You want to have a partner, someone to go home to. I see no fault in that. You seek to have someone to hold and to love, and there is no shame in that.
Perhaps you seek someone who will care for you. Someone who will cook you warm meals and wash your dirty clothes. Someone who will keep you company for the long nights ahead. Someone who you find lovely and attractive, able to keep your interest for more than an hour. Someone who will watch your children and raise them well. Someone who submits to your leadership and relies on your strength. These are good things to want.
But if that is all you seek, then I am not the wife for you.
I will not be a wife who boosts her man’s ego by constantly depending on him, craving for his attention or affection. Because I know that my worth in my Saviour – the one who loved me first. I want to be a wife who affirms my husband’s wholeness without me, because I am only one who complements, not completes.
I will not be a wife who will just stand back and allow her husband to shut her out of his problems and ignore his concerns. Because I want to be a wife who seeks to walk alongside her partner, even if it is just in silent support.
I want to be wife who prays for my husband, even when he doesn’t ask. I want be a wife who seeks to understand her mate’s heart, seeing things other people do not see, covering him in prayer for evils that the world may not know.
I long to be a wife who submits to her husband not because she has to, but because she wants to. Because I know he will protect and love and cherish me, and being with him under the Lord’s watchful care is the safest place I can be.
I want to be a wife who loves our children with the firm discipline of one who seeks what is best, not just what is easy.
I intend to be a wife who speaks the truth in love, even when it is unpleasant for her husband to hear. Because I would rather bear a moment of his displeasure, than see my husband go down a dark path that would cost him more pain.
I strive to be a wife who suffers with patient endurance, because I know that life will tough, but I have a great and mighty God who works all things for good.
I wish to be a wife who cries silent tears when she sees her husband struggling, but wipes them away and offers a soft shoulder for him to lean on when the rest of the world has worn him out.
I intend to be a wife who stands by her husband through thick and thin, knowing that he is not perfect, but together, God is writing our beautiful love story that can only be perfected with his grace.
I know I will fail and disappoint my husband, and I won’t always live up to his expectations – or even my own. But I know that my God is bigger than any of our mistakes, and He is able to redeem the worst offences.
Young man, if you ever do marry, I pray that you find a lifelong partner that seeks the same things you do in a marriage. Then perhaps you will have a chance at creating a happy union for the rest of your lives.
As for me, I pray that my life be a continuing testament of God’s unfailing love – whether single, married, or yet-to-be-married. For I seek not simply to be married, but for my marriage to be a blessing.
Joshua 24:15b
But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
