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.

Give her a Break

Do you have one of those highly repetitive jobs? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, even if your job doesn’t fall into that category. There are just some types of jobs, where it seems that the people do the same thing over and over again, all day long, day in and day out. I don’t know about you, but that type of thing would drive me nuts. I need variety in my work.

Being a wife and mother has a lot in common with that sort of job. The same work needs to be done over and over again; the same dishes need to be cleaned, the same floor has to be mopped and the same clothes need to be washed that were washed last week. Not only is it repetitive, but it seems that everything that you do, has to be done over and over again. Sounds just like that repetitive job, or maybe even a little bit worse.

The worse part of any job is when you aren’t appreciated for it. The person who comes up with a way of saving the company a million dollars might get a little appreciation; likewise the sales person who landed the huge contract, but the one who does that repetitive job? No way.

I don’t know about you, but I appreciate what my wife does for me and my family. All those boring daily chores which have to be done make a difference; even if we can’t always see that difference. I’ve had to do all that stuff, so I know what things are like when she doesn’t do them.

Women say that one of the most romantic things that their husbands can do for them is to take over some of that work and give them a break. That’s right, it’s not buying flowers or writing a love letter (although those are always appreciated as well), but washing the dishes, vacuuming the living room or doing the laundry.

How can it be that those things are romantic? It’s really rather simple. Romance is all about telling the other person that they are valuable to you. So, when you take over those jobs, you’re saying to her, “you are important, because what you do is important.” It’s showing that you appreciate what she does in a very tangible way.

So, when was the last time you washed the dishes? When did you vacuum the carpet for her? How about getting down and dirty to clean the bathroom, have you done that recently? Well, I guarantee you; taking the time to do any of those things won’t make you turn in your man card. Instead, you might just manage to make your wife feel that you really do love and appreciate her.  

Let Her Know That You Appreciate Her

Don’t you love it when someone tells you “Thanks” for something you’ve done? Even if it’s mundane, we still appreciate being appreciated. That simple one-word act tells us that what we are doing is noticed, that we are making a difference and that the person we did it for appreciates that we’ve done it.

On the other hand, when people forget to give us thanks for what we do, we feel used, unimportant, un appreciated and mistreated. I remember once when my wife sent me to pick up some furniture that she bought on Craig’s list. I had to drive over 700 miles that day, to go pick the furniture up in three different places. Finally, I arrived home at 2:00 am and couldn’t even collapse in bed; I still had to unload it.

The next morning (actually it was the same morning I got home) I woke my wife up at 6:00 so that she could get ready for work. She went “ooh” and “ah” over the furniture, obviously thrilled with the furniture and the great deal we had gotten on it. She only forgot one thing. In her rush to get out of the house, she forgot to tell me thanks. Oops!

You know, that bothered me for two whole weeks, till I finally told my wife what had happened. She hadn’t intended to malign me; she had just been in a hurry. Yet, her hurry had caused her to overlook one very important detail, that of saying “Thank you.”

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying my wife was wrong in her actions. I’m only using that to illustrate a point; the importance of showing appreciation. The real question is, how many times do our wives do things for us, and we are the ones to forget to say “Thanks?” Even if it’s only once, that’s still once too many.

Our wives do things for us and for our kids all day long; often without receiving any words of thanks. We tend to take the things they do for granted, as if they are expected. Whether or not they are expected shouldn’t change our appreciation; nor should they change our expression of that appreciation.

If the only time when we say “Thank you” is when she does something outstanding, then we’re establishing an unwritten rule that we expect her to do outstanding things all the time. We are sending the message that we aren’t satisfied with the normal things; so we don’t appreciate them. In essence, we’re telling our wives, “You’re not good enough.”

You know, our wives receive that message more than enough from the world. Every magazine ad, television spot, TV program and movie tells her that she’s not good enough. If there is anyone who should be telling her the opposite, it’s you and me. We need to be building our wives up, not being part of the multitude that’s trying to tear her down. All it takes is a few simple words of appreciation.

If you’ve been lacking in showing appreciation, go to your wife and apologize to her. Tell her that you do see the things that she does every day and you appreciate them. Tell her you don’t know what you’d do without her. Let her know that she’s important.

Then, create a new habit, where you are regularly thanking her for the normal things which she does. Let her know regularly that she is appreciated. Teach your kids to do the same, so that they learn to thank her for taking them to ball practice and cooking dinner and washing their clothes. Those may not be exciting things, but they are important. Her doing them is important as well.