With Mother’s Day right around the corner, it’s a time when I start thinking about motherhood. I usually start by reviewing how different my life would have been without a husband and kids. It would be a lot different, I would work a full time job (not that I don’t now, but I would be getting paid for everything that I do), wear dangly earrings (I can’t right now because the baby thinks they’re toys), and have a much smaller house (really, I think my house is just for toy storage anyways, so I don’t get a lot of space for my stuff these days).
Of course, with any musings about motherhood and being a wife, I always end up back at Proverbs 31. I’ve heard this chapter taught so many different ways, and used to say so many different things, but I still have my favorite verses.
Verse 11 – “The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.” – I love this verse, the verse before this in the ESV version says “an excellent wife…”. I grew up with the KJV version which starts with “A virtuous woman…”. But, I prefer the ESV, because I understand what “excellent” means, “virtuous” is just not used commonly enough anymore for me to connect to it.
Anyways, back to verse 11. We’re discussing an excellent wife and how her husband trusts her. I think of all the things I do for my husband, pay bills, answer his phone, reply to e-mails, little projects he wants done, etc. and I realize that most of thetime, he just asks me to do something and never checks in to see if I actually did it, he just assumes it’s going to get done in time. Basically, he trusts me.
Verse 16 – “She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.” – So, I’m not planting a vineyard anytime soon, but I would say that I’m pretty good at not overspending our budget and managing our finances. I think of Proverbs as poetry, so I very rarely take what I hear literally – as in, this verse does not mean that I need to go buy a field and plant a vineyard to be an excellent wife. I think it means that I take good care of what I have and take advantage of opportunities to provide for my family. (provide not being necessarily working a job but also saving money, spending wisely, and using what I have to create more)
Verse 17 – “She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. – This verse totally, definitely, means that I have to go to the gym several times a week! Just kidding, but I do enjoy a good workout, it’s very stress-relieving.
Strength can be seen in many different ways. I’ve heard plenty of people say “she’s the strongest woman I ever knew” when referring to a favorite aunt, grandmother, or mother and they’re not talking about physical strength. It’s more about the inner strength it takes to be an excellent wife, mother, and woman.
Verse 23 – Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land” – This would indicate that the husband is not home all the time helping his wife, he is free to pursue business deals, hobbies within reason, and he trusts his wife (back to verse 11) with managing everything not exclusively his areas of knowledge or interest. This also ties into verse 31 – “Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates” – obviously it’s not just the husband who’s known in the gates (“the gates” being a circle of people, sphere of influence, etc. – I don’t know of anyone who thinks it’s profitable to actually sit at a gate these days).
And my favorite verse, verse 26 – “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue” – I always think of this section in Caddie Woodlawn