Loving Our Spouses

Nathan went skiing with his best friend from college over the weekend. Although the kids and I spent most of the weekend with my parents, it was still hard. I didn't have my husband to help with the discipline. I didn't have him there to hug before bed. I took all 3 kids to Frankie's Fun Park by myself for a birthday party and about lost my mind. It was hard. Several times throughout the weekend I thought:

"This would be so much easier on ME if Nathan was here!"

Sometimes it's easy to get caught in the trap of thinking we deserve certain things. I often catch myself thinking, "I deserve a night out with the girls because I've been home with the kids all day long" or "I deserve for Nathan to take me out to eat because I cooked the past three nights and I'm tired." I don't deserve those things! I'm a grown up. I should get up every morning and do my job because it's my job, not because I think I deserve a reward for it. I deserve nothing.

We should love our spouses selflessly. We should want them to enjoy their friends, hobbies, and weekends away. Nathan didn't deserve this trip. He's a husband and a father and he has a job and he's a grown up and he gets up each day and does it. But I know what a precious gift this weekend with his dear friend meant to him. I know that a weekend away rejuvenated him. He came home a better father and husband.

Nathan is great at loving me in this way. It's a very rare thing for him to complain about me going out to dinner with my friends or making a shopping trip by myself. He encourages me to get involved in book clubs, go to the gym, and have coffee with a friend. And here's the best part....when I get home, he asks me all about what I did. He doesn't tell me how hard it was for HIM. He doesn't gripe if things didn't go well with the kids. He doesn't throw them in my lap with an attitude of "Finally! You're home! It's your turn with them!" He loves me.

I'm learning more and more how to purposefully, actively, selflessly love Nathan. It's no cake walk. It calls for sacrifice. It sometimes means giving up things that would make my life easier. But I'm choosing to honor, encourage, and support him because he's my man. And I love him.