God calls us to serve one another. He specifically tells wives to serve their husbands. There are many ways I love serving Taylor. For example I love cooking him breakfast and dinner, and packing him lunches for work, I love keeping the house clean, I love putting him first and serving him in most ways. And God makes me laugh because as soon as I get a little prideful about being a good serving wife God shows me there are more ways I can serve him. And these ways are not ones I enjoy as much or that I even considered were ways to serve him. While i was at Sam's in Minnesota I got to spend a lot of time with her Mom, who is a wonderful Godly woman, who I love very much. While the three of us were looking in Sam's closet for some shoes for me to wear, (because I forgot to pack shoes, being from California and normally just wearing my sandals everywhere I forgot to pack shoes for cold Minnesota) anyways while we were looking Sam mentioned something about how her husband leaves clothes on the ground in the closet, and I said my husband does that too he takes them off and puts them on ground right next to the laundry basket, and I don't understand why he has to put them right next to laundry basket instead of in it. But then her mom said 'God is giving you an opportunity to serve your husband.' I stopped for a second and thought about what she said. At first I thought I serve my husband in plenty of ways I just need to teach him to fix this bad habit of throwing clothes on the ground. But then I realized she is so right. There are so many little things that I might think I need to teach Taylor how to do better but really I should just use them as an opportunity to serve him. It's so automatic to nag him to pick them up day after day but really God wants us to serve our husband and love all of him. It doesn't say anywhere in the bible to "nitpick your husband until he does everything the way you want him to" and most of the time thats what we tend to do. (and lots of times those little nagging commands turn into bigger arguments but I'm not going to get into that).
This is really something I have to work on because it does not come naturally to me. I have to train myself to not nitpick little things like that and instead see them as a God given opportunity to serve my husband. Trust me it's much better to just pick up the clothes on the ground then to yell at your husband to do it, it saves the annoying tension that comes after nagging your husband. I'm sure it will be hard to not automatically tell Taylor to pick them up but I think after 5-10 times of just picking them up myself with a good attitude (not being angry about it) it will hopefully just become my natural reaction. I'm really excited God has put this on my heart because the more you have a serving heart the more you will enjoy life.
Picking up dirty laundry is just one example, maybe your husband always puts the laundry in the hamper but I'm sure there's atleast one thing about your husband that you wish he did, or didn't do that you can use as a way to serve him. Pray about it and try to figure out different ways God is putting on your heart to serve your husband.
If you feel you really would like to read more about this topic a good book about being a helper and serving your husband is called "created to be his help meet" by Debbie Pearl.
I can't believe someone else had that problem as well. I put the basket on his side of the bed so it would be right next to him and he threw them, like you said, right next to the basket. You're right, I could drive myself crazy trying to get him to put clothes in the basket but really, it's not that important. There are several things that I do that probably drive him crazy. His concession to me is to let the stray cat stay in the garage, even though it messes up his tools. It's not worth wasting time getting angry about small things.
ReplyDelete