The List

This isn't a new posting, and I'm grateful for running across this: http://www.christianitytoday.com/mp/2005/003/7.32.html. A quick synopsis is that a young wife and mother decides to leave her husband and heads home to mother. Her mother has her write a list of the things that makes her husband impossible to live with. Then, on the right hand side of the paper, not a list of his good qualities but write a list of the wife’s reaction to his bad ones.

We all have our left hand lists. If not on paper, at least in our minds. We know our spouse’s faults. We can name them at a moment's notice and we can add to them with the slightest slight. We know our spouse’s good points, too. We remember how they first impressed us. How they took our heart and made it theirs. We know how they've kept our love over the years, too.

What we often do not know is that right hand list. Not what we do that irritates our spouse, but what we do that harms ourselves. That also harms our marriage, our family and our relationship with God.

Have you ever seen a milkmaid’s stool? As it states, “A simple three legged stool which will stand without rocking on uneven ground.” There are great opportunities for uneven ground throughout out our marriages. With the triangle of God, husband and wife, our marriage is equipped for uneven ground.

As wives, we’re told: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. (Ephesians 5:22 KJV)

Paul repeats it, just in case we didn’t get it the first time? Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. (Colossians 3:18 KJV)

Our beloved husbands are also given instructions: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; (Ephesians 5:25 KJV)

That is a great responsibility given to each spouse. Are we up to the task? If there is any question in your mind, remember where we can get the strength to do so: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:13 KJV)

Uneven, rocky ground cannot topple a marriage that includes Christ as part of its daily life. He has promised to be with us always, though it appear as a great mystery. And marriage often does!

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. (Ephesians 5:32-33 KJV)

If you feel you must, make that left hand list. But never forget to make the right hand list, too.