Appreciation

Everyone likes to be appreciated; at least, everyone I know likes to be appreciated. I suppose there’s somebody, somewhere, who at least pretends not to like being appreciated, but I’m not sure who they are or where they are. Nor for that matter am I sure why they would pretend to not like being appreciated.

Expressions of appreciation make everyone feel good. It makes them feel like what they’ve done is valued, and by extension that they are valued as well. On the other hand, when we forget to express appreciation, we send a message that they aren’t important, they aren’t valuable, and what they’ve done really doesn’t mean much of anything. That might not be the message we intend to send, but we send it nevertheless.

A few years ago, when we were buying our house, my wife was in a furniture buying mood. I don’t know what put her in that mood; after all the new house was going to be over twice the size of the rented house where we had been living. But, for some reason she decided to buy some furniture. The only thing was, in the area where we live, Craig’s List doesn’t have much good furniture.

No problem for her; she just decided to range her searches a little farther afield. She found what she wanted, all right, but the two places she found it were 250 and 300 miles from our home. So, I’m sure you can guess who got to take a road trip for our furniture. Yep, I think I hold the world record for a husband who’s been sent the farthest distance to the store by his wife.

I started out one morning at seven o’clock in my old van, with a trailer behind it, to get the furniture. I managed to get home the next morning at about three o’clock. The entire time I had been driving, or loading furniture. I was exhausted.

After loading the furniture in the house, so that nobody would steal it, I crashed. I couldn’t crash for long though, as I had to wake my wife up at six, so she could go to work. She got up, all excited to see the furniture, and headed off to work. There was only one detail that got overlooked. She forgot to say “thank you” to me for going to get it.

Now, I’m not blaming my wife for anything here. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m merely illustrating a point. Because she forgot to say “thanks” the devil was beating on my head for two weeks about how she didn’t appreciate me; how she didn’t love me; and how she was using me as a slave.

Okay, here’s my point. How many times have we forgotten to say “thank you” to our wives, and the devil has done the same thing to them? It’s really hard for anyone to feel loved, when they don’t feel appreciated and valued.

We could say that appreciation is an integral part of love. If we want our wives to feel loved, we need to make sure that they feel appreciated too. We need to make a habit of thanking them for all the little things they do. When she cooks a great meal, thank her. When she washes your clothes, thank her. When she takes the kids to their practice, so that you can relax after work, thank her. It doesn’t matter how big or little the act is, it’s important to thank her.

There’s another category of things that we should thank our wives for as well. I’ll call these the general appreciation category. They aren’t so much thanking her for a particular act that she’s done, as thanking her for being who she is. That’s important as well. Things like:

• “Thank you for loving me”
• “Thank you for being my wife”
• “Thank you for being such a good mother to our kids”
• “Thank you for overlooking my faults”
• “Thank you for not saying ‘I told you’”
• “Thank you for being you”

These are the type of thank you messages that can be sprinkled like salt, to flavor every day of your life. Don’t just limit yourself to that list, either. I just gave you those, to give you some ideas to get you started. Think of your own; and when you do, be sure to thank her.