With Her Own Hands

You can't grow up a PK (Pastor's kid) and not see all kinds of marriages. I have witnessed the good, the bad, and the ugly. I have seen men and women I would never have put together as a couple -- and they've made it work.  I have seen people so similar it's scary, who have divorced and not looked back. Marriage is a tough, rough training ground for life. It has wonderful moments where you can't believe a person could feel that happy and it has moments where you're looking up the numbers of divorce attorneys and dividing up the stuff in the house in your head.

We need to be honest with our kids, the next generation. We need to tell them there will be times when they think they're the luckiest wife/husband in the world and times when they can't believe they married this man/woman.  That's honest. There is no perfect marriage. There are healthy ones, but they still have issues. They still have problems. Life is messy. We hurt each other and make mistakes. We commit sins. We are sinful, selfish human beings in a fallen world. There are bound to be dysfunctional pieces to ALL of our lives.

But there are certain things you can do to strengthen your marriage and others you can do to tear it down. Proverbs 14:1 says, "A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands." It's not talking about your bungalow, cape cod or raised ranch here, people. It's talking about the relationship. And I believe a foolish MAN does the same thing when he demoralizes, invalidates, or criticizes his wife thoughtlessly.  Abuse in marriage is not a gender-specific problem. But this passage brings up the wife.

Haven't you seen wives and husbands who put each other down in public? They embarrass, they reveal private matters that aren't for public consumption, and they marginalize the importance of the other. It's easy to do. All you have to know is the other's weaknesses, and we all do, don't we? And while they assume that others will think less of their spouse because of what they've revealed, it usually backfires and people think less of THEM for doing the revealing. It shows more about YOUR character when you bash someone than it does of theirs.

Some do it with a joke, and think there's no harm because they got a laugh from it. But it IS harmful and it will be remembered and there will be a scar, however unnoticeable to you.

Some do it with a smile.  Just as evil. Trying to put someone else down, but doing it while smiling doesn't fool anyone, make no mistake.

Some do it with a backhanded compliment. You know how this goes.  It's the comment that says, "My wife is a pretty good  (fill in the blank), which is remarkable when you see what kind of family she comes from!" Or "My husband will eat pretty much anything you give him, he's not picky, can't you tell?"  Meant to sound like praises, they're really digs or insults. They hurt. They stick.

Words matter. They are powerful. They can heal or they can wound. They have an energy to them that is capable of building up, or tearing down. Words about your character tend to be remembered and applied to your self-image. I can still remember a nice man at our church in Buffalo Grove, IL who always called me pretty and sweet every time he saw me. There was nothing badly-motivated by it. He was a friend of the family and just thought I was sweet and cute and said so. I looked forward to seeing him at church because of his kind words. I just as clearly remember a time when my brother was angry with me when I was 16 and he called me ugly. That one stung. As an insecure teen, I already hated how I looked and questioned everything about myself and I didn't need someone who "loved" me validating my feelings of self-loathing and criticism.

Every time a wife puts down her husband, he becomes a little less of a person, and he feels attacked.  Every time a husband puts down his wife, she questions his love for her and it changes who she is, even if just a little. Have my husband and I made this mistake? YES, we have. And I have seen the damage it has done. Now we try very consciously to build each other up rather than carpet bomb one another's character, whether in public or private. I am lucky to have a man who builds me up, even when I am not around. How do I know he does?  Others tell me he is always speaking well of me to them -- coworkers, neighbors, people at church. This makes me want to live up to who he thinks I am and be even better.

Correction of an attitude or behavior should be done in a PRIVATE setting, and in a LOVING way, not with intent to cut down or hurt someone.  And it should be done rarely and carefully. Praise should be the norm in a marriage, not condemnation.

Let's edify one another. Edify comes from the latin verb "to build or construct."  It means to build each other up morally or spiritually, and the more you do it, the better your marriage will become.