Honor Your Spouse (#4 of 7)

We often bump into each other in that tight space called family. It’s a great space to learn how to be less self-centered and how to honor others.  I’ve been working on honoring my hubby for almost 50 years and this is still a daily challenge: Her husband can trust her and she will greatly enrich his life.”   Proverbs 31

Here are two things I try to do daily to honor my hubby.

1) COMMUNICATE

Communicating with each other is hard work but essential if you want to enjoy doing life together.  I encourage couples to practice, read good books and articles, get help from a friend, counselor or pastor if you need it (and we all do at times) but whatever it takes, get this skill down and just do it.

Here’s a little exercise I challenge you to test drive for a week to improve your communicating. Each day take turns sharing the daily four together:                The Daily Four

1. What are you feeling?
2. What do you appreciate about your partner?
3. What are you thankful for?
4. Pray together.

2) SERVE

I love to do special things for Don to enrich his life.  I’m going to toss out a few sample from my week.  Warning: you must be YOU. You need to express honor in your own creative ways.

• Don loves to eat.  Even when inconvenient for me, a good meal on the table every day says “I love you” to my man.  I love to cook. Could it be due to all those 1000+ meals when he said, “Thanks, that was really good?”  Hmmm. Be right back — better check on those pork chops on the stove.
• About halfway through lunch I’ve started putting down my fork (a good thing) and picking up a book (right now it is Heidi Baker’s “Compelled by Love.”) I read an excerpt for us to enjoy together.
• Don also loves football. After years of trying, I still don’t love football, but I do sit by him for Monday Night Football. (He listens to the game on headsets and I read a book on my Kindle.) Just sitting near scores points.
• At the grocery store I picked up three cartons of Breyers Light Vanilla which I rarely eat. Ice cream is a staple for Don on the list above bread and milk, so I make sure the freezer is well stocked.
• I also picked up some mirror chalk (thanks for the idea, Tim & Talor.) This week Don and I started leaving each other encouraging notes on our mirrors. You can see in the picture above his note to me this morning. Honoring.

These are just a few things that came to mind. You can think of a lot more.  The main thing is …  Just do it!

          Love each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring each other.  Romans 12:10