Maybe Your Wife Sees What You Don’t

There was a time in my marriage when I wanted a really good car.

Not because we didn't have one.

We did.

It was old, but it worked.

The truth is, most of my friends were driving nicer cars than mine, and as a young man, I wanted to look like I was doing well too.

I was working as a wedding filmmaker then and making a steady income. Money was coming in, but mostly in smaller amounts from different jobs. And I had one weakness that wasn't helping me at all:

I wasn't good at saving.

My wife was.

At that stage of our marriage, however, I don't think we had fully learned how much we needed each other's strengths.

I was doing my thing.

She was doing hers.

I was imagining the car I would buy one day when enough money finally came in.

My wife was quietly thinking about something completely different.

Our family.

Our future.

A home.

And then one day, she surprised me.

My Wife Had Been Building a Dream I Couldn't See

She called me and took me to see a plot of land.

She was buying it.

I remember being genuinely confused.

My wife wasn't earning some huge amount of money. I couldn't understand where she had suddenly found enough to buy land.

Then I discovered what she had been doing.

Saving.

Little amounts.

Quietly.

Over years.

While I was waiting for a large amount of money to come so I could do something big, she had been doing something small consistently until it became something big.

Then she asked me to come and sign the papers.

She even put the property in my name.

I went home thinking about that.

And if I'm truthful, I felt challenged.

Maybe even a little ashamed.

Here I was imagining myself in a beautiful car, partly because the men around me had beautiful cars.

My wife had been thinking about where our family would live.

She hadn't killed my dream.

She had simply seen something I wasn't seeing.

And that experience taught me something about marriage that I understand much better today:

“Sometimes the person God gave you as a helper will help you most by seeing what you cannot see.”

“Help” Doesn't Always Mean “Yes”

Genesis takes us back to the beginning.

God looked at Adam and said:

I think husbands can sometimes hear the word helper and imagine someone whose job is to assist us with whatever we've already decided to do.

But that's too small.

Adam had a genuine lack.

God saw it before Adam did.

And God's answer was the woman.

The wife was not created because the man already possessed everything he needed and simply required an assistant to carry his bags.

God gave him someone corresponding to him, someone with whom he would become one flesh.

That means I should expect my wife to bring something into our marriage that I do not possess by myself.

Sometimes that will feel wonderful.

Sometimes it may feel inconvenient.

Because real help doesn't always sound like:

“That's a brilliant idea. Go ahead.”

Sometimes real help sounds like:

“Have you thought about this?”

“Can we afford that?”

“What happens to the family if this doesn't work?”

“Do we really need this right now?”

And if I'm proud, those questions can sound like opposition.

But what if they aren't?

“What if the person asking you to slow down is not standing in the way of your vision, but protecting something your vision forgot to consider?”

Men, We Need to Be Honest About Ambition

I don't think ambition is automatically wrong.

Men should work.

Build.

Provide.

Think about the future.

Take responsibility.

And sometimes meaningful progress requires taking risks.

But ambition is a terrible master when pride gets mixed into it.

That car I wanted wasn't only transportation.

Part of it was comparison.

I saw what other men had and wanted to look like them.

That's difficult to admit, but it's true.

Scripture has always warned our hearts about coveting what belongs to someone else. And our generation has made comparison even easier because we can now carry everybody else's lifestyle around in our pockets.

Sometimes we call something a dream when part of it is really the desire to be seen.

Sometimes we call something vision when we haven't yet asked whether it is wise.

And this is where a wife who knows her husband well can become an enormous gift.

She may recognize when excitement has started outrunning wisdom.

She may notice how much pressure a decision will put on the family.

She may see what the children need while I'm thinking about what I want to accomplish five years from now.

Not every wife will always be right.

And not every husband is naturally a reckless visionary while every woman is naturally cautious and detailed. We shouldn't turn personal observations into commandments God never gave.

But I have learned this much:

“Marriage becomes poorer when either spouse starts believing they have nothing important to learn from the other.”

She Bought the Land. I Started Building.

Something changed in me after my wife bought that plot.

I told her:

“Okay. You've bought the land. Leave the building to me.”

And I started building.

Then I got completely caught up in it.

The project became something I loved.

Over the next few years, the land my wife had quietly saved for became a beautiful home for our family.

Looking back, I love what happened there.

She didn't have to become me.

I didn't have to become her.

She brought something.

I brought something.

And when those things started working together, our whole family benefited.

That reminds me of the woman described in Proverbs 31.

She isn't passive.

She thinks.

She plans.

She considers a field and buys it.

She works.

She provides.

She watches carefully over her household.

And Scripture says something beautiful about her husband:

Trust.

That word matters.

A wise husband doesn't merely want a wife who supports his decisions.

He wants to become the kind of husband who can genuinely trust her wisdom.

And a wise wife doesn't use her influence to compete with her husband.

She uses it for the good of the home God has entrusted to them.

A Woman Carries Enormous Influence in a Home

I have come to believe that a wife often has an extraordinary influence over the atmosphere of her home.

The warmth.

The rhythms.

The little traditions.

How things are organized.

How birthdays feel.

What happens around the dinner table.

Whether people feel welcomed.

Whether the small things that hold family life together are noticed.

That influence should never be treated as insignificant.

Proverbs says:

That's powerful.

But husbands need to be careful with this truth.

It would be terribly convenient for a man to say:

“Well, the woman sets the tone of the house,”

while he is angry, absent, selfish, spiritually disengaged or unwilling to serve.

No.

A husband has enormous responsibility before God too.

Ephesians 5 doesn't tell husbands to sit at the top of an organization chart giving instructions.

It tells us to love our wives:

That kind of leadership costs something.

It serves.

It protects.

It listens.

It takes responsibility.

It doesn't make the wife carry the whole emotional and spiritual weight of the home while the husband calls himself the overseer.

“A wife should not have to create warmth around a husband who keeps bringing coldness into the house.”

We need each other.

The World Around Us May Change. God's Word Doesn't Need Rewriting.

Family life looks different today than it did generations ago.

Women work.

Men sometimes work from home.

Businesses are built together.

Responsibilities shift according to seasons.

Some wives earn more than their husbands.

Some husbands handle certain household responsibilities better than their wives.

Life doesn't always fit into the neat little boxes people create.

But Scripture doesn't become irrelevant because circumstances change.

Our question shouldn't simply be:

“What did husbands and wives do fifty years ago?”

The better question is:

“How can my wife and I faithfully obey God as husband and wife in the life He has actually given us?”

The principles remain.

One flesh.

Mutual trust.

Sacrificial love.

Respect.

Responsibility.

Wisdom.

Faithfulness.

Serving rather than competing.

And recognizing that God's design wasn't mistaken when He said the man should not be alone.

And Eventually, I Got the Car Too

Years passed.

God was gracious to us.

He gave us the home.

Our family grew.

He opened our eyes to other investments.

We matured.

And eventually, we were able to own the kind of car I had dreamed about when I was younger.

But something was different by then.

I was different.

The car wasn't carrying the same weight anymore.

It wasn't proving that I had arrived.

It wasn't trying to help me look like my friends.

It was simply something we could enjoy responsibly in a different season of life.

And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten exactly what I wanted when I wanted it.

Knowing myself back then, I'm not convinced it would have helped me.

Maybe it would have hurt me.

There is a kindness in God's timing that we don't always recognize while we're waiting.

And sometimes God uses our spouse as part of that kindness.

Husbands, Listen.

Maybe your wife is asking questions about the dream you are chasing.

Don't immediately call her negative.

Listen.

Maybe she's noticing something.

Maybe she sees pressure on the children that you haven't seen.

Maybe she understands your finances better than you think.

Maybe she knows when your ambition is beginning to cost your family too much.

And wives, don't underestimate what God has placed in your hands either.

Your wisdom matters.

Your discernment matters.

The atmosphere you help cultivate matters.

Your husband's dreams matter too.

Support what is good.

Speak when something concerns you.

Don't compete with him.

Help him.

And husbands, don't merely tolerate that help.

Value it.

Our marriage became stronger when I stopped seeing our differences merely as frustrations and started seeing some of them as God's provision.

We still don't see everything the same way.

We probably never will.

But perhaps that is part of the point.

“If my wife only saw everything exactly as I did, she could only help me see what I already see.”

Before You Make the Next Big Decision

Ask yourself:

“Have I genuinely listened to my spouse, or am I only looking for their agreement?”

And before either of you fights to have the final word, remember whose household this really is.

Neither the husband's vision nor the wife's wisdom is enough without God.

So bring the dream to Him.

Bring the concerns to Him.

Bring the money.

The children.

The career.

The home.

The next big decision.

And then listen to each other.

Maybe your spouse doesn't see everything you see.

That may be exactly why God gave them to you.

“Sometimes the strength of a marriage is not that two people see the same thing. It is that they trust each other enough to put both views on the table before God and build from there.”