Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Mark 12:31
“And the second, like it is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself”

Do we ever view our husbands as our neighbor?  The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as yourself?  I mostly think of the irritating people that use to live next door who would park in my driveway, in my pathway up to my front door, and even had their car in plants, which pulled off my Christmas lights.  I had to jump into action to love them. Convince myself I was doing my best to love them. Make them cookies, bringing them a hot cooked meal, and passing my boys clothes onto their younger ones and smile and wave when going out to my car.  They were not ever giving back to me what I believed I deserved yet through much prayer and the supernatural love God poured into me I could love them.

What if I asked you to forget about what you need from your husband? Or forget about what you deserve from him.  Would you be mad at me? Think I am losing it?  Grumble?  What if I asked you to focus on your heart for just one week, and not his, would you grumble some more? What if I asked you to not say the word “I”? Even if it was on the edge of your lips could you stop cold mid-breath?  Could you do that?

I have needs. I need help. I do not want to do this by myself.  I deserve more of this, that, time to myself. I have worked hard all day. I don’t have anything more left to give. I need to run errands alone. I need to take care of me first.  I need you to watch the kids for a while. I need help with the dishes. I really need to take a nap. I need you to get this done for me.

When I was 18 years old I was running along a little village street, in the wee early hours, in Lucerne, Switzerland. I was running with a family friend. Father Rock.  What an honor to run with a man who loved Jesus passionately and spoke boldly of that love.  I was always one to observe the behaviors of others, especially a godly man such as Father Rock.  I loved watching him talk with people. He had this way of making the person he was speaking with feel like they really mattered.  I asked him a question while out one of our early morning runs.  “What are you thinking about when you talk with people?”  I went on to explain to him that I wanted to be able to have others feel loved and cared for in the way he did.  He went on to tell me that he started, years ago, practicing not using the word “I”.  “I” meant that the focus would be on me, rather than the person I am with.”  If he removed “I” it meant he had to learn how to ask questions about the other person to take the focus off of him.

This past week I have been taking inventory of the use of the word “I” from my own mouth.  “Can I get some help here please?”  “I could use some help with the dishes.”  “I want to tell you about this new sweater.” (Really I have a good sweater story.)  “I am not ready to go yet.”  “I am so cold, can you turn up the heat.”  I think you get the picture.

This week, take inventory of where your focus begins and ends.  How often does “I” come before asking a question, or offering a helping hand?  It’s our natural sin nature to think of ourselves first.  It’s hard when we are inundated with messages that say it is all about me.  It is hard when we have put in a full day just living to not take that important person in our lives and asking for what we believe we need or deserve.

For the past week I have been practicing and praying before the words leave my lips.  Removing “I” from my dialogue with my husband.  Even asking him “what are you ordering?” rather than just saying “I am ordering the phili cheesestake.”  Asking him questions.  Being mindful of him and not me.  Here is how some of my “I’s” have changed this past week:

1. How was your workday, that meeting you were talking about? (Rather than talking non-stop about how “I” spent my day.)

2. Calling him at work and asking if he has a big appetite for dinner. (Rather than talking about how “I” am making this amazing dinner.)

3. Asking how he thinks we should handle a situation with our boys. (Rather than speaking up and saying “I” think…..)

These are just a few examples and yet as the week has unfolded it has become clear that David has a lot to say on many of these matters.  I find that I am learning more about his internal process and his heart on these matters.  It takes me taking an active step of self-control to begin to put David first and before me. It’s a special way of honoring him. If I can love my neighbor as myself I am better equipped when I walk out my front door to do the same.

Our neighbor, our husbands, that special person we rub shoulders with, share a bed, with and are commanded to love as we love ourselves. How can we begin to live this out daily.  I simply state and ask that you actively think first of your husband.  This week, try practicing a conversation without using “I”.  And then in a lovely fashion, when you have asked some questions, listen and then go and French kiss that man of yours.

Love and Blessings, Elizabeth
A French Kissing wife to David

Kindness (Part Two)

When we begin to change our behaviors towards our husband, do our “motives” change too?  I just finished reading “How To Act Right When our Spouse Acts Wrong” by Leslie Vernick.   I highlighted a statement by the author early on, as early as page 13.  I typically don’t mark up my books, but rather takes notes and then go into a deeper study of those things that move my heart.  This blog is about changing ourselves and really has nothing to do of the changes our husband may or may not make. Our change is because we desire to walk like Christ and in so doing we respond as we are called through the guidance of God’s Word.

“We might fool others with the kind of outward change, but we never fool our spouse.”

I am glad that I read this.  I had to pause and sit quietly before God. I had to ask myself of the changes I am making, even this past week.  I have a confession.  I know my husband would like the dishes to be loaded a certain way.  So my act of KINDESS was to do just that.  Nine times out of ten he is loading up the final dinner dishes and getting the machine going.  He has a kind-hearted grumble over how I load the dishes through out the day, because often he has to rearrange them to maximize the space.  Why did I choose this specific act of kindness?  What was my hearts true motivations?  Questions we all need to ask ourselves.

I realized in this act of KINDNESS that I desired to have my husband’s approval on just how dishes were loaded to his standard. Not once did I get that this week.  I did not even realize that was what I was expecting until pondering and praying over this statement of motives.  Who am I fooling anyway?  I want to change the motives of my heart towards Christ and not for approval, not for more love actions towards me.  I want to be kind because it’s what I am called to do and who I am to be.

If you read last week on being kind I ask that this week you continue in that act of Kindness.   Only now ask yourself what your motives might be for the specific act of kindness you chose. Sit still before God and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any motives that you may not even be aware of.  After I realized what my hidden motives were I was actually able to change my attitudes towards such a simple act of dishwasher loading.  This morning I felt a deep sense of joy because I was doing something that my heart was clear on. I just want to love David.  I can show love and kindness in small ways regardless of whether he notices or not. 

A few pages over I loved this:
“When we allow God to define our needs, we can trust him.  God uses something about our experiences to bring us into a closer relationship with him and greater maturity in our lives.”  My need was to be valued by David for something that he missed.  He missed the fact that I was making his loading easier and underneath, deeper than layers had I looked at earlier, I had this need. “We must see our marriage as an opportunity to depend on God to meet our real needs.”

Psalms 19:12-14
“Who can understand his errors?  Cleanse me from secret faults.  Keep back your servant from presumptuous sins.  Let them not have dominion over me.  Then I shall be blameless.  And I shall be innocent of great transgressions.  Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight.  O Lord my strength and my Redeemer.”

Dear Lord Jesus,
It is only through You and only you that we can be redeemed of those secret sins and faults.  I ask that we as married women can sit before you, and ask that those be exposed.   That truly the meditations of our hearts would be acceptable and that what we speak from our mouths to our husband would be pure.  You are our strength.  Amen.

Kindness ( Part One)

"Done and made $19.00 doing it"
“How did you do that?"
"Well you kind of hug him reaching low, pick his pockets, swish-swash pockets picked"

For one week we committed to French kissing our husbands as they walked in the door from work.  We committed to text each other "done" each time this was completed.  And for seven straight days we did just that.  We met yesterday to discuss this agreement and both came to realize that something dramatically had changed.  There is a connection, a quiet, unspoken, sometimes spoken connection.  We decided that it did not matter how we were treated, how they would respond.  We would simply do this in honor and love for our husbands.

K.I.N.D.N.E.S.S. 
Ephesians 4:32
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

The first time I ever visited David’s home I was mortified to see that every sink in his house was D.I.R.T.Y.  Being somewhat of a recovering germ-a-phoebe I truly was over the top mortified.  I knew that if we were to progress in this relationship things would need to change and habits of sink hygiene would be the first.

The first week of our marriage I was M.O.R.T.I.F.I.E.D.  The sinks, all three of them, were always dirty. No amount of cleaners and clothes in plain sight could get this man to wipe down a sink.  Did he really even love me?  This is important to me. If he loved me it would be important to him.  God, help me to show David how to clean sinks. Please.  I have issues and they are issues of spotless sinks.

This afternoon I asked David if I could share my “sink” story on this blog and he said sure.  You see God did help me.  God began to show me what kindness would look like in my young marriage.  At first I thought it was to kindly show David how to clean a sink. To kindly express to David why I wanted to have clean sinks.  Well he kindly told me that his height proved a challenge for cleaner sinks, and with out his contacts or glasses those microscopic spots became impossible to see with a naked eye.  That was not really what God had in mind when the “kindness” began pressing on my heart.

For the next week God showed me passage after passage of what kindness looked like as a Christ follower.  Not once, in all of my reading of the Bible did I see a D.I.S.C.L.A.I.M.E.R.  I wanted to find one. One that would read something like.”be yea kind one to another tenderhearted, forgiving each other, but know that he who keeps a dirty sink will not be worthy of the kindness Elizabeth has to offer.” Good thing God did inspire me to write the Words of scripture. 

I started to pray and ask God to give me a pure spirit in serving up some kindness to David.  I am strong willed and like things to be in order, tidy, and sparkling, like a sink.  I was reminded in God’s word of His love for me.  My imperfections are far worse than David’s inability to spray cleaner and dry towel a sink after each use.  Yet my will allowed this one thing to consume me, and kindness was far from my heart.

What consumes you?  It’s quite embarrassing to admit that a dirty sink caused so many disturbances in my heart towards David.  Ask yourself what might you want to control over your husband?

Guess what?  I have been cleaning the sinks for our entire marriage.  I do this quietly and without his notice.  David has his own sink in our master bath. I will go in with my cleaners and spray it down so it sparkles and leave a nice clean towel.

I want you to prayerfully ask God to show you something your heart prevents you from being kind to your husband.  Something that must be rendered to Him.   You know what that “something” is. God knows it, yet with those delicate hands you hang onto it.  Open up those hands and ask God to hold your hand and take it from you.  Do not go to your husband and parade around how great you are for giving this one thing up.  Rather in a quiet way, a loving way, a kind hearted way serve your husband in this area.  Pray before and after.  It’s okay to grumble a little, but to yourself, to God and not to your girlfriends.  Grumbling about your husband is dishonoring to him.  As you begin to serve and honor your husband with kindness in this one thing, you we see the Divine interventions of the Holy Spirit pour through you kindness you did not even know you were capable of. 

And then as you make this new act of kindness a habit I ask that you go and French Kiss your husband.  Have cell phone in hand, because you might just need to call a medic when you lay one of those on your man.

Please share in the comment below how God is working in your heart on this one act of kindness to be doing daily, followed by a French Kiss.  It’s about your heart, your change, and your willingness to be obedient to the Word of God. 

I have a challenge ahead in this act of kindness. I know I have a bad habit that annoys David. Starting today I am going to change this habit, and when I do, I will give that man a French Kiss. I will update later this week what that habit is/was.

“Dear Lord Jesus I pray over the wives who long to love and honor their husbands unconditionally.  We put conditions on so many things, things we are so unaware of that they become bad habits. May the habits of our hearts be ones that start with kindness, not because of anything special these men have done, but because we are called to love as you love.  Thank you for such a tiny verse in a big Bible for such clear instructions. Blessings and Joy, Elizabeth

Introduction

Today I had a dear friend want to ask me a “personal” question. She prefaced it with the fact that she is more embarrassed to ask that I would most likely be to hear it. Of course she could ask and she did.  Her one questioned opened up dialogue over the next hour. 

Do you like how you feel after doing all the dishes?  Do you like your clean kitchen, counters, and the dishwasher humming?  Dishes are a job that must be done. Someone’s going to have to get them done and on most days it’s you.  What if we gave the same time and care to our husbands?  I am not drawing a parallel between dishes and husband but the reality is that someone’s got to “do them”. 

So now begins the blog that most women, especially Christian women dare not discuss.  A blog about taking good care of our husbands and serving them in more ways than just a good meal.  We can talk about cooking them their favorite meal, or seeing that shirts are ironed or picked up from the cleaners. We can makes lists of things we know that they will like, or enjoy and try to be a good wife loving and serving her husband. If we are all doing such a good job at this the why do we struggle, on many different levels, when it comes to intimacy, as in sexual intimacy?

The conversation with my friend spoke volumes of our needs and desires that we wish we could get from our husbands.  “I want him to want me, to walk up to me and just lay a big juicy kiss.”.  “But then if he did I might gag as his breath is not always the best.”  Or in my case, it’s been so long I would not know what to do, but he would never do that anyway. Oh well a girl can dream.  So we get lost in our dreams of that girl through chick flicks, magazines, and hearing those few, who are still in marital bliss share their stories of romance.  As she and I continued our conversations we both admitted it came down to what we wanted. Nothing to really do with what we could give or are even capable of giving.

So we made a deal with each other. We both made the deal to do something that is not in our normal realm of lovie-dovie behaviors with our husbands.  To give them, upon walking in the door,  a French Kiss.  Regardless of any words exchanged, how they may have made us feel earlier in the day or week, what they may smell or look like.  Then we would text each other one simple word “done”.  For seven days we are committed to this French Kiss.  Holding each other accountable and with the expectation of nothing.

So many woman are losing their husbands because they are either workaholics, involved in emotional / sexual affairs with another woman, are addicted to pornography or just consumed by the daily responsibilities of caring for one’s family. dreams of more and getting less and less. It’s not a secular problem. It is a bigger problem among Christian marriages, which are causing the breakdown of marriages.  We hold our husbands to bondage in our marriages because we do not know, as women how to be there on the levels of needs our husbands have.
When God laid Adam to rest in Genesis 2 He did so because God saw the need for Adam to have a helper. A woman to come alongside and be his helper. 
 ¹⁸ The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 
  We want desperately as woman to have our husbands leading us. But what if that lead is one that could use a little help. Do we step back, grumble and then complain over what our husband can or can not do for us.  What if we were to become help mates in the area of sexual intimacy? Help mates as God designed us to be.

Today it starts with two women.  It starts with a French Kiss.  Yesterday it was another woman sharing her heart and her frustrations. Always it comes down to what His responsibility to “me” is.  And then another woman, and the lines of communication break down, and a husband and wife stand back to back instead of facing each other and embracing each other.  A few more steps taken away and division begins, and sadly the computer, which is so easy get turned on, and there our men are getting turned on too. Our hearts break, and we distance ourselves more, or if the computer is not an issues, we allow other issues that are equally devastating to compromise the most beautiful relationship in the world.

This is a private blog for Christian Women who want to learn how to love in a way that draws your husband in closer.  This is a blog for women who want sound Biblical guidance in how we learn to honor and serve our husbands.  Women who want to learn how to make those steps to rebuild and restore that private part of your marriage.  A blog that will ask you to be specific in your heart and intentions to serve your husband, to honor your husband and be intentional with your desires to love him with passions he may never have known you to have.

Each week, a new level of accountability will placed before you. Are you up for the challenge?  Can you follow through without expecting anything in return?  And then you will be asked to share your heart on each week’s challenge.  Sharing your story.  We each have a story of our hearts. Each story that is shared will protect the intimacies between you and your husband. 

If you know someone that might want to be part of this blog you are welcome to share the address, and they can be brought into this very special group. 

So now back to the dishes.  They have to be done.  They are not always so fun to do but just think how much fun it would be to know that you are doing something special for your husband. No matter what you get in return.  The only thing we get in return when doing the dishes is more dirty dishes, yet we show up to get them done.  Now it’s our husband’s turn.  Join me on this journey.  As we learn and grow how to be Godly Christian women, passionately seeking to do more for our husbands.

Blessings Dear Sister’s In Christ
elizabeth

p.s. I got a text today from this dear friend. Can you guess what it said? Just one word..."done".  My husband had not walked in the door yet, but she too will get a text later. 

P.S.S.
I have received many encouraging emails on the content this blog will have. I am blessed by the many inquiries and realization that perhaps there is truly a need for Christian sisters to get a better scope of this thing called marriage, help mate, and life.  Here is are answers to a questions, asked by many of you. 

"Sharing of Stories" will not be happening on this blog. I am really making this entire blog about how to love and honor our husbands. How to come alongside and help them as husbands by being the model Christ gives as serving. Adding some fun, humor, Biblically based, and spice.

I will write specific blogs that give ideas on how to do just that. To challenge my sisters in Christ to love, serve and honor our husband regardless of what we get in return. This is not a blog about wrapping yourself in saran wrap and answering the door. I actually sat under teaching years ago that a woman shared this as a tip to spice things us and those of us who were moms rolled our eyes and said ....yeah right.

I want to encourage and bring couples together in ways that are never going to be discussed by our pastors. How can they? We are women and they are not going to tell us how to be that "help mate" in the more intimate areas. Besides don't you think that would be just weird for a pastor to speak about us women.

So come along and see how God begins to make the realities of both directions and teaching in areas of our lives, that we are often left to our own on.

On occasion there will be "blog interviews" with specific woman about their hearts and what God showed them and how they grew to a deeper level of intimacy with their spouses. One woman I met with for several months weighed 434 pounds. She hated herself and how she looked and for that reason could NEVER open up parts of herself to her husband, a husband who loved her dearly. As she began to understand her identity in Christ, and the love relationship with God, she grew more confident in herself as a woman, and started to show her husband that he had a green light into her space. She today is willing to share her story, and her husband gives her permission. Is this a encouragement on sex? No, it's understanding who we are, as women in Christ and in so doing we can then extend ourselves in ways to our spouses we never dreamed of. Blessings and Joy, Elizabeth