Family Friday – Enjoy the Differences!

I go to clean the shower and find his bottles of shampoo and body wash with lids open like soldiers saluting their Sargent.  It’s a tiny pet peeve that he knows nothing about.  I snap the lids in place.

There are whiskers in the bathroom sink…again.

I reach into the cabinet below and pull out my rag and bathroom cleaning solution and give the sink a good wiping down, chasing the discarded whiskers around the sink edge with half as much success as I’d hoped.

It can be tempting to sigh at the remnant of my husband’s last shave,  or the opened bottles in the shower, but I stop and ask myself,

Would I rather that I didn’t have to deal with these small issues because I have a husband?

The answer comes to my mind quicker than the whiskers were wiped away –

No!  I don’t want him to have soft skin like me!  God made him to have a bristly beard, and he shaves it to keep himself neat.  I’m thankful!  I’m glad we’re different!

It’s easy for women to gather in little grouchy huddles and complain about their husband’s socks in the floor, his love for football, or his voracious laughter, but wives need to ask if we’d like to hear our husbands complain about all the products we use in our hair, the fuss we make over shaving our legs, or our love for Hobby Lobby.

We know this…

Men and women are different

but we often use it as our reason to sigh or roll our eyes instead of being thankful for the difference.   He’s uniquely masculine and I’m uniquely feminine.  Would we really want him to be like us? Each wife needs to be thankful  for the differences and the ways they manifest themselves in our mate’s life.

The next time you find yourself tempted to complain about a masculine trait of your husband’s, stop yourself and rejoice in the difference between you!  If you were exactly the same, one of you wouldn’t be necessary!  You need both your femininity and his masculinity to complete your home.  Your differences allow you to compliment one another and that’s something reason to be thankful!

Refresh your marriage by telling your husband how thankful you are for his masculine traits and characteristics. Oh, and if you hear another woman beginning to complain, why not give her the reason you can rejoice?