What Comes First? What Should Come First?

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Wife – mom – homeschooler – friend —

We are all of these.

And for most of us, these roles are our dream come true.

But that doesn’t mean any of them are easy. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. There will be good parts and bad parts of everything in this life. We have to keep our joy and hope in the midst of storms and struggles.

But of all of these roles, which one should be our top priority?

It’s easy to put being a mother first because babies and children demand our attention. They can’t help it. That’s what they do! Of course, we have to take care of our children, and we delight in doing that. It’s what we do!

But there is someone else who is often standing in the wings waiting for us to notice them who really needs our care and attention, too.

Your husband may be a strong, independent man (hopefully), but he really does need you. He may not realize how much he needs you. If he is a kind, loving man, he will not demand your time or attention, but he really does need your input and affection toward him.

God calls the wife a Helpmate. That is not just a nice, flowery word to describe our role. Men sometimes don’t know what they need. I’m not trying to be sexist here, but I’ve observed this during my 55 years of living. Actually, women aren’t always aware of what they need, either…. so, there, I’m not being sexist.

Men are often more affected by their wives than they show. They are trying to impress us. They want us to think well of them. Good men want to take good care of their families and be the hero. Sometimes they don’t know how to go about it. Sometimes they think we are impressed with things that are not so impressive to us. Sometimes they are not aware of what would really impress and HELP us. Helping and working alongside us is what would really impress us. Some men think that all they need to do for the family is bring home the paycheck. They CAN be taught that they need to engage and be a part of the life of the family. It may take a while for some to learn this.

But we wives need to be there for our husbands and make them feel like our priority even in the midst of babies, diapers, cooking, cleaning, teaching, and all of the tasks that come with taking care of a family.

Our men need us. God said in His word that it’s not good for a man to be alone. That’s not a metaphor. It’s true. Men may have a harder time keeping spiritual matters uppermost in their priorities. That’s where we come in. We can gently guide them to the Lord with their cares and concerns and help them to develop good priorities themselves. We can help them to understand us! We can use that nurturing attribute that we women tend to have naturally to help our husbands.

The Bible says that we can help our husbands to become better people and draw closer to the Lord by the way we live in front of them. We can make living a godly life look attractive and winsome. We can help them to flourish spiritually if we encourage them and give them love and attention and affection and direct their attention in a sweet and gentle way toward the things of God. They are supposed to be the spiritual leaders, but they may not know how to do that. Not at first anyway. Or their personality may make it difficult for them to take that role.

But instead of being disappointed or demanding or condemning, we can do things in a way that is honoring and loving, and they may learn the things they need to do to become the best husbands and fathers they can be.

We can show them what God is like by our attitude and way of treating everyone, including them. There are several scriptures that tell us how to treat our husbands with honor. If we treat them well, and they treat us well, things are going to go much better for our families. And spiritually, we really yearn for our husbands to be strong.

We all have choices in how we treat others.

Let’s choose well as wives to treat our husbands the way God wants us to treat them and ask Him to help us be the best wives we can be.

Husbands need their wives more than they know and more than they show.

Let’s be there for them.

For help and inspiration, these books can help us to understand and implement these principles:

One more book that may really help your husband is:

This may help him to understand and break free of wounds from the past that hinder him from becoming the man that he was meant to be.

We can do this!

Our families are counting on us!

Let’s take care of our husbands in the most important ways and watch what happens in our families!