Love in Action: Stop Criticizing

Why is The Simple Homemaker hosting Love in Action?

Establishing a simple, peaceful home environment involves getting back to the basics: the basics of housekeeping, the basics of feeding your family, the basics of managing your time and money, the basics of family relationships.

When you take away all the trappings and externals of a family–the house, education, careers, outside distractions–you are left with what? Dust bunnies, yes. But something better. People!

And those people need love. It’s a very basic human need. Denying it doesn’t change it.

That is why The Simple Homemaker is focusing the Love in Action series on the simplest and greatest thing we can do for our husbands and children: love them.

Love in Action Day 1

Our first goal in showing love in simple ways is the only “thou shalt not” in the list.

Stop criticizing your spouse.

Today and for the rest of the Love in Action series, stop criticizing your husband.

Don’t criticize in any way. That means no nagging, belittling, huffing, eye rolling, “joking,” sarcasm, meaningful sighing, or treating your man, your hero, like a child.

That doesn’t mean you can’t disagree or lovingly discuss a matter, but don’t make it a personal attack.

No matter what!

When you want to criticize, replace it with gratitude.

Whatever the circumstances, find gratitude and kick the negativity in the backside.

And when this “game” is no longer fun, think how belittling, how demeaning, how indescribably unpleasant it is for a man to live with a negative, critical, nagging wife. I wouldn’t wish that on my son, nor on any other mother’s son. Would you?

Better to live in a desert
than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.

~Proverbs 21:19

Are you ready to stop criticizing your spouse? Let’s encourage each other in the comment section below!

Helpful Tool: Instead of criticizing your spouse, pray for him. Stormy Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife offers a month’s worth of guidance for praying for your husband. My favorite paraphrase from the book reads something akin to, “Lord, give my husband a new wife…and let it be me.”

There is also The Power of a Praying Husband if the two of you want to read together…but separately.