It is summer of 2014 as I write. My husband and I are Facetiming right now while he is deployed to the Middle East for the military. As you have observed, while he and I are "talking," I am writing. We are having what I think of as Secondary Quality Time. My husband wanted to see me and hang out with me, but he had stuff to do. My husband did not announce this to me, I simply noticed that he wasn't really listening to anything I was saying and was looking at other stuff. 

I could have pouted and gotten snippy with him for blowing me off. Instead, I thought: "No biggee." I adjusted accordingly and started writing you. He's very happy to see his lovely wife and feel as if I'm in the room with him, but --oh wait he's talking--

He told me about a photographer who took some pictures on one of his airdrops. Something funny happened that made the picture look like no one was flying the airplane. Now he's staring at some paperwork again so I am writing again. Let's call it Being Together But Working in Our Separate Cubicles. Now is not the time for me to bring up anything important, ask him any questions or expect him to be able to concentrate on my feelings.

Our husbands cannot gaze at us lovingly and give us two hours of undivided attention all the time. They have a lot of stuff to do, and sometimes they just want us to hang with them. Once a few months ago, I plopped down on the driveway and watched my husband change the oil on our car. He could not really talk about anything, as guys generally do not multi-task. "Dude, I'm changing the oil," a husband might think. "How can I also talk?" 

Now if that had been you or me, we could stir the spaghetti sauce with a spoon in our mouth while we held the baby, cradled the phone in our shoulder talking our friend through her toddler's temper tantrum while petting the dog with our foot. But I respect the one-thing-at-a-time nature of men. While my husband changed the oil, he was glad I was there. When he was finished, he smiled at me and said, "You're my girl." Hearing those words cheered my heart just as much as a meaningful long, conversation would have. 

Oh, and that picture of the football player? One, I think it is so incredibly sweet to see a big strong man kneel down and pray. And two, our men are busy and have heavy things weighing on their hearts. I'm happy to be my husband's adoring cheerleader sometimes, standing in the sidelines. 

I humbly appreciate that my husband works and wants me to stay home so I can rock my domestic swag. I love that he loves that I love the homemaker gig. Dig? Are we rapping or are we writing? Don't need to be fighting.

Got yo money in the bag y'all. Love yo honey not the grab y'all.

I'm tryin' ta be real. I gotta void ta fill.

I agree, I'll stick to blogging. But yes, my husband and I get along about money pretty well. My 12-year-old daughter told me she reads books in which the children's parents fight and shout at each other about the bills. She said, "When I read these books I think, 'Why are they doing that? Why are they fighting about the bills?'"

Well, maybe they signed up for too many bills. And they don't understand Who's paying them. We don't place our trust in money. We place our trust in God. When things are not going well financially, trusting Him is all-consuming, but it's not impossible. Eleven years ago my husband lost his job and our family had barely any income for almost a year. God brought us through it. Rather than letting that crisis destroy my marriage, it brought me to my knees and helped shape me into a Godly woman who can write stuff.

No wonder the Biblical saying "In God We trust" is printed on American money. Yes you need this money. But O ye people, don't trust in this money, the cash whispers to us. The saying is printed on money, rather than on the side of the city bus or on the entrance to the library, because the danger is that we will all begin to trust in money. Don't do it. Trust in God. When we trust God to the extent that we decide we are just not going to fuss with our husbands over money, then we as wives have become masters at contentment and faith. Now it's all good wit da cash yo?

We see eye to eye. We don't even have ta try. 

We hang it out ta dry and we wave the thang good-bye.

The brilliant self help books and relationship experts with fancy titles would have us all believe that we need to work out every little thing in marriage.

I can't find that in the Bible. It's not in there.

It's a bunch of complicated psychobabble to drone on and on and dissect each issue, conflict and facial expression in marriage. Meanwhile life's just passing us right by. As Charlotte Lucas says in Pride & Prejudice, we must accept that, in marriage, "there will always be vexation and grief," and she's right. The author who wrote those words mocks her own character for saying this. But now it's my turn to write and I say there was great wisdom in it.

I say, just forgive already.

We don't have enough time here on Earth to waste our days fleshing out every little thing. I used to think it was somehow dishonest to forgive right away in marriage. That if I didn't feeeeeeel happy then I couldn't forgive. Yeah well, it's not dishonest at all, it's just smart. We probably apply the forgiveness passages in scripture very easily and cheerfully to people who really could not care less about us. Random people. I don't know who these people are, but I've forgiven them. They put the wrong thing in my grocery bag at the store. They gossiped about me. They didn't keep their word. They beat me in a game of Mario Kart wii.

The most important person in a wife's life is her husband. If any energy from our hearts is going toward forgiveness in this life, it ought to first go to that guy. He's the guy. He's worthy of our forgiveness.

A very cool lady told me long ago that the secret to forgiveness is simply to choose to forgive as a matter of the will. It's a decision that you make. And then ask God to let your feelings catch up with that. Our feelings are not in control. God is in control. When we Christian ladies go around proclaiming, "God is in control," we can really live it when we apply forgiveness like this in our marriage.

My favorite passage on forgiveness is Ephesians 4:32 which says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as Jesus Christ has forgiven you." I always shrink in my chair a little at that last part. Oh yeah. Think what I've been forgiven for. Let's not think of it actually. I'm so small and worthless, so sinful and ashamed. If God can forgive me for what a mess I am, I can forgive my husband for anything at all. We need to take this passage as an order and a command rather than a suggestion. God is telling us to be kind to our husbands, to be tenderhearted toward them, to forgive them.

If a husband doesn't make a big fuss over his wife on a special occasion, has a grumpy day or days, behaves in an offensive manly fashion, disappoints his wife or hurts her feelings, all of which is to say, displays the fact that he is only human, then all she needs to do is announce to the Lord that she forgives him. And then ask the Lord to get her feelings to catch up with that.

Where else does it matter more than in marriage, to apply the passage in Matthew 6:3, "don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing"? Otherwise known as, "keep no record of wrongs." 1 Corinthians 13.

That is the Bible defining love.

A motorcycle crash nearly killed Rose's husband. Brad was coming home from work one night on his motorcycle, like he always did. A car didn't see him in time. The doctors thought he might not make it. They told the family to say their good-byes at one point. His pelvis was broken in two. He was bleeding internally. He was unable to move in the hospital for weeks. He was in tremendous pain. He endured many procedures. He is in rehabilitation therapy now.

Brad and Rose go to my family's church. Rose has lived up to her name, blooming sweetly and caring for Brad, staying by his side, staying strong for the family. Some days you know she must have been feeling fragile, like a wilted flower, as we all would in her devastating situation.

What would it be like, to stand by helplessly as her husband was broken in two and not knowing if or when he would be back to normal? Not having him to talk to. Being without him. Seeing him in all that pain. Just like that, Rose's life changed. 

Rose is a strong lady. This is what the Bible (taken from Proverbs 31) says about wives like Rose. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. Strength and honor are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her."

That really does describe Rose. She's not one of these fussy high maintenance girls. She dresses so pretty and always looks nice and yet she's the kind of wife who kills snakes, stands up to foxes, and runs coyotes off their property. I am pretty sure I remember hearing her say something about a time she was driving a bush hog. And she's been through some stuff. She already lost a husband to leukemia and after he died, she still took care of his elderly mama. (I told you she was sweet.) Her granddaughter miraculously survived after being born so prematurely she barely weighed anything.

Rose and Brad are sparkles of light at our church, always smiling, always encouraging, always glorifying God. Every church has folks like that I would guess. They're the sparkly ones at our church. Makes you wonder why the Lord lets things like this happen. I know we're not supposed to question, but I wonder why maybe He didn't let a grumpy guy get hit on his motorcycle instead. Let a mean husband have his life shattered. Why Rose's husband? It's hard to accept.

When my friend Kim's family went to visit Brad, they hoped to cheer him up and strengthen his faith. Kim said they were the ones strengthened. He was the one witnessing to them. His own mother said she thought her faith was strong until she saw Brad's. All of us have been amazed by his faith, and Rose's.

When I asked Rose if I could tell you about the motorcycle crash, this is what she said. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard anyone say. And she said it while she had the flu.

"God's grace is so real in our lives. We could not have done this without our Lord holding us.
Brad is taking steps now. We praise God for that.
We are so very thankful for our church family. We love our church as a whole family so much. And we're waiting to get things back to normal again.
We don't understand the trials that God puts us through. But only: He has his reasons.
And He just knocks off the dust, so His light can shine through better, that's all."

Been thinking about you, airline pilot wife. I think you rock. You have many of the sacrifices and stress that military wives do, but in shorter spurts and with none of the accolades. Frankly there aren't that many accolades so you're not missing out on much. The most thanks I usually get for my husband's military service are when people with those yellow "support our troops" bumper sticker magnets cut me off in traffic.

My husband has flown for Delta Air Lines for 13 years, and he also flies part time for the Air National Guard. So we say his airline job is his day job. And the military gig is extra, to supplement that. He's a first officer and feels he is going to stay in a holding pattern for two decades with that. His seniority number magically seems to stay the same over time. 

We are very grateful for his job, but we never really got to experience the good ol' days of the airlines that we keep hearing about. My husband got hired right before the September 11 terrorist attacks schwacked the airlines. His check ride was September 12. He was a goner shortly thereafter but he's back now. We've been furloughed once and had our pay cut at least three times. The military job is so we'll have a retirement, now that the pension is gone.

We airline wives enjoy many benefits. One, those white polyester shirts our guys wear never have to be ironed. Two, our young children think every airplane that flies over the house is daddy. And three, people like hearing our husbands' greeting on the answering machine because they sound like an airline pilot.

"Thank you forrrrrrrr....

Calling our family today?

We hope you'll,

leave-a-message annnnnnnd....

Enjoy the rest of your day."

Is what they sound like. Which is fun.

But our entire Western civilization is built upon the concept of working Monday through Friday during respectable daylight hours. For us airline pilot wives, every week is different. Every month is different. Our husbands come and go, sometimes at the last minute when we've just made their favorite meal and the Bat Phone rings. When our husbands sit reserve, we sit reserve. When our husbands are on short call, we're on short call. We're carrying the load many evenings when, for the rest of the world, activities and sports for children are a two-parent operation. 

We can't say, "Wait till your father comes home," when the children are acting up, because they'd be waiting three days. We take out the trash, put the children to bed at night, have no one to hand the crying baby off to, and are alone in our beds at night. While our husbands are on a 36 hour layover to Paris. Like many of you, our family doesn't know yet whether my husband will be off on Christmas day.

Lest I begin to make us all sound diva whiny, I bring up all of this because it means that we airline pilot wives can pride ourselves in having some strong character. We're forced to be a big girl when our men are away. We're not just reading the words in the Bible, we're actually doing them. We have to rely on God because we can't rely on our husbands day to day when they're away on a trip. We airline pilot's wives are champions in gratefulness and forgiveness. And flexibility and graciousness are sub-categories of both of those.

There's a passage in the Bible that made me think of you this morning. Proverbs 31 describes the ultimate God-honoring woman who can inspire all of us. This Proverbs 31 chick is hard working, honorable, strong, not afraid, and virtuous. The verse that made me think of you the most today is verse 23 where it says, "Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land." That's talking about where the coolest Bible time cats used to loiter and talk about important things, and it was a place of high honor. It was the entrance to the city. Goofy doofus husbands with loser wives were not chillin' with the elders at the gate. 

Today I'm thinking of your husband at his gate, maybe gate B26 at Hartsfield airport. An airline pilot's wife can know that she is a powerful reflection on her man, she is such a strong anchor to support him, he needs her so much to remain faithful and diligent as a loving wife, relying on Christ for her inspiration and motivation. As she continues to be this caliber of classy wife for him, he'll be known at the gates as a man to be admired.

In the first six or seven seconds you spent on this website, I am sure you noticed what a Bible girl I am. And I'm proud of that.

But ladies, there is a time for naughtiness, namely: having some seriously flirtatious fun in your marriage. Many scriptures tell us to be gracious in our speech, to honor the Lord in our manner, to let no vile talk or jesting be known to come from us, to be sober.

But have you read the Song of Solomon?

Whoosh. Oh my. I think God wants us to enjoy physical intimacy with our husbands. The Song of Solomon people are married and God put that in the Bible. So hop to it girlfriend.

When my husband comes home from work, he parks in the driveway right by a tall hill that is somewhat landscaped but was overgrown with weeds this summer. That unattractive cliff is the first thing he sees when he comes home.

I never notice this hill. I don't pay any attention to it. The weeds never bother me.

He'd mention those weeds a lot, squirt them with weed fighter substance when he had time, and mention the pesky weeds again soon after that.

I finally realized that this was something that was really aggravating my husband. And I realized this was something I could do for him, was to get rid of those weeds. I'm here all the time, whereas his time at home is limited with working. So when I would go running this  summer, I'd spend 15 or 20 minutes pulling weeds afterward. I was sweaty and gross already from running, and the children were not awake yet to "help." I'm talking about the little helpers there. We give the older children lots of jobs, but even for them, this hill is steep, tricky and slippery with pine straw and probably chiggers whatever those are, so it was best left to the big people. Rather treacherous.

These weeds had some fight in them. They were more like medium sized bushes with stubborn personalities and roots to match. But I'm stubborn too, and I fought them for a little while each morning this summer. It took about a month to really get those weeds licked. They rallied and grew back in a couple of times, but they surrendered eventually after they realized they had met their match.

The hill looks very nice now.

I think my husband is happier when he parks in the driveway.

I want to offer hope in the midst of a storm.

In trying to help two couples considering divorce, I went through my entire Bible, every page, and wrote down the scriptures that I thought would address pain and heartache in the context of marriage in the face of divorce.

Please read those by clicking on the button above. Please read them, before you make any decisions. Please read them, and decide to fight for your marriage with God as your strong Father. Nothing is too hard for Him.

I really have to wonder what Eve said to Adam to get him to disobey God. It's one of those questions I'm going to ask when I get to heaven.

It's all in the same verse, the same sentence actually: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." Genesis 3:6

That's it. She gave it to her husband with her, and he did eat.

The Bible says later that she truly thought she was right; the Bible says she was deceived but Adam's the one who knowingly sinned. So I don't think she pulled any female power plays (and neither should we, ever). She just truly and sincerely thought Adam didn't have all the information he needed. Which leads me to believe she overpowered him with her supposed insightfulness. I mean Satan did tell Eve all this compelling stuff about the virtues of the fruit. And Adam caved, under feeling unsure of himself while she was so sure of herself.

I don't want to take the lead in my marriage just because I think I've done the research.

I stopped watching HGTV. I cut myself right off ladies. Haven't watched it in over a year now probably. It's that decorating channel with all these grandiose fun situations of extreme house makeovers and beautiful renovations. I liked the channel because it never brought me down or scandalized me the way so much of the smarmy content out there on TV does. I thought I'd found a nice fun wholesome little chick distraction when I just wanted to relax.

But guess what happened? No longer did I appreciate my beautiful house. No longer did I look around and see how lovely everything is and how blessed I am. Instead, I started walking around thinking, "Now if we just knocked out this wall.... and added a covered patio.... and if we expanded this room a little bit and added brighter fabric..." All of that looks so easy on HGTV. It's so easy, right? You just add a wall and little worker people come in and it takes 30 minutes and it's so much nicer now.

My husband lets me stay home with our children while he slays the dragon and provides for our family. He works as a pilot for an airline and also flies for the National Guard part time. We joke that we are a two-income family: my husband has two incomes. So I really appreciate his working so hard while I stay home. We're not cheap, the children and me. He is very devoted to taking good care of us. I decided adding a bunch of grandiose decorating ideas to our life was really not being the kind of wife I want to be. It displayed a lack of contentment that I didn't like in myself.

Every now and then I'll replace a lamp shade for 20 bucks. I painted a room gray-ish blue to cover up my dark red phase I was over. Paint's pretty cheap but it can take a lot of time to give yourself projects like that. I got new curtains on sale to replace the 20 year old ones in our bedroom. We can replenish and update little things gradually. But no more grand scale ideas for me.

No more HGTV for me. You might be able to watch it for fun and not start day-dreaming about granite counter tops but I can't. And I try not to stare too long at the pretty rooms in my Southern Living magazines either. My house is just fine the way it is. It's really beautiful actually and I love it. I think my husband likes to know I feel that way about it.

I'm so proud of you, dear military wife, and so grateful to you. My husband is Air Force, which he calls the country club of the military, so we are not sacrificing and working nearly as much as many of you. We haven't had to move much, but my husband has deployed overseas for a few months at a time throughout our marriage. 

 It's tough. We just want our daddy.    

Mindset is your first weapon in the battle of the wifely deployment department. You, dear military wife, are fighting a battle while your husband fights his. My husband has often said that when he is deployed at war, his wife has the harder job staying behind.

You are among the elite group of women like those in the Bible who stayed home while their men repeatedly went off to war. Feel honored that you share in this strength of character and sacrifice. We are a different breed. The deployments make you strong. 

The Psalms are my favorite thing to read when my husband is away. You realize when you read the Psalms that the Lord truly does understand how you feel. There's a lot in there about battles and triumphing over those. King David was really pouring his heart out when he wrote those Psalms. We don't have to read the Bible in order, ladies. No one's going to tell on you, if you skip some parts. Reading the Bible is just spending time with Him. Open up to the Psalms and you will have a rush of love pour over you that says you are not alone after all.