Yesterday I got a text message from my husband stating he needed to come by my work to grab the church keys from me. It seems he had left his Bible there on Sunday and he was missing it big time. I laughed at the thought of my hubby running around on his lunch break to retrieve his Bible, and I realized the man God was rising up in my husband’s spirit was not the same man I had married. He was cultivating a heart like David within the love of my life, and every aspect of my spouse’s character had improved as he grew closer to the Lord. As I watched him become the man God had always called him to be I felt so proud of him. One might wonder, as he grew in his desire for ministry, if I questioned how I fit specifically into it all. But no, I didn’t. I already knew.
Last month we celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary, and I grew tearful over the inscription my husband placed in the card he gave to me. The whole card was amazing, but one part really stuck out.
I could not be who God has called me to be without you by my side.
I think many times as wives we can make light over the actually enormous role we hold in marriage. We’ll focus simply on the job of the man as the head of the family and somehow forget how important we are. Wives are almost like the navigation system for their husband’s calling. They certainly help guide his steps. A loving wife inspires her mate and encourages that partner to his best. A wife helps cultivate growing ideas and shape ones that need refining. She offers insight that only the nurturing, emotional viewpoint of a woman can envision, she provides wisdom from her mind and heart, and holds a needed knowledge for the relationship. And boy oh boy, does she pray! If man is the head, then woman is the neck that turns it. Woman was created from man, but she also creates in man a part of himself that couldn’t be lit without her inspiration, love, and presence there to help birth it.
I told my seven-year-old tonight, at her urging, the story of how her father and I met. We had actually met and fallen in love over 20 years ago, but due to our youthful indecision had parted ways back then. It would be ten years before God brought our lives full circle and we reunited in the exact place we had met. Until that time we both floundered through life searching for happiness, but it wasn’t until the Lord realigned our paths that He could use us for the other.
Now I’m not saying that my husband was an utter mess until I came along, but I will admit I was. In truth, we both were struggling, yet something happened when we joined ourselves as one. It was like God created an explosion within us, and we somehow brought out in one another the best there had ever been. So while the beginning was rocky as God refined us, it still was better than it had ever been before. And somehow it continues to get better each and every day.
Our lives are fruitful because of the Lord. It is God alone that changes hearts. But sometimes often times He uses a helpmate to ensure change, create courage, and inspire a life that follows the calling God has for us all. I take my role as helpmate very seriously, and thankfully my husband does too.
