October 13, 2009: On Praising Spouses

I am not going to praise my spouse on this page today. I won’t. She has asked me not to, and I will honor her request. She tells me that whenever I speak highly of her it makes her uncomfortable because she does not feel worthy of my public compliments. So I’ll grant her wish and honor the petition that so clearly springs from her sweet humility and modest self-effacing character and mild feminine deference and all those other qualities of decorum and grace that make me giddy with delight and keep me praising God daily both for the raptures of matrimonial ecstasy and the calm joys of settled peace that by his favor he has brought into my life through her like she were a rushing cascade of abundant cool waters to a desert-starved and soul-weary traveler.

But praise her? No - I said I wouldn’t do that, and I won’t.

So let me instead encourage you to praise your spouse, if you have one and can scrape together a single good thing to say about him or her.

I’ll be brutally frank about the thing that brought this topic to mind: discussions that apparently take place among married women. I have never been privy to one of these discussions, obviously - but enough reports have filtered back to me over the years to make me wonder if one of the prime topics of conversation is “All The Things That Are Wrong With My Husband.” I even asked a woman the other day if she knew anyone who spoke highly of her mate. She did not say “Oh sure, lots!” but paused a while and scanned her memory until she could come up with a name. The sad thing is that it involved a Christian woman married to an unbeliever. (I think, “Dang. There’s got to be good Christian husbands out there whose wives extol their merits.”)

Some spouses, of course, are just plain losers and there is nothing good to say about them. Nabal (1 Samuel 25) was like that, and his poor wife Abigail had to run to David and say, “My husband is a jerk! Please don’t kill us!” (Nabal then did everybody a favor by falling over dead.) And Gomer (in Hosea chapters 1-3) was a filthy cheating whore, so her husband probably did not go around telling friends, “Well, at least she’s a good cook.”

Those of you who are married to Nabals or Gomers are exempt from the command to say good things about your mates. We don’t want you to lie.

For the rest of you, contemplate applying Philippians 4:8 to your marriages. It reads, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

There’s biblical precedent for praising your husbands and wives. Abraham said to Sarah, "I know what a beautiful woman you are” (Genesis 12:11). The widow of a prophet told Elisha, “You know [my husband] revered the Lord” (2 Kings 4:1). Ruth and Boaz said nice things about each other in public. Solomon and his beloved had the screaming hots for each other, and sang each other’s glories in exquisite detail (Song of Solomon). Lemuel quoted a happy husband who says, “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all” (Proverbs 31:29).

In 1971 my mother wrote an article for the Chicago Daily News in which she praised her husband (as always, I’ll make copies available upon request). One of the things she praised him for was praising her! Among the good things he did (which she framed as “advice for husbands who have more love to offer than money”):

- Make a small production out of it when you introduce her to anyone.
- Smile and nod in agreement when she’s complimented.
- Bristle when you detect even a slight criticism of her.
- If she’s a great housekeeper and you’re a disorganized one, don’t attempt your own reformation. Just brag about her fantastic ability to all her friends.

I don’t know about that last one. I think Mom just got carried away with her own rhetoric, because it seems to me that all great housekeepers - male or female – do in fact appreciate it when their disorganized spouses attempt personal reformation. So maybe she exaggerated a little on that.

But as for the concluding observation, who among us doesn’t like having our fantastic abilities bragged about to all our friends?