Day Ninety-Two

Today I am praying for wives. I pray that we will be humble and loving. I pray that we will recognize our husband's weaknesses and instead of exploiting them, criticizing them, or using them to emasculate our husbands, that we would look view them as a way to love, protect, and encourage. I pray that we will be patient with our husbands as God works in their hearts to teach them to be leaders, and I pray that we would be easy to lead. I pray that when our husbands fail, we will be a safe place to fall back into--that our husbands will never experience shame or fear in sharing with us, that we can affirm who they are in Christ and encourage them in that identity instead of naming them according to their failures. I pray that our expectations of them will be reasonable and setting them up for success instead of failure. I pray that we will look for ways to help our husbands succeed and communicate loudly that we love them, we trust them, and we believe in them! And that they will never, ever feel like we are disappointed in who they are.

I pray that we will make our husbands our top priority (second only to God) and become students of them as we seek ways to love them deeper and more effectively, encourage them to live out of who God says they are instead of who the world says they are, submit to their leadership even when it's not easy, honor them in our interaction with them and others and in how we speak about them, delight them when they are home, and trust them both emotionally and physically. I pray that we will be safe places for them--when they come home from work or just being out in the world, that they would find a safe haven in our homes, that they will drive home thinking that what happened that day will be okay because they have a God who loves them and a wife who loves them. That we will be safe emotionally for them and give them the safety they need to express their struggles, their temptations, their needs, their doubts.

I pray that when they sin against us, we can put our own feelings aside and pause to wonder why our husbands are sinning--what are they believing instead of the gospel that is causing him to sin? That in that moment, instead of reacting out of hurt and pain, we can instead reach out to our husbands and pursue them in the moment, proving that we are a safe place, that we will fight for them, and that we will protect them. I pray that once we have loved our husbands in this way, we will be tactful and sensitive if we still feel the need to mention our own hurt in the situation.

I pray that we communicate our love and delight and happiness in a way that our husbands never doubt it, that we will be a safe place for our husbands to stumble and grow and lead, and that we will always put their needs above our own.