Did your attention get grabbed by this title? Some of you may have welcomed the idea of wifely goals, and others may be eyeing this suspiciously, wondering if we're going to recommend housewifely duties and subservient roles.
Not at all.
We're going to go deeper here than the superficial. This isn't about how many homemade meals you make each week, the level of cleanliness your house has attained, how much additional or primary income you've brought to the family, or how beautiful you are. (Remember those 1950s magazine articles where your hair should be curled, make-up applied, and dress neatly pressed to greet your husband when he returns home from a long day at work? Those aspirations have long since retired).
No. Other goals are far more important and, if one is being honest, are probably not talked about nearly as much as they should be. These are the character goals all wives should have because it's within these goals that a healthy marriage can be built. These spiritual goals will serve you well in your marriage and as a woman of God.
Let's check them out:
1. Integrity
This is a characteristic we don't hear about often enough. According to Webster, integrity means firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values. These are the ethics on which your relationship will be founded and which will be necessary to maintain a level of trust between you and your spouse.
Proverbs 11:3 says, "The integrity of the upright guides them." Integrity is what will help you make decisions and sometimes even counteract your preference but ultimately steer you in a healthier direction with long-term consequences that are far less negatively impacting.
As wives, we expect and demand integrity from our husbands. Have you looked into your own moral and ethical stability lately? Have you set a goal to pay close attention to your integrity and build consistency in your decision-making so that your spouse can have confidence that you will walk the moral high ground even in adverse environments?
There is strength and power in a woman who has integrity. She is trustworthy and wise, sets a good example, isn't swayed by others or their status, and is steadfast.
2. Faithfulness
Being faithful in a marriage is often equated to sexual or emotional affairs. But faithfulness is far more encompassing. While the element of faithfulness in that context is critical for both men and women, consider faithfulness as it relates to your relationship with the Lord.
This means your goal should be to not simply focus on retaining a faithful relationship with your spouse but drawing as close to Jesus as possible in order to maintain that faithfulness in other areas.
See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness. Habakkuk 2:4
This verse singles out the character trait of faithfulness. Faithfulness in integrity, the grounding in righteousness, and the unswerving loyalty to the God of Creation. Consider this concept: you're struggling to retain faithfulness in your marriage while you remain intimately close to the Lord. It doesn't even really equate in our minds because the Lord holds us morally, emotionally, and physically accountable when we maintain a deep faithfulness to Him and His precepts.
3. Honor
Honor isn't a word we hear much about in Western culture. But let's look at its definition. Webster defines it as a showing of usually merited respect. This means the person to whom honor is shown has typically earned the gesture and rite.
Are you honorable in your actions and thoughts, both in how you present yourself to others and the world around you and how you show respect to those in your life—namely, your spouse?
Honor and respect go a very long way in a relationship. It can be especially difficult to show honor to a spouse who doesn't deserve it, but in that self-entitlement of convincing ourselves not to waste our time honoring the "deadbeat" husband we're married to, we also can end up positioning ourselves on the same platform. We respond to bitterness with bitterness, nagging with nagging, irritation with irritation, and so forth.
Instead, as wives, our goal should be to be honorable in our actions and words, regardless of those around us.
Romans 12:10 states it best, but it's also the most difficult. "Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves." It's really the equation of how to be honorable. It's about showing devotion and love to one another and is the culmination of the Golden Rule.
Wives, we can do well to work on this area. In Western culture especially, our perseverance to achieve independence and equality has sometimes crafted us into being self-serving and self-seeking as well as critical and judgmental toward our husbands. While this isn't an article on submission, it is a challenge to set that goal of being honorable by honoring those around you—including that guy you married (even if he doesn't deserve it).
4. Gentleness
Too often, our culture equates gentleness with weakness, timidity, or even subservience. Why that is when the definition is so not that, sometimes raises an eyebrow. Once again, Webster's Dictionary defines the word as the quality or state of being gentle. Especially mildness of manners or disposition.
Let's consider this goal as wives. Have you ever been in a situation where you've witnessed a wife harping on her husband—even if he did something wrong or ridiculous—and criticizing his actions? Words become bitter. Tone becomes assertive. The mood becomes divisive.
The phrase "you catch more flies with honey" is an homage to being pleasant, kind, gentle, and, frankly, nice.
Now think about a time when an individual potentially deserved to be corrected or put in their place, and the one doing that did so with a gentle spirit—a coming alongside instead of a slap across one's face. The truth can be difficult enough to hear sometimes, but when given with a gentle attitude, it can be very authoritative and powerful.
Gentleness is showing love in all circumstances. Mothers are great at this with their children—maybe not all the time, but you get the point—the element of gentle spirits that nurture, teach, and are patient.
Your husband needs this, too. No, not a mothering gentleness, but a wifely one. One that speaks to him in a gentle tone of respect, admonishes in a gentle tone of kindness, or even argues gently and firmly instead of brutally and critically.
These four character traits are not necessarily at the top of the list when we think of "wifely goals." But it's a great challenge for us as wives. Consider how your marriage might change for the positive if you were to work on these elements in your own self rather than requiring them in your husband. It's a bit like attending a marriage class without your spouse. When you go with them, there's lots of elbow nudging and thoughts of "Oh, I hope he's listening to this!" But when you go by yourself, you can only look at yourself in the end and do some introspective critical thinking: "How does this apply to me?"
Begin asking the Lord what character traits your goals should be to focus on. Be willing to grow. Be willing to be convicted. Be willing to stop justifying why you are the way you are and instead seek after a state of the heart that is biblical and aligned with the person of Christ.
You'll go a long way in your marriage if you take care of your own shortcomings first.
Originally published Tuesday, 02 January 2024.
