Are you trustworthy?

We’ve been working our way through a series on Marriage about bringing good things to our husband and to our marriage through respect, trustworthiness, and love. We have covered three different ways we show and build respect for our husbands (through submission, our speech, and trust,) and now we’re ready to dig into another important issue in marriage: trustworthiness.

{You can find all “She Brings Him Good” series posts here.}

We’ve already covered one of the most obvious aspects of being a trustworthy wife – being trustworthy in fidelity and wise in relationships with others. 

But there’s another area of trustworthiness we need to look at if we want our husbands to feel confident and at peace in our relationship.

Wives,.. are we also responsible & reliable?

That is, are we trustworthy in the daily things? Are we reliable with our responsibilities?

Are You Trustworthy?

I’m not saying we need to be perfect little Stepford wives – no! But as wives, we appreciate it when our husbands do what they say they are doing to do, don’t go back on their word, take care of necessary projects around the home, and take care of their responsibilities–right? Not just as wives, but as people, we appreciate that in any relationship. Our husbands desire no less.

Whether you stay home, work from home, or work outside of the home, whatever arrangement you and your husband have agreed upon–if you are generally reliable and hold up your end, then your husband will feel secure in his trust in his wife.

Why does this this matter? Why do our husband’s need this from us?

I’ve mentioned that I am a Creative Messy. I also tend to round and estimate and be very general and “close enough.” James is none of those things. We are very opposite in very many ways. If he says 3pm, he means 3pm, and if say 3pm (I almost always say ABOUT 3pm,) I’m thinking anywhere between 2:50 and 3:15.

I am also forgetful, and I always have a bucket full of good intentions (because I’m highly optimistic and that extends to thinking that I’m going to be able to get a lot more done in a lot less time than I actually can accomplish.)

As a result, I’m not the most reliable person. I mean, I’m loyal, I’m committed, I’m reliable to an extent because if I say I will be there, I will be there.. but if you really need me to be early then I’m not the best person for the job. And I’m working hard on that, I am.

I used to be worse than I am, and I have improved a lot, but years of unpredictable patterns have left their mark. Because of my long history of being unreliable, my husband struggles to trust whether I will come through on something he needs done or whether I will be on time, and those sorts of things. Obviously, this can lead to unnecessary tension in our marriage at times.

Just as we need to feel safe and be able to trust our husbands when he says “I’ll take care of that,” our husbands need the same from us – whether you are saying “I’ll take care of the household and keep it running smoothly,” or “I’ll take care of this bill/letter/task for you so that you don’t have to” or “I’ll be there on time to pick you up from the airport.” Whatever it is, we WANT us our husbands to trust us to take care of these things, and they NEED to be able to trust us with them. (Same as we do with them.)

Trust is a necessary foundation in a marriage relationship. 

I am more trustworthy now than I was ten years ago. But the good news is that we can change that. The bad news, is that it can change either way. Being trustworthy is something we have to do all the time because we can become more, or less, trustworthy by the decisions we make. So work on making good ones.

Did you catch that? The key to being more trustworthy, more reliable and responsible, is making good decisions.

All the little decisions we make throughout our day — they make or break our day for us. They do! Trustworthiness is found in all the little decisions: in deciding to put the distractions away and get busy on the to do list, or in deciding there isn’t enough time to squeeze in an extra task before picking up your husband, or in deciding to get ready and leave an extra 30 minutes early before an appointment.

Again, being trustworthy and responsible and making good decisions are things we all need to practice anyway. God wants us to be good stewards with our time, our resources, our decisions, and our relationships.

There are many good fruits that come out of the labor of cultivating good stewardship, and He desires that for us. And one of those good fruits for wives is becoming a trustworthy wife, allowing her husband to cultivate a hear that trusts in her. Because the bottom line is that this isn’t about changing our husband or making him trust us–it is about changing our own hearts, our own habits, and being the kind of person God wants us to be.

As God prunes away at our hearts, he removes those thorny branches from the equation, which does clear them away and expose the open soil of not only our own hearts, but also our husbands hearts, giving God more room to work in both. If we offer up our daily habits and decisions to God and let him prune, ask Him to help us become more responsible and trustworthy, He will do so.

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. (Proverbs 31:10-12 ESV)

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