What Wives Can Do to Bless Their Marriage

You think I'm going to do him a favor?

Well, I'd like to see something in return for that. I'm already doing a lot for him. I cook the meals and I clean up. I make our house a home. But my husband, he just never seems to notice. It's exhausting trying to be the perfect wife and mom, but look at what all these other women are doing. Well, maybe you feel the same way about your marriage.

Maybe your husband doesn't meet your needs and you're feeling a little dissatisfied about the relationship. How can you make your marriage better? Well, today on Focus on the Family, we'll examine how you can change the dynamic in your marriage in some ways that may surprise you. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John, it's so true. Some couples are going to be doing well and I hear from them. I meet them when I'm traveling for Focus. Their marriage is in a good spot and they communicate really well. And when they hear us talking about these subjects on Focus on the Family, they're like, why do people who believe in Jesus have a commitment to Christ?

How could they be having those issues? You're probably about 10 percent. So we want to talk to that 90 percent of Christians who still struggle in their marriage because it's human to struggle in marriage. Your flesh gets in the way, your appetites get in the way, and we want to address that subject of how to do better in marriage.

And the way to do that is hit some things directly, right? So we are going to do that. The fact is, marriage is about selflessness. And I think that's what the Lord's trying to teach us in marriage, not to be selfish. And if you're asking yourself the question, my husband is not matching my emotional needs or whatever it might be, that's time to start communicating with your husband, not time to get upset and mad at him. I'm convinced that marriage is here to transform us.

It's why God created the institution. And I know our guest today has struggled, which I think brings her quite a bit of credibility. She's struggled with these very issues, being hurt by her husband and internalizing that.

And now she's here to say there's a far better way to go about this. And our guest is Angela Mills. She is an author and a blogger. She's been blogging since 2008. One of the forerunners in the blogging movement has over a million hits on the blog. She's written a great book called Bless Your Husband, Creative Ways to Encourage and Love Your Man. Don't turn the dial right now. Don't turn it off.

You know, some are going, what? Love your husband. This is a really good book and it's really practical. Lots of worksheets and interaction woven throughout it. Just stop by our Web site. The link is in the notes or call 800 the letter A and the word family. Angela, welcome to focus on the family. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's good to have you. Thanks. I'm thrilled to be here. OK, now listen, this title, Bless Your Husband, you know, let's get right to it.

That can be a challenge. What prompted you to do this? Was it your husband saying something?

No. We were actually in a pretty good place in our marriage. We had gone through a little bit of tough times in the beginning and we had kind of, you know, evened out.

We were in a good place, but we were definitely in a rut. And I read a book called A Woman After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George. And in that book, she suggests it was like the simplest little thing, but it was to put your husband and children's names on your to do list every day.

Yeah. And to think of something to do for them, to show them that you love them. And so I started doing that and I found pretty quickly that it was really easy to think of those things to do for my kids. But it was getting harder and harder to think of things to do for my husband because it just didn't come as naturally to me. Well, and I want to, you know, I want to point that out because, again, some women were joking about it. At least I am.

You know, when when they hear bless my husband, the thought is, hey, what about me? Right. And this is kind of getting to the point, right? This is where you may not especially for those who believe in Christ. I mean, this is where you're going to learn selflessness. Yeah. And when you're if you're asking yourself what about me, you may be asking the wrong question.

Exactly. Because if you go into this with selfish motives and you're thinking, what am I going to get out of this? Or why isn't he doing this for me? You're going to be let down. So if you go into this and you can even if you're not feeling selfless at the moment and you say, OK, I'm going to be obedient to what God calls me to be and I'm going to put my husband first, even if it's not coming naturally to me. And even if it's kind of hard, then over time, God's going to bless your obedience.

And a lot of times women will think, well, I hope I'm doing this because I want my husband to change or I'm my husband's the one that needs to change. He's the one with the attitude problem. I'm doing everything right.

What about him? And I do get that question a lot. And that's true. Yeah. It doesn't mean it's not true. The problem is you can't control that.

Exactly. You can only change yourself anyway. So you can't change your husband. And honestly, there were things about my husband in the beginning of our marriage that I would have loved to have been able to change because, you know, he was very logical and he approached decisions in a logical way.

And I was very emotional and passionate. And it would upset me when he wasn't passionate about the things I was passionate about or that he wanted to take a different approach to making decisions. And now I'm so glad I couldn't change him because I value that part of him.

Like we balance each other so perfectly. So you learn to appreciate exactly what you want him to change. You might appreciate later.

Yeah, that could be a long journey to learn to appreciate your spouse's traits. Yeah. Yeah. It's been 20 years. And, you know, that that gives you credibility. You guys have learned how to do this.

Let me you mentioned something. I want to come back to it because a mom's heart is always for her kids. And one of the things that we've noticed here, focus on the family, when you make the family a kid centric family, you're in danger. You know, we need marriage centric families. You need to love each other. Well, your kids, your children are going to learn so much by how you interact and how you love each other. That's where they get a sense of security, belonging, exactly. Even for their future, they know how to behave in a marriage.

Right. So speak to that once again, a little more to the detail of that, the credibility or the criticality of having a strong marriage. Well, when it comes in relation to having the kids and I think for women especially, it just is our nature to want to put our kids first. And for me, being a mom was really natural. It came very natural to me and it was no problem to be selfless with my children.

It's just something that we do by nature. And then when it comes to your husband, it's so much more difficult. And so how did that recognition happen for you, though? How did what was the light bulb that went off that said, wow, I'm treating my children differently than I treat my husband? Actually, it was my aunt. I was on a phone call with my aunt and she was just talking about her own life. And my cousin, her daughter had gone off to college and she said, I just want to encourage you to be really investing in your relationship with your husband.

Spend time alone with him. Make sure you keep up your friendship because and I had just had our youngest daughter and I was just, you know, it was baby, baby, baby all the time. And so she said, your kids are going to grow up. They're going to move out and go away. You don't want to be stuck living with a stranger. You want to have that friendship with your husband. And I thought, wow, we haven't really been paying attention to that at all.

And so that was kind of the turning point for me to realize that I needed to be more intentional about having that friendship with him, keeping it going and not making life all about the kids, which was definitely my nature at the time. Yeah. And, you know, it's natural, actually.

And you have to work at it, like you said. You know, this is a touchy question, but when you look at feminism and, you know, there's been some benefits of thinking of both male and female with equal but different assignments. If I could say it that way, that would be a biblical, you know, women are not subservient in God's love for us. Women are the companion to their husbands, Adam and Eve, et cetera.

Right. And but in that context, feminism, because of the nature of it, it has seeped into the church. If you talk about, you know, being a servant to your husband.

Oh, my goodness. Or being subservient to your husband. Speak to that that pull of feminism and where it crosses the line and begins to work against you in your relationship with your husband. I think it's when it crosses the line is when you're actually putting yourself first. And so because you want to be independent and you've been taught. And I kind of believe that when I was first married as well, I really wanted to be independent for my husband. And I was constantly trying to show him that I was independent of him. And honestly, I still struggle with that to this day. To be honest, I think when I observe it, most women do, even in the church.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times when we hear, oh, to serve your husband or to bless your husband, people, women tend to think that that can be demeaning. It's demeaning to have to serve my husband because if I'm equal to him, why should I be serving him?

But when we look at the example that Jesus said, he was serving others the entire time that he was walking the earth from a young age even. And we're actually getting to grow and be more like Jesus when we serve our husband. It's like a gift that God gives us. And I just look at it as a blessing.

And honestly, if you just start serving him and you have those good intentions in your heart, the joy will come, you know, over time. And some of those attitudes that you're being demeaned or it's beneath you or you're somehow lowering your standard of yourself. If you serve your husband, that will begin to drift away as you see the good that comes. And of course, it doesn't leave husbands off the hook. I don't want to give that impression here and we're going to get that e-mail. And, you know, no, husbands have a responsibility to love their wives and to lay their lives down for their wives. I mean, that's the ultimate calling. So we've got to behave ourselves, too.

And, you know, I don't want to give that impression. But again, there's importance to both roles and we've got to do that. I loved your suggestion about encouragement. I think this can be one of the more difficult things in marriage to encourage one another. But specifically from wives to their husbands, how can a wife think about that and really embrace encouraging her husband?

Right. Well, there's so many different ways we can encourage our husband just by thanking him and finding good things about him and praising him for what he's already doing. And we can encourage him by sending him scriptures and things like that and just finding different ways to lift his spirits. And so, you know, our words can either like build our husband up or they can tear them down. And I think it's too easily the negative things come out of our mouth all the time. Let's touch on that for a moment, because it's an easy place to go.

We seem to have a well of criticism or a well of negativity. How do you consciously develop a different pattern when that's been your pattern? Well, you have to consciously do it. You have to focus on Thanksgiving.

Like I always go by what Philippians four says that if you want that peace and you don't want to have anxiety, focus on what is good and and have a thankful heart and think about what's good. And so I play that to my marriage. And instead of dwelling on what I don't like about my husband and what he's doing that bothering me, focus on something good in him and turning.

Once you start to focus on that in your heart, it's just going to come out of your mouth. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that.

But for that wife that's struggling there, I do want to ask that question, you know, but there's so much my husband does. It's so negative. Right. That it's hard for me to find that thing. I've been there.

OK, you've been there. I have felt that way myself because I remember actually I sort of assigned myself this challenge. I was going to write a list of things I loved about my husband and I sat there and I was in like just such a bad mood about it. I finally sort of grudgingly wrote down, well, he's a good provider. And that was the only thing I was willing to give him.

Yeah. But from that came more and more things as I opened myself up to it. And I always say, if you're really to a point where you can't see the good in your husband, find the God in him.

Oh, wow. Because everything that God says about us in the Bible, everything he says about you that, you know, you're redeemed, you're, you know, you're perfectly made and all of these things, they apply to your husband, too. And so if you think about that and you try to find what God has put in him, because God puts good in all of us.

Well, it reminds me of what the word says about, you know, God loved us even as we were sinners. Yeah. So that's a great thing.

I mean, that's a very hard thing to do, but it's the right thing to do. Well, we're talking about kind of getting a new perspective here today on Focus on the Family. Our guest is Angela Mills, and her book, Bless Your Husband, is available when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the episode notes for the link. Angela, you mentioned in Bless Your Husband, the need to find an anchor. And I like that.

But what were you driving at? What does an anchor do for us and what is an anchor? Right, an anchor, that was an idea, a way to keep your mind on the positive and to not dwell on maybe past hurts and negative things. It's part of what I call purposeful reminiscing, which is looking back with a positive outlook instead of, you know, dredging up all the negative things, which we kind of want to do sometimes.

I'm laughing because that's very understated. Yeah, right. It's almost more comfortable to think about the yucky things. Well, women have this amazing capacity to just keep dwelling on things. Yeah, we do.

I mean, we kind of throw it in that nothing drawer for us, you know, it's done and forgotten, but you guys keep going. Yeah, and it informs our future behavior and attitudes and things like that. So if you're dwelling on positive things, so the idea of the anchor I actually got from a dieting program that I was doing years ago.

And it said, look at a physical object, get something that reminds you of how far you've come and successive you've had in the past. And so when I was thinking about that in terms of my marriage, I thought of my wedding ring, that something I can look at and I see multiple times a day. For me, every time I see my wedding ring, I've trained my brain now to think this way. I think of our history and everything that we've been through together. You know, my husband proposed to me with that ring and it's been through everything that we've done, you know, like our arguments.

Yes. And our history of like growing, but also all of the fun things we did and all the good memories we have. And so when I look at that now, it's just a habit. And I glanced at my hand and I see it. I think of my marriage and the happy times that we've had.

So that's what I use as my anchor. Angela, some of these challenges seem pretty easy. You know, things we could do. It shows love.

Then you've got some things in the book that maybe are a little more difficult. One thing you've mentioned is to encourage wives to wash their husband's feet and give them a back massage. Yes. But, OK, Jean was like, what? I just got to give it to you the way that she responded, like, wash your feet. And, you know, I get that some of it's just, you know, wow, that seems lacking hygiene, whatever it might be. Right. Well, that's why you wash his feet first.

But what are you driving at? What's the heart of it? Really, that actually came from something my husband did for me. OK, now that's back on me.

I got to do it. So we went to this like marriage group overnight, a little retreat that we had with a group of people we were just going through marriage books with. And all the husbands one night set all of us wives in a circle and they went around each of them, like told what they loved about us. And they watched our feet. It was this amazing moment.

And it really, of course, was inspired by Jesus washing the disciples feet. And, you know, what really struck me about that was he knew it was his last night to be with them. And that's what he chose to do. And I thought if I knew I only had, you know, a few short hours left with my family, would I spend it serving my husband? Would I be taking care of his needs? Or would I be thinking about what I wanted to do and what I wanted to have fulfilled in me before?

You know, I couldn't see him anymore, whatever. And I just thought that was such a beautiful illustration of just that hands on love and, you know, letting go of whatever pride or hygiene issues. There is something emotional about it when you do that kind of active service.

There's something much deeper going on in your own heart when you do something like that. Let's speak to contentment in marriage. And, you know, again, I think everyone falls prey to comparison.

It's not a gender oriented thing. But women, you know, comparison really drives so much of their thinking and, you know, they're ruminating and all those things. How do you get off that rail of comparison and finding true contentment in your marriage? Well, it is really a decision you have to make that every time you start finding yourself comparing yourself or your husband or your marriage or your family, whatever it is, that you have to stop yourself in the tracks and think about something positive. That's what I counteract it with is if I'm tempted to compare my husband to someone else, then I just try to stop myself and think about what I love about my husband. And, you know, comparison just it isn't healthy and it's not good for anyone. It's not good for your husband.

It's not good for you because it just creates discontentment in your heart and that puts you in a bad mood. And a lot of time I think comparison makes us feel bad about ourselves. And I feel like so many problems between husbands and wives come from on the wife's part feeling bad about herself or feeling like my husband doesn't love me, even though logically, you know, he does. And comparison can bring up all those feelings.

And when you give into that, you're just you're headed down a yucky road. Well, in fact, in the book, you use a double date experience that you had. Explain what happened, because that would be very practical to our listeners. Well, we were out with a couple of friends of ours and my good friend was the wife and my husband and her husband were just sort of getting to know each other. So we went out and hung out and the husband was just all over the wife, kissing her, hugging her all night.

They look like newlyweds and, you know, they'd been married longer for us. And we were like semi-affectionate, but nothing compared to this. And I really started feeling like somehow my relationship was lacking because my husband wasn't fawning all over me the whole night.

And I felt a little I was definitely going down that road of comparison and feeling like we were coming up short. And I didn't really express it to my husband, but I'm sure it came across in my attitude, you know, because those kinds of things that just eat away at your mind and it does affect how you're treating the people around you because you're just all caught up in your head about how you're feeling. And a few days later, I was hanging out with just the wife and I and I told her, you know, that I was almost jealous of like, oh, you guys are he was being so affectionate or whatever. And she said, well, don't be she had found out that day that he had been cheating on her. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

And they decided to just go ahead with the outing. And he was trying to like basically win her favor back. And she was just completely, you know, closed off. I'm actually getting chills talking about it because I realized that not only was being in my own head, coming between probably me and my husband and giving me some attitude. I'm sure it was also it made me closed off to my friend that night. I should have noticed that something was off with her and that she was something massive had happened in her life.

But because I was so caught up in, you know, my comparison, I didn't even notice what was going on with her. So it can be it's really damaging. You know, what's interesting about that? That realization is just how the enemy works. Exactly.

That's an amazing illustration of that. He's obviously working to divide them in their relationship with the affair and those things. And then even your observation of him trying to make up ground with his marriage and how that planted a seed in you.

Man, you have to be on your toes. Yeah, that's what that says to me. You also urge wives to not give up even when your marriage is in a hard place. And I think that's great advice. Certainly that's the Lord's heart for our relationships to improve, to get better. And to that point, maybe your husband is unloving or acting like a jerk.

And that's hard. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't none of what we're saying justifies that kind of behavior coming from a husband. But you and Eric face some conflicts when you were first married and you considered leaving him, actually.

Yeah. And, you know, I know that's probably hard to talk about publicly, but helpful for people listening who might be in that same place where you were. And she's thinking some wife is thinking, I'm thinking about leaving my husband. What were the circumstances and what kept you together? Well, I can't tell you how many times I call myself a flight risk because that was always my go to in the beginning was I just even when we argued, I would just get in the car and go on long drives because I didn't want to be trapped in the house with him arguing.

I was just I would believe that was my thing. And so when we would get in a really big argument, which we did a lot in the beginning, we both had a child when we met when we were young and we met and then so we had a blended family thing going on. And we both had issues in our past that caused problems in our relationship. And we were dealing with custody issues. And I mean, it's a lot for a new couple to go through. And we were both carrying baggage from both of our parents had been divorced and we knew that we never wanted to get divorced.

That was pretty clear. But my husband was a lot firmer in that stance than I was because I was constantly going, this isn't working. But every time I started to make that decision, I would tell him I wanted a separation. I wanted space. Something would happen where I couldn't do it. It was usually something with one of my kids would get sick or there would be a holiday coming up.

But I wouldn't want to ruin it for the family. And I feel like God just always gave me an out to that temptation to leave. But one time I did get to the point where I told my husband, like, I actually wanted a separation and I was looking at apartments and I was very serious about it. And again, God just threw up a roadblock and I decided to stay until Christmas or something like that. And of course, by then we were fine and we had worked through our issues. But I just I do want to encourage anyone that feels that way, that it just took years and years of me realizing nothing I do is going to make him leave. And I think that's really what I was testing him with, thinking that if I one of these days, he's going to say, OK, we're done.

And he never did. And so I think I just had to figure that out in my own stubborn way. But I can look back now and see how many times God just put up a roadblock, closed the door, made circumstances happen. Because in my heart of hearts, I wanted to stay. I wanted to be married. I didn't want my kids to grow up with divorced parents. And of course, we're talking, Angela, about, you know, marriages that are having a modest level of difficulty for women who are in danger, their children are in danger.

We always counsel them to seek safety. And here at Focus, we have great counselors that women can call. But we're talking about just the kind of the mundane ness of marriage and how to rise above that and be in a better place. And it does start with that selflessness that you so beautifully have described in your book, Bless Your Husband.

It's interesting that, you know, we have to give so many caveats because the sensitivity of this is so high. And we've talked about it throughout the half hour here. You know, are you serious? Do you know my husband? You know, if you knew my husband the way I know my husband, you wouldn't say bless him.

And it is true. And, you know, it's just sad within Christian circles. And of course, I know that some of you have never dealt with this because you've had that kind of relationship where you've been very open with each other, loving. You were probably spiritually mature, I would suggest. And I get that.

And certainly we don't need a note saying that, you know, we didn't address that. We get that your relationship was good and strong. The problem is 90 percent of Christian marriages still struggle in different ways. And I love your commitment. You and Eric both commitment to stick with it and rise above the flesh, above the enemy of our soul to give hope. And I think your book, Bless Your Husband, is a wonderful outline for women to really embrace something that is counterintuitive right now. And that's rising above the cultural noise to truly love your husband. And then you watch.

I do believe in most cases, maybe not all, that husband will turn in such a way to honor you and to bless you, I believe. And I just want to say thank you for being with us. It's a great resource. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. And if you can support the ministry to keep marriages together, very much like what we're talking about, make a gift of any amount, maybe become a monthly supporter. We'll send you a copy of Angela's great book, Bless Your Husband, as our way of saying thank you. Yeah, it's very easy to sign up to be a sustaining member of the Focus support team to be a monthly pleasure. If you're not in a spot to do that, make a one time gift. Either way, donate to the ministry today and we'll send a copy of Bless Your Husband as our thank you gift for joining the support team. Our number is 800-AFAMILY or you can donate and get the book when you're online. And the link is in the episode notes. John, before we leave, though, I need to make people aware of the fact that if their marriage is in a very difficult place, we have a wonderful marriage intensive called Hope Restored.

They run in Branson, Missouri, Michigan, and just outside Atlanta in Rome, Georgia. And we have an 80% post two year success rate. And a lot of these couples have signed divorce papers. And the program really helps you do the many things that Angela is suggesting, but how to love each other in a different way. How to communicate in a different way.

How to understand those triggers that are really making it very difficult for you to communicate and to love each other the way God intended. So if you're in that spot, get a hold of us and let us give you more information about Hope Restored. Yeah, Hope Restored is a phenomenal resource and we'd love to tell you more. Our number again is 800, the letter A in the word family.

Or click on the link in the episode notes to find out more about Angela's book or Hope Restored. Coming up next time, a powerful message from a former Teacher of the Year, Guy Dowd. So you know what I do as a teacher?

I go to school a little early in the morning. I sit down in Shawn's desk. And I pray for Shawn, sitting in his desk. And then when Shawn comes walking down the hall, I can never think of him again in the same way. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.