“It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.”Proverbs 21:19
Did you catch it?
…that one little word?
Fretful
Other translations say angry, nagging, or vexing…
But that word fretful…it stings because it is so often how I act.
fretful – disposed or quick to fret; irritable or peevish
to fret – to feel or express worry, annoyance, discontent, or the like
dictionary.refernce.com
This disposition to worry…
This inclination to anxiety…
These characteristics are so deeply ingrained in my personality that I wonder if anyone will ever be able to describe me without using those or some of their nicer forms as descriptors.
High strung.
A-type.
Perfectionist.
And when I fail to give my worry and anxiety over to the Lord, when I fail to breathe out my cares to Him in prayer, they soon begin to leak out me…as fretting.
And this verse cut me straight to the core…
“It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.”
Proverbs 21:19 {emphasis mine}
Because when I’m fretful…
When I’m worried…
When I’m constantly stressed and anxious…
Then I become the angry wife.
The contentious wife.
The nagging wife who makes her husband want to live in a corner of the rooftop.
I don’t want to be that nagging wife…
So I bottle up my emotions or I try to mask and disguise my worry as “needing quality time” or “having a serious conversation” when really all I want is my husband to listen to my fretting.
How often am I choosing to carry my cares, when I should be casting them on Jesus?
How often am I clinging to my worries instead of making request of God with thanksgiving?
How often am I fretting to my husband under the guise of spending quality time with him?
I’m so thankful for a godly husband who listens and then rebukes my heart with the truth of God’s Word. And sometimes he’s gentle and sometimes he’s firm and sometimes he’s simply tired…but always he points me to Jesus.
Because our husbands are not meant to carry our burdens for us…
And our husbands can point us to Him…
And our husbands can show us the One who can carry our cares…
And our husbands can help us drag our heavy hearts to Jesus…
But our husbands cannot carry our burdens…they were never meant to. Jesus does that.
And having a husband who can help point us to Jesus is a beautiful gift. But I wonder if perhaps I should be gifting my husband with a wife who is learning to carry her worries to Jesus first? What would my husband be enabled to do if I freed him of the constant burden of reminding me to go to Jesus?
And there will be days when I loose focus and he’ll have point me back to Jesus, but there are many days when I can run to Jesus on my own.
And those days….
I can be support to my husband instead of a weight.
I can be a joy instead of burden.
I can be a helpmate instead of wandering heart for him to guide.
Sister, will you join me? Let’s learn run to Jesus first and stop asking our husbands to shoulder the burdens of our worry that they were never meant to bear.
Be blessed
<3
