Becoming Best Friends

Do you have a best girl friend or two, or perhaps a sister who you can call a best friend? You probably do. And can you think of the many things you do for and with a best friend? Your list is probably like mine—you pray for her, phone her, send her cards and notes in the mail, celebrate her birthday, get together for lunch, visit often, e-mail her, pick up little things for her that you know she would like. On and on the list goes.

Well, this is the kind of love God wants us (if we’re married) to display to our husband—a love that is deeper and more devoted than what we would demonstrate to a best girl friend. You see, loving your husband is first on God’s list of assignments for us in Titus 2:3-5. Indeed, loving our husband is a high calling! So, let’s see how many ways we can do the work of love and set about to answer God’s calling for us to cultivate this character quality as Christian wives.

It may sound strange with all of our recent emphasis on the importance of your role as a parent. But, an important choice that every wife needs to make in order to become best friends with your husband is to choose to love your husband before or ahead of your children (or your best friend!).

This is not a choice to love your husband and not love your children. No, this is a setting of priorities. God’s next high calling in Titus 2 is to love our children. But please note the order of God’s callings in verse 4—before He calls us to love our children, He calls us to love our husband.

In most cases, marriage and establish­ing a relationship with a husband precedes bearing children and beginning a family. And, as I once heard a wise person explain, “You live the first 20 years of your life as a single, the second 20 years as a married woman raising children, and the third 20 years with your husband.”

Let’s see now… that’s 20 years alone, 20 years raising children, and 40-plus years as a wife. Surely the mathematics show us vividly the investment we must make in our marriage day after day. So be careful—and be wise. When the children arrive— accompanied by all the busyness and activity that chil­dren generate—make sure loving your husband doesn’t get crowded out. Your friendship and love relationship with your husband must be faithfully and dili­gently nurtured, even in the midst of the duties and chaos of raising your children.

So, make the choice to love your husband. That’s right—decide to love him. That might not sound so romantic. But, a choice to love your husband is most definitely a choice that will benefit both him and you. And it’s a choice that honors the Lord and is a testimony to His glory.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned these now-famous words to her dear husband Robert: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” When you choose an attitude of thankfulness determinedly express love to your husband, you will certainly find that the lovey-dovey feelings beyond those of friendship will follow.

A Verse to Recall:

She does him good and not evil all the days of her life (Proverbs 31:12).

Find further study of God’s priorities for women in my book, A Woman’s High Calling.

Read Becoming Best Friends on Elizabeth & Jim George.