Marriage takes effort. Every married couple knows that all too well. But as with other worthwhile endeavors, it’s often more important to work smart than to work hard. If our goal is to value our spouse (and it should be), it’s smart to designate significant time to meditating on our spouse.
My use of the word meditation is different from many in our culture. The meditation I’m referring to is rumination, or giving repetitive consideration to a subject.
Some animals, like cattle, chew the cud. Cud is partially digested food. I for one am glad humans don’t chew the cud. Gross!
But humans, more than any other animal, can ruminate mentally. Our thought process is often to rethink what we’ve thought about previously. A lot of our meditation we do without (pardon the ironic pun) even thinking about it.
Any Christ follower who wants to make the most of their walk with God will find it necessary to spend time meditating on His Word and in prayer. My early morning time alone with God gets my focus and attitude into a productive place; I’ve become so accustomed to that daily time that I’m practically addicted to having it.
I realized sometime back, though, that if I need meditation time to help me value a perfect and holy God and keep my relationship with Him strong, then I probably should spend some regular time meditating on the qualities of my wonderful, albeit imperfect wife.
Here are three guidelines I recommend, and I’ll include some examples from my own spousal meditation:
- Identify a strong character quality in your spouse. My wife has a very strong sense of commitment. For her, that means she’s dog-with-a-bone committed to God and to me, her husband. I see this everyday as she helps me accomplish things I cannot do alone. This light really shone brightly during my stroke recovery, when I had some serious limitations. She was and is tireless in whatever she’s committed to, and I’m super blessed to have her as my wife.
- Identify a physical quality you love about your spouse. For my wife, it’s her lips. She has beautiful lips. It’s one of the features that attracted me to her thirty-seven years ago, and I still find myself captivated by them, especially when she’s talking.
- Reflect on something your spouse has done recently that you appreciate greatly. My wife is truly a Proverbs 31 wife, and her modus operandi is to focus her efforts on entrepreneurial projects and to be industrious and productive in them. She holds Super Host status with Air B & B with our Coastal Country Cottage, which she renovated, marketed and now operates with the highest possible quality. She is also overseeing the renovation of a rental property we hope to soon sell at a profit and does so with the highest level of quality and style. All these projects she does without dropping a single degree the quality of the day to day family, church/ministry and professional responsibilities to which she’s committed herself.
One more suggestion: try not to compare your spouse to others. As I write this I can imagine readers comparing their spouse to mine. But God has given each person a unique set of qualities that renders them incomparable. Focus is the key, and as I quiz my five-year-old grandson, focus means thinking about how many things? One. So keep your focus on your spouse and their best qualities.
I highly recommend spousal meditation, and not just once but regularly. I promise that, just as our walk with God is made better by taking time to meditate on His awesome qualities, so will be the walks we’re in with our spouses as we add spousal meditation to our lifestyles.