Are you Cultivating the Land? Caution: Encroachment Warning!

Wives Wednesday - Keep care of your Property! Ever consider gardening? I remember as a little girl, I would plant vegetables with my grandmother. We would spend a lot of time planting seeds then ensuring they got nourished with water. We would check on them regularly and prune them. We would remove dead or dying leaves and clean around them to ensure they were in the best environment to grow. Sometimes, no matter how much we tried to contain them, some of them would get out of control. I didn’t understand it. But my Nana would get a few sticks and we would tie them up to keep them together. The purpose (as I understand it) was to help them to grow strong and to keep them off the ground where insects and parasites could eat them. It also helped some of them, which were planted so they could grow WITHOUT infringing or encroaching on the things around it. Doing this ensured we did not lose produce (productivity) to the environment and we maximized our growth by creating a supportive “trellis” to ensure it grew upright and strong. That reminded me of marriage today. Often, we fail to nurture our marriage relationships. We plant the seeds and just expect them to produce. We don’t check on it (daily communication). We don’t prune it (determine what things are a detriment to the relationship and shed it). We don’t create a trellis for it (boundaries to keep “parasites” from eating at our spouse) and then we wonder why our marriage is not blooming or producing anything sustainable or how it appears to be dying. It’s important as wives that we don’t just focus on the external things. We can’t just have a peripheral view of our marriage and think that everything is OK at-a-glance. We need to be diligent, deliberate and disciplined about cultivating and nurturing out marriage and nourishing our husbands. It’s not difficult. We just MUST remain vigilant in ensuring no one takes better care of our garden than we do. You ever ride pass someone’s home and look at their landscaping and think man that yard looks great? You ever see someone’s home and look at their landscaping and think, man how do they let all of those weeds grow in their yard? That’s how people look at our marriages and our husbands. There is ALWAYS someone that thinks they can do a better job at taking care of them. “They” always have suggestions for making things better and remember, we tend to HEAR the opinions of others easier than we do that of those we know in love. And again, our voice becomes silent to the ones who long to hear us the most. So be mindful of your home. Protect It. Nourish It. Prune It. Nurture It. Then, once you’ve put in the work, enjoy the fruits of your labor as you enjoy your healthy, thriving marriage. #wiveswednesday #therapistchat #sharhondalford #wisdomforwives ©2018 Sharhonda Ford