She threw away the vase! It's been a picture stuck in my head for weeks now. Recently a friend recommended a book on the importance of wives and their influence on their husbands. It arrived in the mail yesterday and I'm anxious to get started. As we talked I told her about an event I witnessed from a distance. It was a friend's birthday at the beginning of August. Her husband sent her a breath-taking bouquet of pink and red roses for her birthday. I mean the kind that have a huge glass vase and are exquisite from any angle. They sat on her desk for several days, and, as all cut flowers do, they wilted and eventually were thoroughly brown. Not long after, another individual and her husband met her for lunch. As they left the office she carried with her the vase of brown roses. Before they all got in the vehicle together she walked over to the dumpster and threw away the flowers, and the vase. She probably didn't even notice, but her husband stood on the sidewalk and watched the whole thing.

Now. I know I was raised in a family who does not waste anything, if it's reasonable to expect so. I mean, for crying out loud! My mom dipped out the water from the rinse cycle in the washing machine, so she could use it to dump back in and start her next load of laundry. She would never dream of throwing away a glass vase. It would go in her stash under the sink and then resurface when she had flowers from her own yard. They would sit on our table, or be given to a friend.

Back to the dumpster and the husband. Putting the wasteful aspect aside, the respect issue is a much larger topic to tackle. I believe the bible specifically commands husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands for a very specific reason. Typically husbands would choose to be respected, over a feeling of love. We as wives have no idea the power we hold. A single word, a single action, a single sigh, a single expression....far beyond what we understand, we hold our husband's self-worth in our hands. It is something we should treasure and thoughtfully consider. A husband who feels respected and honored is and entirely different man than the one who feels belittled or over-ridden.

All of us, in our own ways, have thrown away the vase. My hope is that as we continue along that we become more and more perceptive to how our decisions, actions, and words as wives affect our husbands. God has given us a treasure and a gift. My prayer is that we use that gift to honor Him, honor our marriages, and honor our husbands.