The Good Woman

About an Excellent Wife on Valentine's Day

An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is above jewels.
(Proverbs 31:10 NASB)

In the late sixties, I met the one who was to become my soul mate. It seems odd to say that I only just met someone who already attended the same church and participated in the same young peoples group, but it was a big church, and we had tended to move in different circles.

She was different from the start: had no guile, played no juvenile girl-boy games , walked in a comfortable reality and a genuineness of spirit.

We married two years later. Any cold analysis might have prophesied disaster. We were both young — in our very early twenties. I was in the middle of a semester at an out-of-town university and living on student loans, but it made a kind of sense to me to marry the one with whom I wanted to share my life. Today, people wouldn't get married in those circumstances, and in my rational middle-age, I would heartily join them in counselling against it. But times were different, and we were naive: naive but not without some maturity; naive but not without genuine committment.

Needless to say, any cold analysis would have proved incorrect. We're still together after more than three and a half decades, and we are not unhappy in our togetherness. We have lived in harmony with very few disagreements. We have never been and never will be wealthy. Indeed, we have lived on a single income in an era when few others could or would make that choice. We have lived small: small house, small cars, small vacations. But we have also lived large: large in peace, contentment, and happiness.

She is human and has feet of clay. Nevertheless, I have been thinking lately, even before the approach of Valentine's Day dawned on my foggy brain, that in many ways this woman is proximate to sainthood.

The motto by which she lives is, "Always be kinder than you need to be." She doesn't just say this; she lives it. I don't think I have ever heard her utter a catty, malicious word about anyone: not even to or about those who would deserve such. She is a considerate and undemanding woman who always assumes the best of others, including me.

I have been blessed to share life with a good woman, an excellent wife, a jewel.