May 11th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Sometimes our words aren’t necessarily bad or malicious… sometimes they are simply ill-timed.

I rely on my husband. When something really wonderful happens, I want to tell him and have him rejoice with me! When something really terrible happens, I want to tell him and have someone listen and understand. When I’m not sure what to do, I want to tell him and have him counsel me!

The thing is, timing is not always my strong suit.

• Water begins to bubble out of the basement drain, and I rush to the phone to call NP. He is sitting with a client or in a meeting – what can he do? Nothing. Just listen to a hysterical wife on the other end and tell her what she already knows to do!
• An email with concerning news knocks me off balance. I stew and worry, and finally feel like I am about to burst. He calls me to say he’s on his way home from work… and instead of waiting 15 minutes, I lay the news on him right then.
• A terrible day with my children. They are disobedient and whiny, the baby is crying, my nerves are shot. He walks in the door from a long and difficult day at work, and I dump it all on him – sending the children straight to him for discipline, complaining about my day, handing him a crying baby complete with a dirty diaper that I ask him to change.

I frustrate my husband when I don’t carefully consider the timing of my words – telling him what he truly needs to know now, waiting for the best time to discuss everything else with him.

But more than frustrating him… what does this reveal about me? Am I turning to my husband for comfort and counsel and peace that only God can provide?

In 2 Kings 4 there is an account of a wife who fascinates me – because her reaction to tragedy is so different from what I think mine would have been.

The woman conceived and bore a son at that season the next year, as Elisha had said to her.

When the child was grown, the day came that he went out to his father to the reapers. He said to his father, “My head, my head.” And he said to his servant, “Carry him to his mother.” When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her lap until noon, and then died.

She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door behind him and went out.

Then she called to her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may run to the man of God and return.”

He said, “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath.” And she said, “It will be well.”

2 Kings 4:17-23

The Shunammite woman held her precious boy as he suddenly fell ill and died – the miracle baby that God had given her. She calmly lays the still body of her boy on Elisha’s bed in the room she and her husband had provided for the prophet. She isn’t hysterical, she is quiet and full of faith – she simply asks her husband to allow her to go and see Elisha. Her answer to his inquiry often rings in my head – “it will be well.”

This kind of answer reveals the object of her faith – she turns to Elisha {not her husband} because God {not her husband} was the one who could address the crisis she faced.

Girls, do you suffer from a bad case of ill-timed words, a habit of crisis calls to your husband? These patterns in our lives reveal that we have placed faith in our husbands to do what God alone can provide for us. We frustrate them because we want them to solve our dilemmas when they are powerless to help.

A wife with her faith solidly placed in God alone has a soul at rest – and can say to her man, “it will be well,” even on the worst of days.

Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.

Proverbs 25:11

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