Spring 2020

HOMESCHOOLIOWA.ORG

eff and I have been married for thirty-three years. They have

been mostly great years, and I would say wholeheartedly that

we have a good marriage. But it would be dishonest to say

that we have not had our ups and downs, as have most couples who

have been married for any length of time.

I want to start bymaking one disclaimer. I amwriting towives who

have husbands who are sinful, fallen creatures (as are we), but I am

not pretending to have the answers for abusive situations.What I say

applies to wives in a “normal”(which I am fully aware is a very broad

term) Christian marriage. I’m writing to women whose husbands

are imperfect, love Jesus and love their wives, albeit imperfectly. If

your husband is physically or emotionally abusive, my heart aches

so much for you! If that is your situation, please read no further and

seek help beyond what I can give you.

Homeschooling moms are some of the busiest people in the

world. Trying to homeschool multiple ages of children, caring for

preschoolers, toddlers, and babies, helping teenagers work through

their struggles, running a household, getting kids to the right place

at the right time, all while trying to be an invested wife can be over-

whelming. I understand! We can put into place certain practices that

will help it be less overwhelming, such as being as organized as pos-

sible and scheduling our day, (I’m not pretending I do these things

as well as I should) but it is never going to be easy to keep up on all

these things and to be an invested, loving wife as well. But God has

not called us to an easy life. That is why we must prayerfully rely on

Him each moment of every day to guide us, to give us wisdom, and

to lead and guide us.

It is vital to spend time in the Word and in prayer every day. This

should be as important to us as eating. This will, however, look dif-

ferent at different seasons of life. I have much more time now for

intentional Bible reading and prayer than when I had little ones. But

there are ways to make this happen, even in the busiest seasons of

our lives. I find that having an attitude of prayer all day is the key to

keeping my relationship close to God. It helps my thought life tre-

mendously if my focus is on talking to my Lord instead of thinking

about hurts that may make me bitter or other thoughts that would

feed my flesh instead of my spirit. It helps me to be others oriented

as I focus on praying for my husband, my kids, and friends. I pray for

my husband and my marriage. Satan would love nothing more than

to see it fall apart.

We need to accept and understand that our husbands are not like

us. Not only are men and women different from each other, God cre-

ated husbands and wives to be

unique individuals. Honestly,

Jeff and I could not be more op-

posite in most ways. (though we

do share what is most vital, our

values and our faith).

Jeff and I dated for several

years, and we knew each other

quite well, but I still didn’t know

everything about him. On our

honeymoon, I realized that I had

married a man whose biggest

nightmare was being bored.

While I wanted to rest and recover, especially after a busy wed-

ding, he wanted to constantly be on the move and be doing things.

Simple communication would have helped us to understand each

other, but at that time, I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was bother-

ing me, much less articulate it. I just knew I wasn’t fully enjoying our

honeymoon. Since then, we have learned how the other functions

and on family vacations, or time together as a couple, we have some

down time to chat, play games and go for leisurely strolls, (my idea

of a fun vacation) and we have some very active times of going on

long hikes, canoeing and other very physically active activities (his

idea of a fun vacation). Sometimes he goes off and does his active

stuff and I stay back and read a book. That is perfectly okay, too. And

we have actually rubbed off on each other over the years. We both

enjoy doing what the other one likes a lot more than we used to.

Along those lines, if you haven’t figured it out by now, men and

women think differently! While women tend to multitask, men tend

to focus on one thing at a time. If we are cooking or working on a

project and a child walks up and asks for something, we can easily

drop what we are doing, help the child, and then go back to what

we were doing. If we are in the middle of a conversation and need to

veer off of it for a minute to talk to someone else about something,

we can easily go back to the previous conversation. If our husbands

are working on a project and we ask him a question or ask him to do

something, we may feel that he is ignoring us or blowing us off. In

reality, he is probably not trying to be hurtful, but is just very focused

on what he is doing. (Of course I am speaking in generalities. There

are women who are one-track minded and men who can multitask

quite easily, but this is the general rule.) We need to respect this and

wait until our husbands finish a particular project, task, or conver-

sation before we veer them off course. Sometimes I tell Jeff, “When

Surviving

Thriving

Marriage

BY KIM STILWELL

Be quick to forgive.

Our husbands

blow it sometimes.

So do we.