Proverbs 31:31 Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

My husband and I have been house hunting for most of this year.  We wanted to buy a place in the country with some land – not too much but not too little. We didn’t want to be close up against neighbours and wanted some peace and quiet.  Our children have left the nest and we are empty-nesters now, enjoying our pre-retirement stage.  We’re free to do what we want in the evenings and weekends and just do nothing if that suits us.

Not that either of us are the type to just sit in front of TV and do nothing. We are both active people.  He enjoys mountain bike riding and is out every weekend, I enjoy my photography and often join him on his trips so I can wander off to enjoy the scenery behind the viewpoint of my camera while he enjoys his rides with his mates.

We finally found the house a couple of months ago. We shift in this coming weekend.  The wait was worth it, although we despaired whether we would find the right place.

Because we are in pre-retirement stage we are conscious also of our bodies growing older and the needs that older people have. We wanted to be sure we were close enough for medical support if needed later in years. We had to have a place where the land was reasonably flat so our knees wouldn’t give out on walking steep slopes every day.  And God has been good and provided the right place.   2 acres in an area that is nearly all sloped. We think we got the only ‘flat’ piece of land in the area – well almost!  3/4 of the land has lawns and plants and a tennis court. The rest is bushland and sloped at the back of the block.  Native birdlife and we’re told some animal life too, which I look forward to seeing.

Now comes the hard part. All the packing. I feel like I’ve been doing it for weeks and that’s probably because I have.  I am so over packing and just want it to end.  But every day I get stuck back into it, after knocking off from my work early in the day. I don’t want my husband coming home and feeling overwhelmed with how much there is to do.  We’re nearly at the end part of it.

When I look at the last verse of Proverbs 31 I wonder how often the P31 woman also felt like this.  Like there was no end to the work in sight but she knew she had to press on.  And look at how she is remembered all this time later!  She did achieve, she did succeed and she earned her reward.  She is a woman for us to look up to and admire, and want to be like. She was a hard worker and that hard work paid off.

For me, my reward will be the unpacking in just a few short days and being able to take photos inside and outside our new home.  Being able to sit back and enjoy the solitude of the country and enjoy more of the beautiful nature that God made.  And knowing that I might just experience a little of what the Proverbs 31 woman felt so long ago for a job well done.

This year has been very different to the past years of our lives.  We’ve gone through tremendous upheaval and change which began almost 12 months ago when we lost our darling Miriam.

If anyone had told us at the beginning of September last year that nearly every member of our immediate family would be moving house this year and that we would be missing a member of our family too, we just would not have believed them.

It’s been a long slow year – one where I’ve been anxious to get back to some sort of normality and yet when opportunities arise, particularly through my business, I am slow to respond or take things up.

I’ve been very reluctant to go out in the evenings so have missed a year’s worth of business networking events and church events. I haven’t wanted to leave Graham alone and I haven’t really felt like being with groups of people.  Neither has he for that matter.

The book I was going to write has been put on hold but I am a contributing author for an anthology of poems and short stories about babies and impending motherhood called “Even Before You Were Born“.  The poem I wrote back in the 1980s.

I’d been planning a number of things for my business and team this year – at least I was going to plan them, but the year is almost over and I haven’t moved forward with them.  I wrote things down and thought about them but they progressed no further.

I did set business and personal goals in January this year, as I do each year, and I have achieved 5 out of 11 things which isn’t too bad (45%) – but I usually achieve 85-90% of my goals.

It recently hit me that I’m entitled to ‘time out’ – time to reflect, time to heal, time to just vegetate if I need and want to.

Why do we (and particularly women I mean) feel guilty if we just take time out?

When we look at the Proverbs 31 woman in Chapter 31 of Proverbs she seems to be constantly on the go, always doing, never letting her lamp go out.    But if we look more closely at these verses there are hints that because of her previous hard work, profitable trading, her planning and preparation, she has no fear for her household (v21) and she can laugh at the days to come (v25).

Perhaps I am allowed to take time out after all and not feel guilty about it, simply because of all I have done in the past.  I need to allow myself time to renew, refresh, heal, rest, and gain new enthusiasm for life and all it promises in the days to come.

I hope you’ve seen my Proverbs 31 Woman presentation set to music?  I have it linked on the site here or you can see it at youtube.

I had an interesting comment placed at youtube which basically said the writer felt that the Proverbs 31 verses were not positive but saying that women were servants.

This morning I got up before my husband because I was going out on a photoshoot (my latest passion and favourite hobby) and I set about getting ready, switched on the urn for a cuppa and made myself breakfast. Once the urn heated I asked my husband would he like a coffee and then made it for him and took it into the bedroom for him.  For which he was extremely grateful and he told me so.

Doing things for my husband gives me a warm glow inside and a feeling of contentment, that all is right with the world.  It doesn’t matter what else is going on in our lives if I can do small things for him here and there and know he truly appreciates what I’ve done for him.

This is not a sign of being subservient but rather I am demonstrating love in action.

Verse 12 says: “She brings him good, not harm all the days of her life” and I like to feel that is exactly what I do for my beloved Graham.  It’s not about being a servant or being subservient ( implies the cringing manner of one very conscious of a subordinate position <domestic help was expected to be properly subservient>).

I choose to do things for my husband, loving him for who he is and it doesn’t matter if he shows his appreciation or not for the most part.    My actions are not dependent on his praise, acknowledgement, or reciprocal actions.  It’s about showing him the love I have for him, knowing that in some small way I am making his life better on a daily basis.

If anyone at all feels that a wife doing something for her husband (freely and willingly) is an act of being a servant then I would say that person has never ever experienced true love.

I’m not talking about being besotted with someone and getting in their way and hanging around them and constantly smothering them. That can get really tiresome for the person the attention is focussed on. But I am talking about really loving someone and getting real joy out of doing simple things for them.

My husband told me quite some time ago how much it means to him to come home at night and have an evening meal ready for him. He cycles to and fro work daily so by the time he gets home he is quite hungry and the text books tell him he should be fuelling up after a ride. After Graham told me that I began to take even more care with the type of meals I was preparing and deriving real joy from his genuine comments of appreciation and enjoyment of the meal I’d prepared for us both. Just that simple one statement he’d made about his appreciation for the evening meal meant so much to me and it’s something I’ll remember always. And because of his comment I get even more enjoyment out of preparing the meal for him.

What about you?  Do you know how much your husband enjoys something you do for him? Not all men express their feelings verbally but look for ways he might indicate to you of his pleasure at something you’ve done for him. And if you’re not sure – ask, or perhaps share with him something you really appreciate about him.  It may just open up conversations you haven’t had before.

This was shared on a forum I belong to and I asked permission to bring it here.

Today is my day for the devotional and I want to share something that Celiabeth said to me the other afternoon. Remember, she is our youngest grandchild and has just turned four years old. At the time of our conversation, it did not hit me as to the depth of what she said, but it has since.

I was sitting on the love seat and she squeezed between the seat and the end table. She reached out and patted me on the arm and said, “Nana, how is your kidney ‘fection?” All the time those huge brown eyes are seeking my face looking for the answer she wants to hear, which was, “Oh, Celiabeth, Nana is feeling much better and will be back to normal before too much longer.” As if we were conspiring, she leaned into to me and said, “Nana, I am going to tell you something that you probably don’t know.” She said, “I know you know who Jesus is, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I certainly do.” She cuts her little eyes up at me and says, “Then you know He will heal you, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I do know that.” Then, as if she were telling a universal top secret, she said, “Now, Nana, this is what I don’t think you know—–did you know that you don’t have to wait until it is dark to pray?”

They have family prayer and devotions every night before they all go to bed and that is where she got that. She laid her little hands with the chipped fingernail polish on them and prayed the sweetest prayer for me. Tears streamed down my face. She smiled and said, “See, I told you and it is not even dark!”

Now I told you this to say that, yes, those were words from a four year old, but how many times have we waited until it got ‘dark’ to pray? When things got so bad that we couldn’t fix them ourselves and we couldn’t do anything else but ask God to help us. Darkness surrounds us in many ways—family relationships, work problems, church problems, financial problems, marriage problems—–many, many ways of darkness and sometimes we wait until the darkness envelopes us and drags us down before we pray.

So, in the words of a very smart little girl….. “You may not know this, but you don’t have to wait until it gets dark to pray”.

Thank you for allowing me to share a ‘grandchild’ story.

Love, Rhonda

Proverbs 31:20
She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.

There’s a man I see shuffling along in the local shopping strip almost every day. He walks with head bowed and usually has a bunch of books and a bible under his arm.  He rarely looks up at anyone.

Many months ago I felt God leading me to pray for this man and so every time I drove past or walked past I did just that, asking God to bless him.

One day I saw him in a full suit on a very hot summer’s day, sitting on the pavement with his back to the fence of the house he was outside of, and he was reading. I got out of the car to see if he was ok and noticed for the first time his bible and struck up a conversation. I found out his name is Roger (I’d nicknamed him Mr Klump as that is how he walks) and that he went to a local church. He lived not far by but was happy where he was reading and writing and thanked me for my concern.

Over the months I’ve made sure I say hello to him and I see his face light up and he smiles, showing his blackened misshapen teeth.  I feel sorry for him as I’m sure he is lonely and I’ve never seen anyone else with him or talking to him.

Sometimes I just pass him by as he’s hard of hearing and if he doesn’t hear me the second or third time I call out I feel a bit silly as I know others are walking in the street also and can hear me clearly.

Today I walked past him as he sat on a park bench in the new plaza strip between the shops and asked God to bless him.  I continued to walk and began to feel convicted. I turned around but he’d not noticed me and so I continued to walk and pray for him.  Again I asked God to bless him and then I got the response ‘you bless him’.  I kept walking and began to feel guilty. I turned around and Roger still had his head down writing.

So I turned back and walked up to him as he got up to move away and felt I better hurry or I’ll miss my chance.  But he was only moving to a seat in the sun to get more warmth and then sat back down again. He looked up as he heard my voice (I made sure I spoke louder than normal) and he smiled when he saw me and settled back in his seat.

We had a short conversation and I asked how he was, and how were things at church. And then it occurred to me Christmas is not far away and I wonder if he’s going to be alone this year?

I’m not really in the mood for more company this Christmas – we usually invite loners to join us each year but this will be the first year without our beloved daughter Miriam and I don’t know how the family is going to be on that day.  Will I need to ask him to join us at a time when we will be in sorrow?

But I still asked him if he had someone to spend Christmas with and he didn’t hear properly so I asked again, louder this time, wondering what on earth I was doing.

He looked up at me and said he was planning to see his sisters.  I said ‘that’s good’.  Then he thanked me for asking and I told him he was welcome and said goodbye.

I walked away and then suddenly realised he’d thanked me for asking, for taking an interest.  How many do that? Thank you for taking an interest in their lives?  I couldn’t help wonder just how many people take an interest in Roger and continued to pray for him as I moved away towards my car again.

Do you have a Roger in your life and is he waiting for someone to take an interest?

Opening our arms and extending our hands to the needy should also mean turning our hearts and minds to these people, the lonely because they truly are needy – of company, of friendship and of love.  Make sure you extend yourself this Christmas.

Proverbs 31: 20 She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.

Recently I received a phone call from my church, asking if I would make a meal for a family who had members unwell and the mother had been in hospital.

This is the first time I’ve ever been asked to do this by any church I’ve belonged to.  I felt both honoured and pleased they asked me.  Perhaps it’s because I’m always seen as a very busy person and I am, but I have the privilege of working for myself in my own home office and if I want to take time to do something for someone, then I can.  I answered ‘yes’ without hesitation and set my Outlook reminder to 4pm that day so I could go out into the kitchen and prepare an evening meal for this lovely family that my husband and I have begun developing a friendship with over the past few months.

When I delivered the meal I didn’t want to stay long and intrude on the family but I was invited in to chat with the husband and wife for a short period of time. They were delighted to see me and very grateful for what I’d brought them and acknowledged they knew how busy I am.  That brought us to a conversation about my business and how things are progressing.  And then Janet said something that I later repeated to my husband and didn’t fully comprehend until I said it.  She said ‘Some women return home to escape from the outside world.  You returned home to reach the world’.

Graham and I discussed this comment and he mentioned that he felt that Janet often had very insightful comments.   It is true that through my business, my writings and through speaking at churches and seminars that I have reached many, many people and yet that had not been my goal or my intention when I first came back home to work over 14 years ago.  I was fed up with the corporate world and I was anxious to be home for our 5 daughters.  But God has turned that into something really special.  All those years of experience, trial and tribulation have brought with it lessons I can share with others.

Our senior pastor has been preaching a series on ‘church without walls’ and I can truly say that through my working at home, and in sharing with and caring for others online I have truly reached out beyond my own walls.  Puts a whole new slant on the verse above doesn’t it?  As you’re reading this right now it means you have internet access.  How many people do you think you can reach and touch through the ministry that God has planned for you?

That’s what I used to be told when I was young.  I guess I was always a dreamer and I know I was definitely a loner.  Being on my own for hours on end never bothered me.  I entertained myself with books and with my writing – I was always writing, even as a young child.  And my dreams would take me to places that I could only dream about.

My parents did not have a lot of money and with 4 children in the space of just over 5 years and only one income in the household, it meant that we did not get to travel much and only in our own state.  We never went without, don’t get me wrong. Our home was filled with love, we were always fed and well clothed.  Mum sewed and cooked and kept house and did everything a mother should do. She was always home for us kids and we never came home to an empty house.

However I remember things that were said at school, at friend’s places, and in our home that made me feel I shouldn’t be hoping, or dreaming, or expecting for bigger or better things in my life. That I shouldn’t get my hopes up.  And I found as I got older that I was the one in control of my own life, my hopes and plans and dreams. I kept reading books that would fill my mind with what could be and I determined to learn more and more.  My grandmother told me when I was aged 14 ‘the day I stop learning is the day I die’ and I determined I would always keep learning.

Verse 26 tells us ‘She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue’ and I want to encourage you to think about what you say to and around your children. Do your words and actions tell them not to get their hopes up? Perhaps it’s not even your own children but kids who hang around where you are on a regular basis.  You can’t take back words you speak and it’s so easy to say something in jest but for it to be taken to heart in someone else.

I don’t know who it was that told me ‘don’t get your hopes up’ but I can tell you I carried that phrase with me for almost 30 years.  And it was only because of a very kind couple who took my husband and I under their wings, and fed us with motivational tapes and books, and took us to listen to people who had fascinating stories to tell, that my hopes did rise and that I learned I could take action and make something of my life.  That is was up to me and it had nothing to do with how I grew up, my own personal circumstances, or how rich or poor I might be.  It had to do with how I responded to things and the decisions I made. And I learnt not to tell my own children ‘don’t get your hopes up’.  Instead I encouraged them and shared with them, and told them to go for their dreams and you know what? They are!

hopes, dreams, don’t get your hopes up, wisdom, instruction, Proverbs 31:26