While at lunch on Friday, yesterday, a wife came in with her two daughters, her husband, her mother and her husband’s parents. She needed to change the baby daughter’s diaper and her husband told her to take the other daughter as well to use the potty. Headed to the bathroom, already, the wife stopped, turned around and firmly exclaimed how she couldn’t take both of them BY HERSELF. Her tone was loud and demanding, and her look was like, “YOU ARE going to help me!” I held my head down and whispered to my love that her behavior and speech towards her husband was not acceptable; that she should not speak to him like that (and in public).
I was burning to get to her and stated to him and my lads that I was going in the bathroom to have a talk with this wife. They nervously laughed and told me not to do it – PLEASE! My lads were certain that I was going to have one of my “nice and kind conversations.” So, my love placed his hand on my thigh as a gesture to keep me from getting up, in which I had already pushed my chair back to get up. He was basically pleading for me to not to go to that bathroom – PLEASE! I sat there for a moment, but was so compelled to go talk with her.
When I walked in, the baby was on the changing table and I smiled at her and said, “I came in here to give you a hug.” She smiled back and her face turned red as I hugged her and said, “I noticed the way you spoke to your husband, and I know you’re frustrated, but that shouldn’t BE. I also have two sons who are 16-months apart and I remember the trying days of seeing after both of them by myself for days and nights and I was married too.” She very jittery says, “Yes, I am frustrated! He normally helps me, and it isn’t that I can’t do it by myself I just don’t want to. His parents are here visiting and he’s been spending a lot of time with them and I’ve been doing this by myself since they’ve been here. But, my mother came with us today and she is helping me.” I said to her, while rubbing her back, “It’s good to have a mother’s help, and you need to apologize to your husband AND give him a BIG HUG!” As I told her that I loved her and gave her another hug, she smiled and said, “I will!”
When we walked out of the restaurant, I told my love what I had said and he smiled at me, chuckled and said, “Ohhh! Only you can do something like this!”
Truly I AM an advocate for healthy marriages and relationships. COMMUNICATION! How we speak to our spouses, in public or not, must BE the speech that will ultimately raise him up and honor him regardless of how frustrated we are. And sometimes, just sometimes, that language is called SILENCE! SELAH! We can BE frustrated or in a funk and still speak with kindness that will draw him in to feel and understand where we are. We can teach our husbands the philological posture that will help him perceive how to dwell with us according to knowledge.
It is refreshing that my love adores me AS IS, and that he LET me do what I was compelled to do in this incident. Yeshua was exemplified! It was what that wife needed to get through the rest of the day without frustration dominating.
© 2012 Angela M. Smith
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