| Home Making |
Chapter 2 |
Page 10 |
While gentleness should always mark a husband’s bearing toward his wife, there are occasions which call for peculiar thoughtfulness and sympathetic expression. Sometimes she is very weary. The cares of the day have been unusually trying. Matters have not gone smoothly at home. Her quivering nerves have been sorely overtaxed. She has heard sad news. A child has been sick all day, or, worse still, has by some disobedience or some wrong doing almost broken her heart. What is a husband’s part at such times? Surely if he is incapable of tenderness he will show it now. He will not utter a word to add to the load the overburdened spirit is already carrying. He will seek rather by every thoughtful help his love can give to lighten the burden, to quiet the trembling heart and to impart strength and peace.
In walking on the street one day in violent and sudden storm, as I was passing under a tree a weary bird fluttered down from among the branches, and alighting on my bosom crept under my coat. It was seeking a refuge from the fierce storm. Every wife should know that she will always find in her husband’s love a safe and quiet refuge when she is perplexed or tired. She should be sure that he will understand her that he will deal most gently with her that he will give his own strength to shelter her, which he will impart of his own life to build up the waste in hers. She should never have to doubt that he will sympathize with her whatever it may be that tries her. She should never have to fear repulse or coldness or rebuke when she flees to him for shelter. What Christ is to his people in their weariness, their sorrow, their pain, their alarm, every husband in his own little measure should be to his own wife.
There is one place where we shall remember every unkindness and every neglect shown to those who lean upon us for support and for sympathy, and then the pain will be ours if we have failed tenderness. Ruskin says: “He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companions on whom it has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent there is the wild love or the keen sorrow to give one instant’s pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust.” Yet how slow we all are to learn this lesson!
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