the wife engages in all kinds of activities outside the home (church things, social things, political things), but in which the husband is not expected to have any such activities at all. When wives need to attend seminars or conferences, they assume the husband should keep the children. When husbands want to attend anything, the wives have a fit about "being left at home with the children." Or, worse yet, the wife acts as if the husband ought to take his wife and children with him everywhere he goes. 

The illogic and unfairness of this is so obvious that it is hard to really grasp, until you think about the lies that wives have been told. Chief among those lies is the idea that a man who "goes to work" is somehow taking that time away from his family. Wives were told (starting in the 1950's and 60's feminist movement) that "work" was actually "fun"  and were told to be jealous of the fact that their husband was able to "get away" every day. 

The result is that wives who stay home have the rather odd idea that time spent "at work" is actually kind of a vacation from family duties. They resent their husband going to work and are jealous of him going to work. They think that since he takes so much time "for himself" by going to work, the rest of his time should be with the family. 

No one can believe this who has any knowledge of what it means to work. Going to work does not mean taking a vacation. Believe me, taking care of some young children (especially your own children) is nowhere near the exhausting experience of waiting on customers all day in a retail setting, or dealing with patients all day in a medical setting, or handling multi-million dollar disputes all day in a legal setting. Taking care of small people who obey you is nothing like having to obey other people all day, being told where to go and what to do. 

Do you ever think about the realities of work? If your husband has a job, he must got to work everyday at a time chosen by his boss. He must wear what his boss wants him to wear. He has to park where his boss tells him to park. He has to do what he is told to do. He works with people chosen by his boss, who may be jerks and may hate his guts. He has to get along, to go along, and to be quiet when it is his turn to be quiet. 

He is not watching television and munching bonbons all day, any more than you are are. He is working. He is not indulging his private wishes or enjoying recreation, he is working. 

Yes, the wife who stays home needs to have some "time away from the children," but your husband needs the same thing, and time spent at work does not count as time to relax. 

Wives need to understand that their husbands' time at work is just like their time at home, except that the husband is not in control of his time, is not in control of where he is, is not in control of what he does, cannot schedule things as he wishes, and is not the boss. You may spend your whole day with three children, but you are the boss (or you should be). They can take naps (customers do not take naps). They can play quietly (bosses don't play quietly). 

Your husband needs as much time away from home and family as you do. When he goes to play golf or tennis, or goes hunting or fishing, he is trying to do exactly what you do when you get out of the house, he is trying to keep his balance in a world in which he is not in control. 

It has become popular to refer to moms as "workers at home." Great. Your husband is a "worker at work." Just as you need a break from your duties, he needs a break from his duties. He does not need to just come home from one job in order to be given another one. 

Ultimately, it all comes back to loving him, doesn't it? The wife who resents her husband taking "time from the family" is not loving him, but herself. She is not concerned about his wellbeing, but about her comfort and her children. 

But loving him means loving him. It means making his life better. It means letting him have freedom, just as you need freedom, so that he can continue to be the man you married.