Last week I was in the kitchen doing what felt like absolutely everything.
Cooking. Cleaning. Wiping counters. Loading the dishwasher, again. Circling the house like a one-woman cleaning service while everyone else just sat there, doing their own thing.
And I started muttering under my breath.
Nothing out loud, but just that low, simmering kind of talk. The kind where you're not technically saying anything, but your body language is saying all of it. Dishes clanging a little too hard. Sighs a little too heavy. Eyes that could level a room.
And then I caught it.
I knew exactly what I was doing. I was sliding into martyr mode.
Nobody asked me to carry all of that. Nobody told me to take it on and then simmer about it in silence. I'd picked it up myself, said nothing, and was quietly building a case against every person in that house.
That's the sneaky thing about a martyr spirit. From the outside, it can look so much like faithfulness. Like endurance and selflessness and strength. But on the inside, someone is keeping a scorecard, and resentment is doing the bookkeeping.
There was a season in my marriage when some of the people around me were convinced that what I was fighting for was harmful.
They saw the broken trust.The distance.The abandonment.The destructive coping mechanisms.The mess.
And from the outside, I understand why they were concerned.
These were people who genuinely loved me who thought the best thing for me to do was stop fighting for my marriag...
When the hard moment hits ā€” the text that makes your stomach drop, the comment that lands like a jab, the decision you have to make about how to respond ā€” what's running through your head?
For most of us, it's some version of: What do I deserve here? What does he deserve? What will protect me? What will make him finally see?
I've spent nearly twenty years walking with women through the hardest ...
About ten years ago, Tim and I were out celebrating our anniversary and he suggested that we go back down memory lane and make a list of what we've done for each of our anniversaries up to that point. We racked our brains (I think it was already year 15 by this point!) and years later, we still add to that list on every anniversary.
Each year, we mark down the city we celebrated in, where we ma...
The Wise Wife Letters
A weekly letter for the wife who is standing alone, fighting the right fight, and refusing to let fear run the house.
