Learning How to Build {Even When You Are So Mad You Could Spit Nails}

“A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 14:1

Heat flooded my face. To say I felt angry would have been an understatement. The hard closing of the bedroom door, a firm period on the end of a statement, declared my stance -“I am right and you are wrong.”

An overwhelming need to get away pulsed through me. I wanted to grab my keys, hop in our van, and drive away. No real destination. Just somewhere that was not my house – a house suddenly filled with tension and hasty words.

Realizing the hour was too late and my emotions too high to make driving wise, I opted for sitting on the edge of our back patio. Prayers and tears poured out together. Prayers less about “Lord, show me my wrong in this” and more along the lines of “What is his deal, Lord?!?!”

I cried and prayed and prayed and cried. And when words and tears were finally spent, the Lord redirected my attention. A new addition to our patio caught my eye. My husband and I had put it in a few months earlier. We had dreamed together, shoveled together, raked gravel together, laid brick pavers together. The two of us, side by side, had built it.

My thoughts wandered to other things built over 14 years of marriage – a family with three girls, a home where we can laugh and feel safe together, a life that I love. The issue I had been livid about moments earlier suddenly seemed a whole lot smaller.

My right to be angry, the one I had been gripping so fiercely, slipped from my fingers as realization set in. We had invested too much in our marriage to let a disagreement cause division, to let words be a destructive force in our home. And when I walked back into my house, it was with a changed heart. One more concerned with being in right relationship than with being right. A heart ready to ask for forgiveness. A heart willing to work together to find a solution.

I am seeing that being a wise woman who builds means not only prudently managing my home, but also being a woman who tends to her marriage. The wisdom to build comes with a humble realization I need just as much work as my husband (if not more) and a willingness to pray far more than I fuss or nag.

Will you ask the Lord some questions I am having to ask today – Where am I doing well in building up my husband and strengthening my marriage? In what areas have I been more like a one woman demolition team?

May we keep our hearts humble and prayerful before the Lord, trusting Him to do more than we could ever hope, ask, or think in our marriages. (Eph. 3:20) And when these precious men the Lord has blessed us with make us mad enough to spit nails? May we choose to be builders.