My husband woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
He hasn’t felt very good this week, which he claims is because he has to ride the bus. I didn’t wake up feeling so hot myself, but that had more to do with working a full day, then spending 2 hours deep-cleaning the salon.
I woke up and started picking up the house a little bit, and did my morning check of my social media sites and affiliates. A big, looming project on my to-do list this weekend if finishing up editing the senior pictures I took last month.
I finally woke my husband up around 9 o’clock and asked how long he planned on sleeping. “I don’t feel good!” he barked at me.
I sighed in disgust and went to wake my daughter. We grabbed fuzzy blankets and parked in front of the TV to watch the weekly message from Lifechurch.tv. As soon as it started streaming through the TV my husband emerged from the bedroom and started clanking around dishes in the kitchen. Washing them, apparently.
I finally turned around and said, “Are you seriously refusing to watch a church service as a family?”
He sulked into the living room and silently watched the message.
He continued to act like this the rest of the morning. It all came to a head when he marched in and announced that I should drop him off at work, and that he would stay with my sister for the night and return home tomorrow night.
At that point I had enough. I screamed and yelled informed him that he would be doing no such thing. I needed help around the house, the groceries needed to be bought for the week, and this is the ONLY day we all have off to spend together.
Eventually I sent him to buy the groceries. He was still being a grouch when he returned. While I was frantically running around the house trying to get things done, he proceeded to put the foot rest up on the recliner and check football scores from his phone.
Finally I sent him on another errand to buy a 3-cube-organizer shelf I had been eyeballing. After about 20 minutes of texting back and forth trying to communicate which one I wanted (can I just clarify that they only have one option?) he finally purchased it and brought it home.
In the meantime I set up my laptop in my office, i.e. desk beside my bed, and started working. I have several hundred pictures to sift through and edit, as well as blog posts to write.
He proceeded to bring the shelf kit and and dump the contents of the box on the unmade bed. I tried to ignore him as I continued to edit. There were several dramatic sighs, blaming my daughter when he couldn’t find the screws (he was sitting on them), and the pièce de résistance – hammering in EIGHT nails.
Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound …. *curses* (I think he hit his thumb. Serves him right). Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound …
“Do you have a lot of those to nail in??”
“Yes.”
At this point I was almost audibly trying to calm myself.
“How many is a lot”
“Two more.”
After the approximately 735241426374 hammer hits it took to finish he stood the cabinet up and said quite proudly, “Well, what do you think?”
What I was really thinking is several ways to hide a body. But in his mind, he just did me a huge favor!
Relieved that I could get back to work in peace, I thanked him and then turned to the computer.
Mere moments later he came in with a plate of food.
Whether he chose to eat lunch in the bedroom to purposely annoy me or not is up for debate.
In between smacking on his food he turned on the TV. I could feel the muscles in my body tightening and felt myself calculating how long it would take to snatch a pillow and put it over his head.
“Loooook!” he shouted.
I turned to see a dog rescue on TV. Ok.
Once the dogs on TV started barking, our dogs started barking. And whining. And running around.
“Maybe you could move the antenna out to the living room? The channels come in better out there,” I said, between clenched teeth.
“Oh, ok,” he said, between juicy bites of food.
Mercifully he has been in the living room watching TV at full volume for several hours.
So why am I writing about how irritating my husband is today?
Days like today make me want to run for the hills. He is being childish, selfish, and not anything close to the Biblical job description of a husband. Why couldn’t I have married a REAL man? Why do I have to be married to a lazy, thoughtless person? Maybe this is a sign I should just leave.
Um, no.
As irritating as my husband can be, God did not call us to stay in easy marriages. He did not promise every wife a hunk with a 6 pack to match his 6 figure job. He knew marriage would be hard, He knew two imperfect individuals would make an imperfect marriage.
1 Cor 13:1-3 – If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
Ugh. I am super irritable and resentful right now.
1 Peter 3:1 – -Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives
Honestly, my first thought was shut up Peter.
1 Cor 7:39 – A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
Well, he almost died today.
My point is, as irritating and childish as our spouses may be, we as wives are called to love and respect them. We are commanded to show them the love of Christ no matter what.
This is a hard pill for me to swallow, especially when I am in the middle of a day like today, but if I am obedient I believe that God will honor that choice. This post was fairly tongue-in-cheek, but I hope you remember some of these things the next time you find yourself in a similar place in your marriage.
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This is day 12 in the series 31 Days Of Learning To Be Positive. Click here to check out the entire series.
