Do You See the Real Me?

Ladies this is for you. The Bible describes the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31 and today I want to compare this to real life.

Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax, and willingly works with her hands. She is like the merchant ships; she brings her food from afar. She also rises while it is yet night, and provides food for her household and a portion for her maidservants.

She considers a field and buys it; from her profits she plants a vineyard. She girds herself with strength, and strengthens her arms.

In this passage God really paints a picture of a truly gifted woman. This woman is quite intelligent, she’s loving, she takes care of her children, and she’s great at multitasking. Also, here this passage tells the husband the worth of his wife is far above rubies. The husband should trust her. The husband, however, forgets the part about how the worth of the wife is above rubies, but tends to use this verse to discredit his wife because she is not perfect and has made mistakes. The husband then holds on to his wife’s mistakes to cling to his distrust of her. The husband, however, forgets the many mistakes HE has made along the way and how his wife forgave him for those mistakes. The husband should instead look at the many other good things the Bible says the wife does for him. Most ministers’ wives definitely try to do our husbands good and not evil. We work with our hands throughout our husband’s ministry, and try with all our hearts to make his ministry work. We do this because his ministry is our ministry, and as we are married we are ONE and we love our husbands.

We go out and get food for our homes and do whatever is necessary to make our homes work. Many minister’s wives have a job outside the home and thus make the money so our husbands can be free to answer their call of ministry. Many of us get up earlier in the morning and we work until late, late at night. When our husbands and children are asleep we are still up working, putting away food, washing dishes, washing clothing, and cleaning the house. My grandmother used to tell me “a woman’s work is never finished”. I now know so well what my grandmother meant. We wives are always trying to find ways to make our homes work better, but sometimes we fail at this and make bad judgments calls. We, however, do not make those calls with malicious intent, but with all intentions of making our husband and our children’s lives better. Sometimes, however, our judgment calls are dead on, but we are not rewarded for the good calls where we saved the day, but yet are continually held accountable for all the wrong calls.

We must have strength because we have our husbands, our families, our jobs, and the church families to answer to. Wow - for any one person, this is a lot to answer to. No wonder we are batty and stressed out. It, however, is even more infuriating when we work so hard and so long at the church and very few people appreciate it. We are oftentimes talked about, lied on, and mistreated as the song goes.

Don’t even get me started on the stress we encounter on our jobs outside the home. What hurts even more is that when we get home we have so much more to do there with no help, and husbands are not even interested in how our day went at work! We continue, however, to support our husbands with all our hearts; hoping that our husbands, as well as the church, will see that we love them and are willing to do whatever it takes to make the ministry work, thus fulfilling our husband’s dream and calling. Remember the virtuous wife has many tools at her disposal, i.e. she can run the home, buy, trade, and she is a good business woman. She can “fry bacon up in pan and never let her husband forget he is man”. All we ask is that our husbands see us through God’s spiritual eye for what we really are, and not what they think we are when they see us through their fleshly eyes. Our husbands may be missing out on a precious treasure...a treasure whose worth is far above rubies!

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