30 days for His 30th

One of my goals for this year: Work on being a better wife. Not that I think I'm a horrible wife or anything, but I definitely think there's always areas to grow. Plus, being pregnant and nursing for the last 4 years has probably given me some bad habits as far as "treating others better than myself" and "dying to myself" goes. Those pregnancy and nursing hormones bring out the selfishness in me!! =) All that to say, 2009 is the year I am focusing on how to better die to myself so I may better glorify God in my marriage.

As I started thinking about what it would look like to work on being a better wife, I almost decided to put off working on it until 2010. I'm having a baby in a few weeks, and I sort of live in this fog for about 4 months after a baby is born. I'm sleep deprived, I'm tired, I never have alone time, the house is a disaster, and all I want is for someone to take care of me instead of me taking care of everyone. But I knew God was showing me that now was the best time to work on this because it wasn't going to be easy. There were going to be huge obstacles in the road ahead that would definitely point out weaknesses in my character that I would need to submit to the Lord. So I began the journey.

The first step was to train my mind to think about ways to make Brent's life a little bit easier and to let him know how important he is to our family. So I started the 30 days until his 30th birthday countdown. For the 30 days leading up to his birthday, I tried to do something special every day for him. It got to be fun because the girls got all into it. There was even a day when Avery asked, "what do we get to do to make daddy feel special today?" Here's what the month looked like:

Flowers in his car







Breakfast in
bed









Fishing lessons for his girls







Lots of hugs and fun notes from his family



A new game for the Wii, picnic lunches at work, coffee in the middle of a cold day, notes, cards, a professional massage, pictures of his family, tickets to the PBR,





And it all culminated with a surprise party with his friends!
The goal was to have a present for Brent every day for the 30 days until his birthday. I missed a couple days, but hopefully still succeeded in making him feel special for his 30th birthday.
Sometimes it would be fun to just sit back and think there's no more character issues to be mastered in my life, but that would just be lying to myself. I know I'll probably fail a lot throughout the year, but I'm okay with failing as long as I keep learning and growing. Throughout the last 30 days, the Lord has really made my heart excited for the refining that will happen in me as I work on this whole wife thing. I'll keep you posted =)