What woman wouldn't want her husband to think her as more valuable than jewels, precious gems? Priceless! Rare! Beautiful! What does it take to become worth that much to your loved ones?
While I embark upon this journey to become more like the Proverbs 31 woman, I am doing a bit of "research." I am currently reading Beautiful in God's Eyes by Elizabeth George. She walks through each verse of Proverbs 31:10-31. Her book is convicting, challenging, empowering and encouraging. I am going to try to share my thoughts on each chapter as I go through her book. I am currently on the second chapter, which describes Her value. She points out ways that we as women can add sparkle and brighten up our own life, as well as the lives around us. She suggests that we can bring value to those around us by:
Growing in practical skills - managing a home. Her suggestions include homemaking, money management, and time management. This is an area where I am striving to be better. I am working on doing a better job taking care of our house (dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc.). I know Jim appreciates the meals that I cook and trying to make sure the pantry and fridge are well stocked. I do enjoy taking care of my home and those in it but there's always room for improvement. I am doing a much better job of making dinner most nights (for the past two weeks I've made dinner EVERY night). I'm trying to be budget and health conscious when we go to the grocery store and am making a very diligent effort to buy fewer processed foods (making a healthier version from scratch). I love to cook and am having fun exploring new recipes. Laundry is an area that I don't feel too much struggle in, we have a good system, and we always have clean clothes to wear. However, I generally fail abysmally at dishes and keeping the kitchen clean! Because I love to cook, something is always dirty! I try to catch up and some days I do great, but a lot of the time there is always a pile of dishes to do. Definitely an area where I can try harder.
Elizabeth also mentions money management as a way to add value. This is an area where I feel we're doing a decent job (Jim and I feel this is a team effort). Jim and I always do our budget together every month. We know how much we spend and loosely follow Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan. We have no debt other than our mortgage and are working on saving. Jim is definitely the saver in the family, and I am the spender. I have learned a lot about money being married to him, particularly to be more aware of how much we're spending. We are pretty content with our financial position, however, we're trying to figure out if we can make our budget work with me being a full-time stay-at-home mom (I currently work from home which can be exhausting and difficult with a very active 10 month old!). I read a lot of articles, blogs, books, etc. on how to manage money, retirement planning, budgeting, etc. I hope that I can add value by thinking of creative ways to tweak our budget or helping figure out investments/savings (Jim doesn't like to read so he trusts me to summarize what I've read).
Lastly, in this section, Elizabeth mentions time management. This is an area where I feel I could use help. Some days, I manage to workout, clean, take care of household chores, play with my baby girl, work, and cook dinner. Other days, I feel like I've wasted the entire time on the internet (I could argue that some of that time is productive as I find new recipes, learn about how to raise kids, and read financial articles but I think Jim would disagree). I lack discipline. Elizabeth George is also the author of a book titled Life Management for Busy Women. This book is on my list to re-read. Hopefully I'll get some good ideas on how to be more productive.
In this chapter on value, Elizabeth points out not only growing in practical skills but also growing in emotional stability. I feel I've written enough for now so I will have to revisit this topic some other time.
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