A Treasure or a Prison Sentence?

Proverbs 18:22 “The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the Lord.”

I know, I have been a little rough with these daily devotionals. Getting in your face and calling you out on your attitudes and the way you treat your husband and your kids and all that, but I want you to know that I come up with the ideas for these devotionals based on things that I need to hear. I’m not yelling at you. I’m fed up with me and the way I can be toward my husband. Yes, I have seen other women do these things too and it sparks some ideas. But primarily, I’m barking at myself.

It’s funny because I frequently ask my husband to help me come up with ideas for me to write about and I usually end up with something totally different than what he suggests. So, this morning, without me asking, he wrote a list of about 20 ideas for me to write about. The last one on the list was titled, “You are a Treasure” and he gave me this verse reference. I, then, read the verse and, knowing my sin nature all too well, thought, “What an unfortunate treasure for Josh to stumble upon. I hardly enrich his life. It’s more like I make it more difficult.” He does not hesitate to tell me that I am the best gift he has ever been given. And I can guarantee that what he meant when he wrote, “you are a treasure,” on the little sticky note this morning was that he wants me and all of you to know that we are gifts, that we are beautiful like precious stones and that we are a literal treasure to God and to our husbands. He meant it as a confidence boost. He is so sweet. And while I agree with his thoughts and I do mean for all of this to be an encouragement, we can’t just be called a treasure, we have to act like one too. Does that mean we have to get up in the morning and exfoliate until we start to shine? No, that’s weird…and impossible. But just like finding a buried treasure is exciting and causes us to become rich or noble, that’s what we are supposed to be for our husbands. We are supposed to enrich their lives. Help them reach their goals. Make them feel important and respected. Give them love and attention and affection. Not suck the life out of them because we thought “all this” would be different before we signed on the dotted line to be connected with this man for the rest of our lives. When the “carrot” of marriage is dangled in front of our faces we think of everything we’ll get out of it, rather than what we get to give in it. When our selfish expectations don’t match up with reality our treasure-like attitudes and personalities fade into a ball and chain.

Whether you have been married for a decade (or more) or married for a year (we will neglect the newly weds because they probably don’t read marriage blogs anyway…too busy with other *ahem* team building exercises.) you know that the reality of marriage is harder than you thought. But even though you don’t feel like a treasure anymore, you are one. Learn how to act like it. Bless your husband with the way you treat him. You’ll know if he feels like he lives in a prison cell or in a palace, because you’re the one putting him there. And if you still can’t tell, ask him. But don’t jump down his throat if he tells you he’s in a prison. It’s your job to keep him in the palace and if he doesn’t feel like he’s in the palace, you need to change whatever it is you are doing. God will deal with the way he treats you. Don’t worry about him. Just be who God has called you to be.