Skip to main content

What My Wife Does Right

When I got married back in 2012, I didn't have a whole lot of involvement in the planning with the wedding. My wife, Maggie, took care of everything. It was one of those situations where I literally did nothing but show my happy little self up the day of the ceremony. It's not that I refused help or was asked to stay out of it. My wife had it under control.

More accurately, I wasn't needed.

Photography: Free.
Flowers: Also free.
Church reservation: Yup, free.
Super nice five-tier wedding cake: Well... you probably get the point by now.

After all was said and done, I think she effectively got half the stuff for the wedding for free. The most amazing part: she never even asked for these free things. These people willingly volunteered their time and resources.

Of course, you don't just wake up one morning with a group of people willing to do amazing things for you at the drop of a hat. This took my wife her entire life to build toward, and it's something she continues to cultivate at work, home, and church.

(Seriously, I think she's up to something like five baby showers planned for her and our baby girl on the way.)

So, what is it about her? What's her secret?

I can boil it down into a single statement: she genuinely and authentically invests into the lives of others. Of course, there are specific things she does well, so I have taken just five of them and how we can learn from her in applying them to our own lives.

1. She is always enthusiastic. I always tell people that they would get along great with Maggie because she is always super friendly to everybody. She is always smiling and laughs a lot. Her nature creates an instantly inviting atmosphere and is able to do so in a way that respects all personality types. You might think her extroverted nature turns away folks are more introverted, but that is not the case at all. Her authentic enthusiasm draws in everybody.

2. She is an excellent listener. Complementing her enthusiastic personality well, she takes an active interest and care in what others what have to say. Not that she's afraid to talk about herself, but when I listen in on a conversation between her and somebody else, it's mostly her listening to the other person.

3. She learns everybody's names. This one might seem super obvious, but you have to understand the context. One of Maggie's roles is working as the Creative Arts Coordinator for the children's program at Eastview Christian Church. There are something like 200 kids in the program, and if you add in each of their parents, she's easily having to memorize something like 600 names. When she first took over the program, its attendance was roughly half of what it is now, and I firmly believe this very specific, seemingly minor thing is a major reason why.

4. She will go out of her way to help somebody else. Okay, if I'm being totally honest, this is not a personal favorite of mine. It usually means that she's going to be late getting home, but I can get over it knowing she's probably helping somebody else. She has a generous heart and will go well out of her way to help somebody. As I type this post, I am in the atrium of our church while she is working to prepare a "Welcome Back" meeting for her Creative Arts volunteers in an hour. She is, by no means, obligated to come in early to prepare for this, but she cares about her volunteers enough that sacrificing a couple extra hours of free time on a Sunday afternoon isn't even a question to her.

5. She's not afraid to stand up for what's right. She fortunately doesn't have to do this a lot, but she can get scary when she needs to. If you're familiar of the Bible story of Jesus flipping over the merchant tables in the Temple, think that. Okay, so she's not flipping tables, but she is a strong proponent of justice. The parents at Eastview and parents of her autistic clients know their children are safe with her because she will fearlessly and relentlessly protect them.

So there you have it! I could easily write a follow up post on more things she does well. She's a magnificent person, and I'm super proud to be married to her. I am constantly learning from her. These are things we all can stand to incorporate in our own lives as we continue to craft the story we tell to people at home, at work, and everywhere else.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: "The Dip" by Seth Godin

If you think you've seen this book before, you're probably not mistaken. It's not a new book at all. It came out in 2007, and the first time I read this book was actually back in 2011. For personal reasons, I chose to pick it back up, and I'll talk about that in a separate post. Having been five years since my last read, I'm glad I dug this back up. It's a pretty teeny book, as you can see in the image below. A person can definitely breeze through the entire book in an hour or two. Anyway, this is a book review! How does this book hold up in the nine years since it's initial release? Let's get into it.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Christian Civil War of 2016

There's no doubt that the outcome of the recent election had arguably the most divisive outcome in American history. People have not been afraid to voice their anger and concerns about Trump's election on social media. From what I've seen, the most vocalization has come from the left, and I honestly haven't seen a lot of overt support from the right. (That's another topic altogether.) What has quietly gone unaddressed is another issue that has stemmed from the election: a Christian civil war. As somebody who cares for the church, this something I definitely think needs addressed sooner rather than later.
Post a Comment
Read more

Be Mindful of Invisible Scripts

Whether we like it or not, assumptions pretty much drive our lives. We learn to live not because we have analyzed a certain matter thoroughly. Rather, much of what we know today was ingrained in us in our adolescent development. Some of these are more obvious. Take going to college, for example. When I graduated from high school, something like 90% of my graduating class planned on pursuing some sort of college education. Even if my parents didn't encourage me to go to college (they did), it still seemed like the thing I needed to do. But some things aren't so obvious. There are subtle things people do and say that guide our choices in a way we are oblivious to.
Post a Comment
Read more

Being Transparent about LYEATT's Analytics

I'm going to break off from my usual explanation of whatever trending idea to be open with you all about some stuff. I chose Blogger as the platform for this blog because it's housed under Google, and I find Google to be a trustworthy company. What I did not realize is the extent to which Blogger provides analytics. Obviously, I can't see exactly who is reading this blog, but I can see a number of other things. I can see where traffic is coming from, whether from LinkedIn or Twitter. I can also see how many times people have viewed each post. And I can also tell you that I wrote my first zero-view post recently. Also, to date, there has never been a single comment on any post. I'm not going to share which post that is because viewership is not the purpose of this blog, nor am I looking for anybody to comment now. But I will say that it is a little disheartening. This would normally have been the point where I'd shut down the blog and labeled it a failure. Bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

You're Out of Excuses

The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is $50 and often goes on sale for cheaper than that. You can get free wifi almost anywhere, including most McDonald's locations. The best email platforms, Gmail and Yahoo, are free . Almost all social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are free . My blog is hosted on the Blogger platform, which is free to use. If you have a library card, you can probably checkout digital ebooks for free via Overdrive. Apps like WhatsApp allow you to make calls to people for free . Interacting with people on social forums like Reddit is free . The barriers to entry have been lowered significantly. You don't have an excuse why you're not making yourself better anymore.
Post a Comment
Read more