I’m not sure you know this, but if you listen to most Dave Matthews Band songs, they’re really about my husband.

Or, at least, that’s what happens in my head when I hear them. I think to myself, “Boy, Dave Matthews must really like Nick.” In all honesty, I think that Dave Matthews really just knows how to write about love and passion.

Those are two of the things I have for my husband, among other things. I love him deeply and have a passion that reaches the ends of the earth for him. Yet, I also hold him in highest regards, respect him and attempt to honor him the best way I know how.

However, these days, it’s almost taboo to say you “honor” your husband. For some reason, it comes across that as a wife you are some how less than your husband if you respect him and honor him.

When did it become so bad to do so?

I’ve heard some people say jobs and education are much more important than a  person’s spouse – but if that’s the case, then why get married? I mean, if an expensive piece of paper that proves you know something or the description of your job is more important than the person you’ve devoted your entire life to in love, compassion and partnership – then I guess I don’t understand why you’d want to be with them in Holy Matrimony.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m the best wife ever in the whole world and I consistently honor him, love him and respect him in all the ways I should. I’m a human being. I’m selfish at times, I’m cold, I’m too wrapped up in what I have going on to be fully there for him – and a variety of other undesirable things.

Welcome to humanity. It’s a club we’re all in, and the basis for membership is imperfection. I fit right in.

However, if we’re not even doing these things part of the time – if we’re not even occasionally madly in love with our spouse even if they have morning breath, or respecting a decision they made in the best interest of the family, or giving of ourselves or our time for their good – then aren’t we really just people who live together?

That is not what God called us to in marriage.

Right in Genesis, God set apart marriage for mankind. God saw that Adam was alone in the garden, and decided it was not good. You know God meant business because he said it was, “Not good.” Everything up until that point had been “Good,” or “Very Good.” Yet, out of all the animals, no helper could be found – but God, as always, had a better way.

“But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman

because she was taken out of Man.’

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:15-24

My husband is a gift from God – I am blessed to have him in my life. We have made a covenant between each other and with God, and I am thankful that he is walking beside me in this life. While I treasure my identity as a person, as a woman and in my various roles in life – being my husband’s wife is one of the most important things I am able to do, just as being my daughter’s mother is important.

I made a vow before God to respect, love and honor my husband – to forget that would be folly. Not to mention the fact that I love him.