What is your first thought when you wake up in the morning after a hard night with the baby, look in the mirror, and realize you look like death warmed over? Is your first thought, “How am I going to love and honor my husband today?”
I would say for most of us that would be a big fat, “NO.”
Yes, our first thoughts and prayers should be about how we plan to glorify our God that day, but I believe that a large part of our God-given role and mandate as woman and wife is to love, honor, and respect, the man with which God has blessed us. When life happens, and we are caught up in the mundane, how do we continue to love, honor, respect, much less romance the man we wake up next to every morning?
I have been married for six years. My husband and I have spent the better half of those six years in a place much as I described above. I have either been pregnant or breastfeeding for 5 of those six years. I have been exhausted and spent. My husband was unemployed for a full year, and the others years, his employment was less than desirable. We loved each other dearly; we even had fun, but we were missing out on much of what God intended for our marriage – the joy to be had in just being together.
What’s worse? I realized that much of what we had missed was my fault.
I have been working very hard lately to make an effort in our marriage. Sadly, in six years time, I never did. I was too busy with the babies, too tired, too … too … too … and the list goes on. I was not fulfilling in any sense the role of helpmeet which God had called me to be to my husband.
The following are five ways in which I have found I needed to step it up in my home and in my marriage in order to love, honor, respect, and even romance my husband better. This is not a “Five Step Fix-All.” What worked for me, might not work for you, but I do not think it’s a bad place to start.
1.) Loving Your Husband With Your Words
Take time to compliment your husband with sincere words. Tell him how handsome he looks in that suit for Sunday. Compliment him on how he plays with the children. Thank him for putting in such a long week at work, because you know he is doing it for you and your family.
If you have a husband, who is not the “ideal” spiritual leader in your home, it is still very important to love him with your words. By building up the good qualities you can find, even if it is very small things, your words will speak volumes of the love you have for your husband.
2.) Loving Your Husband By Serving Him
Take time to serve your husband. There is a great love and care shown for your husband and family in everyday tasks such as doing the laundry, making the meals, and cleaning the home. When these daily duties are done with contentment and even joy, God’s love is shown through us. We are serving our family, and building them up without even really knowing it.
There are smaller actions of service which exude a special kind of thought and love whether planned or spontaneous. By making your husband a cup of coffee without being asked, putting a love note in his packed lunch for work, or planning a special date night without his knowing; small actions will speak louder than words. We all love to have things done for us, so do something out of the ordinary for your husband today as your serve him out of love.
3.) Loving Your Husband With Your Thoughts
Sometimes the mind is the hardest of all places for us to love, honor, and respect our husbands. Our minds are a secret place where we can think or say anything we want to about another. No one will hear, and no one will know … except God. We are held accountable by God as much for our thoughts as we are for any other sin we commit outwardly.
Wives, love your husbands, even in your thoughts. If you have a harsh thought about something your husband does or says, deal with that thought immediately. Give your husband and your emotions over to God. Pray that God will help you to love your husband at all times. Bitterness is a great pitfall of many a woman. Do not let bitterness take over your mind, because it surely will come out in your actions.
4.) Loving Your Husband With Your Appearance
Do not dress immodestly. God has blessed women with a beauty unmatched, but God also intended that beauty be saved for the husband to enjoy. Do not flaunt your beauty for other men to see. If you are bringing unnecessary attention to yourself, this will only invite jealousy and bitterness into your marriage.
On the other hand, spending your week in the same worn out pajamas and robe is not ideal either. Consider your husband, and what would please him. Take a shower, shave your legs, and put on some clean clothes. Be a breath of fresh air for your husband when he walks in the door from a hard day at work.
5.) Loving Your Husband Through Your Children
How often does your husband just come in from a long day at work, the children are screaming and running all over the house and you toss him a baby because you have had it and just need a break?
Maybe you have not done this, but I have, more often than I care to recount.
So how do we love our husbands through our children? As wives we need to not manipulatively over-extend our husbands by asking them to care for the children in our stead when really it is just laziness on our own part. Yes, it is absolutely wonderful to have the help of our husbands. They are an integral part to our homes, but you know what I am talking about. We have all done it: asking our husbands to do more than they really need to, and when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.
We also need to train our children to love and respect their fathers in a healthy way. Boys should strive to follow their father’s example and wisdom in manhood. Girls should strive to respect their fathers and even serve him. Our daughters should follow our examples in doing small things for their fathers that will show their love for him, like a special picture of Daddy and daughter, or a song created just for him. When children learn to obey and love their parents, they learn to submit and love the God we are leading them to.
Always Keeping God’s Word At Heart
As in all things, it is so important to keep God at the center of your marriage. You can be doing all of the right things for all of the wrong reasons, it might look good for a time, but it will all fall a part in the end if God is not there holding it all together.
Marriage will not work the way it is intended without God at its center. Read God’s Word with your husband, pray with him, pray over him, and try to be a blessing to him in all that you do: by word, by deed, and by thought. God has given this man to you to grow you, to challenge you, to protect you, to love you. Love your husband as you glorify God together in this blessed union we call marriage.
https://thepurposefulmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/pennant-1.jpg Stomberg is a pastor’s wife and loving mother to three little 
blessings living in rural North Dakota. Reading, sewing, and crafting
are a few of the things that https://thepurposefulmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/pennant-1.jpg enjoys doing when she is not
cuddling with her hubby or playing with her children. https://thepurposefulmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/pennant-1.jpg is
cataloging her journey to become the Proverbs 31 woman on her blog, Road to 31. Grab a cup of coffee and join https://thepurposefulmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/pennant-1.jpg while she blogs about the Bible, natural living, marriage, homemaking, homeschooling and more! Catch Road to 31’s latest series, “The Homemaking Pharisee: Living a ‘Godly’ Life With An Ungodly Spirit,” on Mondays.
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6 Comments on Five Steps To Loving Your Husband More
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Thank you for giving me some new ways to reorient my thinking. My husband does so much for me and I really love for him to know how much he means to me.
Here’s a fun challenge I did this year. Beginning in September, I wrote a reason why I loved him on a post-it each day until Christmas. Then I combined them with pictures in an album and gave it to him for Christmas. I was so much kinder to him in my thoughts when I had to sit and think of different reasons why I loved him each day. :) Here’s the link if you would like to see it. https://withalljoy.com/2013/02/05/joeys-christmas-present/
Beautiful! Love this post. Great advice! Especially the last one!! My hubby and I have been married going on 14 years and I agree with each of these to make my marriage a little stronger… a little more amazing!
Great list, Lindsey! After 26 years of marriage, I can say that I still try to do these things to show love to my husband. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever mess up, Boy, do I ever!! And I agree that the most difficult struggle is within the mind! We can be “dutiful wives” and still harbor resentment and unforgiveness. But God requires more from us, as His followers! Thanks for sharing these at this most appropriate time of the year!
In His Lo♥e, Ann @ Christ in the Clouds
I love this post. I needed this reminder…especially the part about loving my husband with my appearance. By the time he gets home I look rather sloppy with spit up and hair a mess from the day. But my goal is to take a little bit of time to freshen myself up before he gets home. Thanks for the reminder!
I needed to read this more than ever today. Thank you for posting the things I should have been doing for the past 5.5 years.
I read this post with great interest, particularly as I struggle to keep things together. I am definitely at fault for many of the things you have mentioned and often find myself struggling to be the 24/7 cheerleader with the incessant smile. Often, I am plain exhausted and spent, as you have noted, dealing with my own personal issues that require attention. My marriage has been the last thing on my priority list. I’m not above admitting to that and look forward to praying to God to gain his graces so that I can continue to improve as a wife and mother.