As the readers know, I recently purchased and began reading a book called The Power of a Praying Wife. I became interested in this book after reading a comment from a reader in the forums. She had questioned about the book and its application in the lives of other couples.
I then read a few chapters of the book and gave my thoughts in another article.
One concept that came kind of surprising to me was in the section that deals with priorities. In this section, the author discusses how the order in which you place your priorities can make a difference in the happiness of your life. To my surprise the order was a little different than I had thought.
The order of priorities as they were listed in the book were God, spouse, children. Of course I was not surprised that God should be placed first. However the next two were a little bit of a shock. I love my husband and I love my children. I had not given much thought to the order that they come in my life.
I suppose that I assumed that my children should come first because they are much more needy and dependent than my husband. They are my responsibility. They consume more time and energy from me than anything else.
However the more that I thought about it, the more that I realized the order listed in the book was correct. And that order stems from the exact thoughts that I had about how much time is spent on children. Because we, as mothers, are typically forced to place priority on our children we must voluntarily place more priority on our husband.
The children will make their place in our lives without effort on our part. However our marriage and our relationship with our husband will take some effort on our part.