Bring Him Good Not Harm

As I sit here I am aware of my sore muscles.  This is the first of three VBS weeks we will experience this summer.  Simeon was so excited he woke up at 6am and wanted to go to VBS now.  Then I spent the morning working in the garden.  I have been planting more seeds as well as plants, pulling weeds, raking, and putting down straw.  When the boys came home from VBS I went back out to the garden to do more work.  Then we took a pool break, had a church meeting, then supper with my dad.  Now I sit here listening to cars drive by through the open window I hear the sound of wet streets making a splash, surrounded by the mess in my house that I did not get to today, look over in my living room to the four loads of laundry folded, some needing to be put on hangers, and socks that need to be matched.  As I sit here I am trying to come up with how I want to put my post into words.  I was talking with Vic earlier today about how I am struggling to put this thought into words.  I am going to try to do that here.

She brings him good not harm all the days of her life.  Proverbs 31:12

As I think back over the years of our marriage-- in just a couple of weeks we have been married 12 years.  The years 2003-2011 were pretty rough for us as far as communication goes.  I did not understand exactly how much my husband could not understand certain things.  This brought a lot of strain to our relationship.  During those years I did the best things I could do for my husband.  Those things were actually doing good for him, but they did not feel good-- in fact they hurt.  Vic did not interpret them as good either.  He did not understand our situation and no matter how hard I tried to get him to see it he couldn't.  It was not that he was being lazy or neglecting responsibility.  He really could not grasp the concepts he needed to.  For example at one point we were five days away from being homeless and he wanted to do somethings that would have made our situation worse instead of better because he truly did not grasp the severity of our situation.  I told him no to the things that would have been a waste of our resources.  He thought I was so mean, but I did what had to be done to take care of the situation at hand.  I cared for him and the family.  Since about this past Christmas my husband has been building even more neuropathways.  He has been able to grasp where we have been in our journey, where we are now in our journey, and able to formulate goals and dreams with me at his side.  He has recently thanked me for the good I did him when he thought I was doing him harm at the time.  So I am trying to say that sometimes doing someone good is not going to feel like it at the time.  I did the best thing I could for my husband back then.  In this season of life my doing him good not harm feels a lot more like doing him good both to him and to me.  I like this season much better.  Marriage is meant for the long haul and so don't forget to evaluate and always do your husband good.  That way we can be the Proverbs 31 woman.