Last Updated on May 1, 2019 by Stacy Averette
What does your husband wish for? Suppose someone shows up at your door this evening and promises to grant your man three wishes. What would he ask for? If you’re like me you might have a hard time narrowing that down to just three. I think I know what one or two would be but given just one chance to have three wishes granted, I’m not sure. But I expect them to be big! I mean, given just three, every man’s gonna shoot for the moon, right?
Honor His Wishes
Well, this post isn’t about giving our husbands his three biggest wishes—as much as we’d love to do that. I mean, it certainly would be fun to ask him what his three wishes would be but what I’m suggesting here is really much, much easier than granting three big wishes.
In her post, 25 Ways to Show Respect to Your Husband, Jennifer Flanders lists Honor His Wishes as the second way to show respect. If you missed yesterday’s post where I talked about the first way click here to read it.
Honor His Wishes: Give Weight to What He Thinks Is Important
Let me give you a simple example: Eric likes my car to be clean (on the outside) even more than he like his car to be clean. I drive a 2004 Suburban that has a lot of miles and scratches on it. I don’t spend much time thinking about the dirt. It seems silly to me to pay for a car wash when it will be dirty again tomorrow. So for a long time, I ignored his request to get my car cleaned. Weekly he would volunteer to take it to the car wash for me. It seemed like a waste of money and time and I thought I was doing the right thing, being a good wife, by saying “No”. But I started to notice how he would comment how dirty my car was when we’d go out in it. On the rare occasion when it was clean, he would comment how good it looked and how happy it made him. Finally, I realized it was such a small thing but it made him happy so I started saying “Yes” when he asked. It makes him even happier if I go with him to the car wash!
My car being clean is important to my husband.
Y’all.
I know that might seem like the silliest thing in the world to you. And trust me, I could give many more examples–big and small–of how I’ve learned to show him respect by honoring his wishes. The truth is, when I give weight to what he thinks is important it’s a greater gift than all the big wishes I could grant him. He feels respected and that’s the gift he wants most from me.
I feel like some of you might be reading this thinking, “Why didn’t he just take the car and get it washed if he wanted to? Why even ask you?” So I want to add that that’s just not how he is. He is a very kind and thoughtful person. A real gentleman for sure. And even though at our house, he’s the bread winner and pays for the car and the gas and the car wash, he doesn’t demand his way about any of it. I am thankful the Holy Spirit is still teaching me what it means to love my husband the way he needs to be loved and how to be a wife who doesn’t need to control everything.
Wives, your husband may be more demanding but I would ask you to prayerfully consider if there’s some way in which you’ve ignored or made light of something that’s important to him?
Do you really know what’s important to your husband? If you know and you’ve ignored it because it seems silly to you, I encourage you to honor his wish and honor it with love. If you’re not sure, then listen, pay attention, or ask. You might be surprised!
Obviously, we’re not talking about honoring the wishes of an abusive man. But with a good man, we can often overlook the smallest things that would make them feel respected (loved) and happy.
Love doesn’t force it’s way on others. I Corinthians 13
What’s one thing you can do today to honor his wishes and show him the respect he needs and wants?
God will be glorified and your marriage will be stronger because of it!
Our marriage has greatly benefited from Emerson Eggerichs’ book Love and Respect and from Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages. I highly recommend both!!