Dear Mom Who Wants to Love Her Husband More Than Her Children

Mother’s Day is right around the corner and I’ve gotten together with a group of bloggers to bring you a giveaway and blog hop that we are hoping will bless your socks off.

We not only hope to bless several moms with some pretty awesome giveaway prizes, but we also hope to bless many more moms through the Letters to Moms Blog Hop (that you can find at the end of this post), where each participating blogger is writing a ‘Dear Mom’ letter.  These letters will be anything from a letter to our own moms, a letter to ourselves, a letter to a mother figure, or a generalized letter to a group of moms, such as weary moms, hopeless moms, expecting moms, single moms……. Maybe one of these letters will speak to you!

So please, hop around to the many other bloggers below, and of course enter to win the giveaway too – there will be 4 winners with the total prize value over $1000!

As a busy mom this seemed like an impossible idea. My hands were full just caring for our young children. By the time my husband came home I just wanted his help. I wasn’t often concerned with making him feel welcomed or loved.

Sound familiar?

We’ve all heard that we should put God first in our lives, husband second, and children third. How does this look in real life? Let’s look at several ways we can work this into our daily lives.

7 Ways to Be a Blessing to Your Husband and Show Him Your Love

1 – You can’t do this alone.

I’ve tried, and you probably have too. There is no way to build a home where the husband/father is given his rightful position without being in the Word.

“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Psalms 127:1 ESV

For the most part, mothers of young children don’t get uninterrupted time to spend in the Word. That’s why I decided I need to have several “go-to” verses memorized. Then in times of stress I can pull out an appropriate one and quickly send up a prayer before things get out of hand.

I also put up verses to encourage myself in prominent places throughout the house-like on the bathroom mirror and above the kitchen sink. Several verses I’ve made into pictures, either with cross-stitch, calligraphy, or a plaque that I hang in places where I will see them often.

You can read more about how I’ve done this in this article: Surrounded by the Word.

2 – Train your children.

What does training your children have to do with blessing your husband? A lot.

Children who are trained to be obedient and helpful are happy children.

[Tweet “Children who are trained to be obedient and helpful are happy children.”] #marriage

Happy children are much easier to live with and cause less friction in the home.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 KJV

There are a lot of good parenting books available, so I’m not going to go into that, but I will mention a couple of our favorites.

Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp

Raising Real Men by Hal and Melanie Young

Keeping our Children’s Hearts by Steve and Teri Maxwell

A couple of suggestions I would make are:

Look for ways to praise them more than you criticize. If you have someone who is having a difficult day, you might want to give them a hug and say, “You have a great smile,” or something to that effect.  Most children really want to please their parents.

Tell Dad about the good things they’ve done that day–and be sure the child you are talking about can hear you. This could be a dinner table topic.

3 – Journal/Pray/Praise

Journaling gives me a place to write out my frustrations without taking them out on someone else. It helps me clear my head and take it to the Lord. I use my journal like a letter to the Lord. I dump it all out to Him–the good, the bad, and the ugly. Oftentimes when I read what I’ve written I stop and think, “Do I really feel that strongly about this?” It gives me a chance to assess my thoughts and feelings with the Lord first.

I keep a running list of things for which I’m grateful. Developing a spirit of gratefulness helps us focus on all the good rather than the difficult. It opens our hearts to praise the Lord.

Of course, I have written in my journal after a particularly difficult incidents, when I need to pour out my heart in repentance.

I also use my journal to keep a list of things I need to talk with my husband about. This comes in handy for date night, which we will discuss next.

4 – Date your mate.

This is another area that a lot has been written about, so I won’t belabor it other than to say it doesn’t have to be a fancy dinner to be a date. There are many lists of ways to do this inexpensively.

Here is one of many sites I got by googling inexpensive dates for married couples. I’m sure you can find something that will work for you. I often just fixed one of my husband’s favorite meals, put the children down early, and enjoyed some quiet time together. This is another time when having trained your children to be obedient blesses your husband and you.

Early in our marriage, our pastor gave us an idea that we still use today. Rather than greeting my husband every evening with a litany of problems, I keep a list of them during the week and Dan agreed to listen to them on our date.

This did two things for us.

We had been fighting almost every night over issues that I brought up. When we only talked about them on date night, it gave us six days that were more peaceful and we were able to build our relationship.

We called our date nights fight night for about the first year, but eventually we began to reap the benefits.[Tweet “We called our date nights fight night for about the first year, #marriage http://tinyurl.com/pc3f65c”]

When I would go over my list before our date, I found that many of the items were no longer an issue, or just not that important to me anymore now that I’d had time to think them over. The ones that were left I was able to discuss much more rationally and calmly.

The other thing I learned is that most women talk too much. Men want headlines–women want fine print.[Tweet “…most women talk too much. Men want headlines – Women want fine print. #marriage http://tinyurl.com/pc3f65c”]

So, I began to follow this format:

Tell him concisely what the problem is.

Example: I need to return the bread machine we just bought because it isn’t working properly. (Since this is an area that I’m in charge of, that is all the detail he probably wants.)

If he wants more information, he can ask, “What’s wrong with it?”

At that point I would again give him a very brief description: It isn’t completing the cycles properly. (Notice how brief this is. If he wants the 15-minute description of all I’ve done to try to figure this out, he can ask for it, but he more than likely won’t.)

He trusts my judgement in these matters, so unless he has a suggestion this will probably be the end of this topic.

Oftentimes I think we lose our husband’s attention because we try to give him every detail of a situation when all he wants is the basics–the headline version. By keeping things like this brief he is more likely to have the patience to really listen to a topic that requires his advice or input.

The other thing I do is tell him up front if it is a topic that I want his advice or input on. Then he doesn’t waste time, emotion, and energy on a situation that I’ve handled, but want him to know about. Often when I bring up a topic my husband feels like I want him to “fix” it, so it’s nice for him to know when it’s just for his information, or I need him to listen to me, and when it’s actually something that requires him to do something.

5 – Welcome him home.

Think about what’s happening when your husband walks in after a hard day of working to provide for your family.  Would you like to be greeted the way he’s being greeted?

I like to make him glad to come home and it usually doesn’t take much to do that.

Start preparing a little before you expect him.

Remind the children that Daddy’s coming home. Use your “excited mommy” voice. Set the timer and see how well you can straighten up the area that he will see first so that his first impression is one of order instead of chaos.

Have everyone meet him at the door.

When our children were younger, I liked to let Dad come in. All the kids were greeting him excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy!” Then I would say from behind them–“Mommy first!” and make my way to the head of the pack and give him a big hug or kiss. All the kids would say, “Eew…” followed by lots of laughter and Dad hugging everyone.

This serves to remind all of us that Mom and Dad’s relationship is very important.

Hold the problems–remember we’ll talk about them on date night. But what if there is something pressing that you need to discuss with him? We’ll cover that shortly.

Table talk–keep it positive. This is the time to share with Dad the good things that have happened. Share some ways the children helped, or had good attitudes. Ask one of them to share something from their day.

6 – Couch time.

While the children clear the table sit down with your husband for a few minutes. Yes, five minutes is enough–longer if you want to or can.

This is important. It gives our children a sense of security to see Mom and Dad together. Remember, most women talk too much, so this is an opportunity to ask how his day went. He will probably ask you too, but keep it brief. He isn’t asking for a blow-by-blow of your day. This is a great opportunity to reconnect.

7 – Be characterized by contentment, praise, and a joyful spirit.

A woman controls the atmosphere of the home. If she is tense and angry, everyone can feel it and they begin to feel tense and angry too.

I want my home to be a peaceful refuge for my husband and children–and myself!

You will probably never have all these things in place at one time. I know I haven’t. Don’t even try to put them all in place at once. Prayerfully look them over and pick one or two that you think you can implement. Work on those for several weeks and then try to add an additional one. You’ll see which ones make the biggest difference in your home and be able to focus on them.

Like I said in the beginning, you can’t do this alone so cling to the Lord, ask Him to give you a heart that desires to be pleasing to Him, and trust Him to guide you each step of the way.

Here is another excellent article on this topic by Lori Alexander.
Do You Love Your Husband More Than Your Children?

And now for the giveaway!

The prizes will be as follows –

Prize 1 – Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer
Prize 2 – Slow Cooker
Prize 3 – Keurig Coffee Maker
Prize 4 – ALL 3 of the prizes above

Each winner will also win a digital copy of I’d Rather Be Your Mommy by Stacy Farrell

Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter:  This drawing is over.

 

©Write the Vision

Finding Joy in the Journey,
Phyllis

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Phyllis Sather

Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:
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