“I understand.”

In certain situations, those might be the 2 greatest words paired together in the English language.

Knowing that you have been understood doesn’t mean you’ve been fixed.  It means that you’ve been figured out…the person gets you.

Did you know that God’s desire for us as wives is to be understanding?

Fathers can give their sons an inheritance of houses and wealth, but only the Lord can give an understanding wife.  Proverbs 19:14

I’m sure I’ve read that verse before but it never hit me the way it did this time.  I heard it in a sermon this week and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

As a wife, I knew I was called to honor him.  I knew I was instructed to submit.  I knew I wasn’t suppose to nag or keep records of wrongs.

I think the phrasing of this verse is interesting because it’s not so much a command as it is a gift…to our husbands.

Sometimes, we work so hard to make sure that we are understood that we forget, he needs to be understood too.

One commentary put it like this that an understanding wife is one “who avoids complaining, though she may often have cause for it.” :-)

He needs us to understand that sometimes he just wants to watch the game, especially in the last few minutes of the 4th quarter.  He hopes that we understand that his time table to get things done is different than ours.  He wants us to understand that respect is as important to him as feeling loved is to us.  

He wants us to understand that he is human and will mess up.  He hopes that we understand that he sees the world differently but that doesn’t make him wrong…it just makes him different.

In some circumstances, I’ve realized that my husband and I may not come to a place of complete agreement but we can reach a place of understanding.

The world we live in doesn’t always take the time to understand us but I can make my home a place where my husband feels understood.  Hopefully, he understands that I am still a work in progress on this too.  ~ Anu