A virtuous woman.....who can find her?

This morning I woke up to finish my reading of Proverbs and of course we all know that this book of wisdom ends with a chapter focused on the virtuous woman. I thought it was a little ironic that I would end this chapter with Mother's Day being this weekend. I've read this chapter, specifically verses 10-31, plenty of times. Most of the time when I have read these scriptures it was to encourage myself as a stay at home mom. We live in a world today that, to me, does not honor what moms do when taking care of their homes is their priority. I mean people say they commend moms for raising their children and staying home, but sadly are so quick to turn around and say, "All you do is stay home", "You don't have a real job", or as soon as you mention you stay at home with your kids, their facial expression kind of turns to disdain and is followed with an, "Okay". Sadly I must confess that at times I don't want to say that I stay at home with my son or have said it with not the most positive attitude because I have let the world's view consume me. Which is why when I have read Proverbs 31:10-31, it's to encourage me or other moms I know that stay at home (or don't) who I'm sure feel the same pressures of this world. 

Today was different though. Today The Lord told me to read this as a convicting passage. In other words, I read it and listed the qualities of the virtuous woman and examined myself to see if I had any of these qualities and if not, where I needed to improve. (In reality though, when it comes to living your life for The Lord, we should always be improving.)

Here are a list of qualities I wrote down:

*She does well by her husband, not evil 

*She does well by her family

*She gladly serves her home 

*She's resourceful

*She's strong 

*Her household is her priority 

*She reaches out her hand to the poor and needy

*She anticipates her families needs

*She brings honor to her husband

*Strength and honor are her clothing

*She is wise and her tongue is the law of kindness

*She fears The Lord 

These are all wonderful qualities. I feel like I possess some of these and some of these I need to work on. I wondered though, what my husband thought. I was already feeling conviction in my heart of areas I needed to work on and wanted to know if my husband felt the same. I asked him to stop working and read these scriptures and be honest about how I am doing in these areas. As he sat there and read the scriptures, I was a bit nervous. My husband has always been honest with me. I have loved this quality in him, but sometimes I just don't want to hear it. I knew I needed to ask him because when it comes to looking at our own hearts, we are blind to our sin, but others can see it quite clear. God had already revealed to me what I needed to change, but I wanted to hear what He would reveal through my husband. If I am serious about changing and fighting sin, I need to confess and put it out there instead of keeping it in like the devil wants me to do. He finished reading and told me that he didn't really know what to say because he thinks I do a very good job of taking care of our family. Now this may not seem surprising to you, but I was surprised. I was ready to hear his constructive criticism because trust me, he will give it to me straight. I asked him if he was sure and he said yes. His issues have always been other things and not so much how I take care of the home. He asked what I felt I needed to work on and I said out of all of those qualities, my two biggest issues were taking HONOR in what I do and not looking at it as just a job and taking care of him better. 

For me, I have found that I have more than less not taken honor in what it means to take care of our home. I mean lets face it, all the mundane things you do around the house can just get repetitive and frustrating, and there is nothing glamorous about picking up things off the floor, or cleaning bathrooms. I would find myself becoming bitter about it. I can blame it on listening to the world, not feeling appreciated, not feeling like I'm really contributing, and whatever else. What it really comes down to is I'm not believing what God's Word says about what I'm doing. God didn't just put things in the Bible to just out them there. His Word is TRUE and so it's my heart that needs the adjustment. I need to remember that in all I do, I need to do it to glorify God. My life is to please Him, not others. Would it be nice to get praise from others?  Sure, but we all know that that is not going to happen most of time. My focus needs to be that I'm bringing honor to God by taking care of my family, even if no one shows me appreciation. (Which they do, but you get my point)

I think my other problem I have faced when taken care of my home, is my sense of entitlement. I say that because as women, we do a lot, but I feel like we use that as a way to make it seem like our husbands don't do anything. We know we do a lot so we feel entitled to things going our way. I don't know if this is making sense, but I can just think of plenty of times when my husband has complained about being tired or wanting a break and I just have looked at him like, you have to be kidding me. Like I look at him like he doesn't work. He does work. He works for our family. He has deadlines, he has responsibilities, and he has an actual boss that he has to report to. I have to remember that that can be stressful for him. It may not be the same kind of stress I face at home, but it doesn't make his feelings less than mine. Now I know my husband would much rather be at work than stay at home cause his patience is ummmm well lets just say he's praying for patience in the area of parenting, but he is still working and doing what he does to take care of us and I need to recognize that as well.  

I guess that brings me to my other issue I mentioned that I need to work on, taking better care of him. The scriptures he read had a lot to do with taking care of the home, but there were a few verses that briefly mentioned how a virtuous woman takes care of her husband or brings honor to him. My husband doesn't feel like I treat him poorly, but I felt differently. I wouldn't say I treat my husband poorly, but I know I can take care of my husband a lot better than I have. My husband asked me where those areas were and the tears began to flow. I know I'm pregnant and hormonal, but the tears I cried had nothing to do with that. Like I have mentioned before in previous posts, me and emotion don't come easy, so I knew this was The Lord working through me and helping me to pour out my feelings to my husband. As hard as it is for me sometimes, it felt so good to just weep in front of him and pour my heart out to him and share my desire to be a better wife and take care of him like I should. I won't go into the details, but I will say that since I don't have the greatest record with showing emotion that plays a huge part in my desire to take better care of my husband. For some reason, it doesn't come easy to me and I can blame that on so many things, but I believe in not placing blame and taking it as an opportunity for me to become more dependent on God and letting Him work through me. My husband was very encouraging as I finished my meltdown (lol) and I was blessed not just because he was consoling me, but because of the words he was saying. I could tell how much God has been working on him by the words he said to me. He is growing more and more and that helped me to smile through the tears that were falling. 

Anyways, I wrote all this to say that I desire to be that virtuous woman. I want to bring honor to my family, to my husband, and especially to God. I'm thankful for the conviction and the tears I had this morning. It just showed me how much God continues to love me and that He is still working on me. I guess I also wrote this because I know I'm not the only mom out there that is feeling this way. My prayer for you and myself, is to not listen to this world and to let our minds and hearts be saturated with the wonderful things of God and to let that be our motivation in everything we do.

You always take care of me...

My husband and I have always been far away from family so getting away for a little trip is not really easy for us. Of course dates are nice, but there is something about completely getting away that is a lot nicer, any parent would understand that. So if you're reading this and you live near your parents or in-laws, I hope you realize how lucky you are. Anywho, my husband and I were able to plan a little getaway thanks to our wonderful friends who watched our son for us. (BTW, if you are reading this Jackie, thanks again, a million times!!!) My husband has always wanted to go to Chicago, especially since moving to Ohio. It's less than 4 hours away from us so you would think it would be easy to just go, but visiting Chicago can be quite expensive and mainly because of the parking. After a lot of searching we chose to stay here.....

This is the Renaissance Blackstone hotel and it was pretty gorgeous and lovely on the inside. I got a great deal that included parking and a few other great things and it costs under the normal price of staying there one night. It still costs a nice little penny, but it was the best deal all around and hey we were celebrating our anniversary and our new baby girl on the way so it was worth it. This hotel has a lot of history, specifically, gangster history. It's been said that Al Capone was a frequent customer there. As a matter of fact, "The Untouchables" was filmed there because of his frequent visits. The hotel also has a history of a lot of former presidents staying there. I thought all those things were pretty interesting, but I didn't really care too much about it. I just wanted my bed to be comfy. We arrived earlier than check in time and were told that they would hold our bags so we can walk the city, but luckily they had a room ready and better yet they upgraded our room to a lake view!! I was very happy to hear that!! Our room was awesome and so was the view. We dropped our things in the room and started touring the city.

We were hungry, scratch that, PJ was really hungry!! Of course we saw a lot of places we know, but we were in Chicago and obviously wanted to eat something different. That something different for PJ was deep dish pizza. We went to Giordano's and even though it says its stuffed pizza, it's pretty much deep dish and huge. Throughout this pregnancy I haven't been too fond of red sauce so I didn't think I would have a slice, so I bought a big chicken salad that was really good. PJ had to wait 40 minutes for his pizza so by the time it came out, I was done eating my salad. So the menu said his small pizza could feed 2 but I think they meant 4. PJ can eat, but looking at other pizzas that people had, I thought even that's too much for you babe. He grabbed a slice and bit into it and the look on his face was priceless. He said, "Babe, this is sooo good!!!". I thought okay I will try it because the sauce didn't seem to be too much and you know I had to help him eat all that pizza lol. I took a bite and I said,"Oh yeah this is good". I only had most of one slice, but PJ ate 3, so he did pretty good. It was just really nice to be sitting outside with him relaxing and having adult conversation. It would have been a complete different experience had we brought Peanut and the couple next to us with their three kids proved that to us. Thanks to that family PJ and I will have an ongoing joke for the rest of our lives.

After our meal, we went walking to the Navy Pier and of course got on the Ferris wheel. If there's a Ferris wheel and I'm with PJ, I want to go on it. I love being with him like that. After our lil tour there we headed to see The Bean in Millineum Park. My honest opinion on the Bean was, it's a bean lol. It was nice to see, but nothing I would get extra excited about. After that we heading back to our hotel before dinner. I would write about our experience at dinner, but it's still a memory I try not to remember. A very expensive, tasteless memory. As a matter of fact, PJ said we aren't to speak of it for years to come hahahaha. 

Other than that dinner experience, everything else we ate was great. The picture above was from dinner the next night. We ate at The Gage and it was very very good and a lot less expensive. The picture below has a few pics of other places we ate. I know we were in Chicago, but no matter where I am, if there is a Cheesecake Factory, I'm getting some cheesecake!! I love their cheesecake!! Mmmmmm I want some cheesecake now. I kind of felt bad for PJ because he's down to eat anywhere and unfortunately I don't have any kind of appetite in this pregnancy so picking somewhere to eat would be a complicated sometimes, but eventually we got food in our bellies.

Our second day in Chicago was more sightseeing. We went to the John Hancock Observatory and as our friend Katie Spink would say, we got a sweeeeeet deal. A lot of the tourists sites offer military discounts and it only costs 15 dollars for both of us to see the view. That was pretty cool since the original price was nearly 40. Just goes to show that you always ask for a military discount no matter where you are. I would say that view was uuummmmmm AWESOME!! You know what was really great? There was basically no one up there, so it was almost as if we had the place to ourselves. Actually, this whole trip was pretty nice when it came to other tourists being around. We came right before tourists really start to come through and see the city and the weather was perfect. I thanked The Lord for that every day.

After the Observatory we went to the Water Tower Place and did some shopping and had lunch. Apparently R.Kelly was there, which was kind of funny because PJ kept joking that he was going to find him and some random black girl told PJ he was upstairs. I say black girl because we all know if PJ wasn't black she wouldn't have came up to him and said, "Ummmmm I know I don't know you, but R. Kelly is on the 7th floor". PJ just said, "Okay". I think R.Kelly was trying to find material for the 176th chapter of Trapped in the Closet lol.

All that walking was making my feet hurt, so I thought we were going to do a boat tour to rest but PJ wanted to just rest in the hotel so we made our way back there, but I had to stop. I'm over 5 months pregnant so I had to listen to my body and say I need to stop. We stopped at this water fountain art area in Millineum park and I walked in the water and it felt sooooooooo good!! It's as almost as if my feet were saying THANK YOU!!!!!!! It felt incredible on my burning feet and it was nice kicking water around with the little kids, especially the little girls since it only made me think about my baby girl. 

Our last day we spent at The Field Musem. I have to say that was one place where I really missed Peanut. He would have loved the dinosaurs. PJ and him would have had a great time together at that place because PJ is really into "old" things lol. We got to take a stroll and spend time together by the lake as well. It was just awesome to have nothing to do, but spend time together and love on each other. Sure we could have done a whole lot more, but the focus was on us. 

I posted this picture of our breakfast because that was another thing that was included in our package.  The funny thing is, where we had breakfast is where we had the regretful dinner experience. Thankfully the breakfast was really yummy and so fancy looking, the dinner was fancy looking and nasty hahaha. I swear you could put anything on these types of plates and it makes you want to eat it. It was nice having a full breakfast every morning. Before we headed back to reality (home), we had our last breakfast there and enjoyed the last view moments of sanity.

    So you might be wondering why (or maybe you're not) I titled this post the way I did. I mean technically it has nothing to really do with Chicago to most people. It does for me though. Throughout this trip, as I said before, we did a lot of walking. In my "condition" walking around for long periods of time and getting up and sitting down can take a lot out of me. My husband was always helping me, but there was this one time when I didn't need help up but he gave me a napkin or something, he basically made sure I had what I needed before him and I just smiled inside and told him, "You always take care of me". You might say, well he's suppose to or yeah so my husband does the same thing, but how often do we forget to tell our husbands how grateful we are for the little things they do, especially little things that are really big things. In that moment I was reminded of all the little things my husband has done to protect me. From holding out his hand for me to grab to keep me from something, to walking behind me in a crowded area, to putting his arm in front of me to keep me hitting something, or just going without something because his wife and son were more important. I know my husband is in the military, but I honestly believe that has nothing to do with how protective he is over me. Since we have been together I have always seen how important I am to him and how even though he jokes about me fending for myself if the house caught on fire, he would do anything to protect our family. My husband is not the most vocal person when it comes to sharing his love for me, but I've always known and felt his love for me because of his actions. Anyone can say I love you, but showing your love is a lot different. Sure, he works my nerves at times, but he's suppose to. Seriously, him working my nerves only helps me to grow in learning to love him more. Anyways, being on this trip with him and having all the laughs and conversations with him was just another reminder of not just why I married him, but why he's my best friend. My prayer before going on this trip was that The Lord would bless it and we would have a great time, and we did. We didn't want to leave. I'm very thankful that God granted us this time together, it was pretty sweet, just like our view every morning. I love you PJ, looking forward to our next getaway.......