6 Practical Ways to Support Your Husband’s Dreams (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of the mini-series on supporting your husband’s dreams. Click HERE to read Part 1!
Like I mentioned in Part 1, sometimes your dreams line up with your husband’s dreams. Other times, you may feel like you aren’t truly on the same page. However, what is most important to remember is that as wives, we should do everything we can to support our husbands in their endeavors. This allows us to bring glory to God by lovingly being our husband’s greatest champion, and it also strengthens our man’s sense of purpose and identity (and, I believe, strengthens our marriage in turn!).
Here are the next few practical ways you can support your husband’s dreams:
3 // Spend time talking with him about his dreams. Perhaps it’s not super exciting to hear about stocks he’s thrilled he bought. Maybe you don’t feel like chatting about grad school, or other money-making ideas he’s had. But he probably shouldn’t know that! He knows you. He is most likely aware that not all of his favorite topics to talk about are your favorite topics. But what he needs from you is a listening ear! Ask about his endeavors! Most of all, though, talking about his dreams with him will mean listening to his dreams and desires.
4 // Budget what you need to – be it time or money. Now, this will take a bit of discussion, particularly if it is money that you need to budget to help your husband pursue his goals and dreams. But this may mean budgeting time as well. In Part 1, I chatted a bit about my husband’s farming. I have had to be more understanding than is my natural tendency to be 🙂 when it comes to my husband’s farming endeavors. With farming, that mostly meant I had to be understanding and aware of the hours he’d need to be gone…but it also meant budgeting my time well, too, since I would sometimes be called upon to bring meals to the guys in the field. If we learn to do these things with great love, and without resentment, we’ll find our husbands will feel uplifted and encouraged in the process.
5 // Remind him that you truly care about his goals and aspirations. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, especially since I just mentioned that maybe his favorite topics aren’t your favorite topics! But caring about his dreams goes much deeper than that. Caring about his dreams can mean voicing the fact that you care about him as a person; therefore, you at least indirectly care about the things he cares about!
6 // Find ways to assist him. In our pastor’s sermon at our wedding, he talked about the concept of a wife being a husband’s “help-meet,” a term that when translated, refers to battle reinforcements! You are indispensable to your man. He looks to you for your encouragement, insight, resources, and help! You are valuable and have a crucial role in your husband’s successes. Don’t let this responsibility slide. I certainly have, countless times, and I’m sure I will falter in this in the future. But we should commit to find ways to help our husbands, being reinforcements in whatever ways we can!
How do you strive to help support your husband’s dreams? Has it been difficult for you at times? What have you learned he needs from you?
Missed Part 1? Click HERE to catch up and join in on the discussion there, too!
This is really important to remember; great post. My husband’s work is very boring and confusing to me, but he loves it, so I’ve been trying to make a better effort to understand and listen when he talks about it. That’s not 100% connected to his hopes and dreams though, so that’s another area I want to reconnect with him in. Thanks for the reminder!
Thank you, Lindsay! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed this post! Yes, sometimes the things our husbands want to discuss aren’t totally interesting to us, but it’s great that you’re trying to understand and listen! And it could be really fun to ask him about his bigger dreams, too!
sorry! too busy thinking about MY dreams.
This is such an important reminder, and quite timely, because I’m realizing I haven’t asked Dan about his dreams in quite a while. That will definitely be our dinner conversation tonight!
Thank you, Brittany! I’m glad you liked this post! I’m sure Dan will appreciate getting to chat about his dreams, too! It’s a great conversation starter. 🙂 Thanks for reading along!
I love these! I struggle a lot with budgeting my time and our money to help support Jordan’s dreams. I’m a saver by nature (aka I’m super cheap) so sometimes it’s hard for me to open my hands and trust that his dreams are worth pouring into. Thanks for the encouragement and reminder that it’s okay to do that!
Yes! Thank you, Lauren! I’m happy this post resonated with you! This can even just be a great conversation starter in terms of how you want to approach budgeting for his (and both of your) dreams!
I love this, Hannah! I love that these can go both ways, too. Budgeting in general is something I need to get better at and I’d love to help my husband focus more on his hobby dreams, instead of him worrying of work all the time.
That’s such a good point, Summer! I’m always working on being more understanding / a better listener when my husband wants to chat about his (many) hobbies! 🙂 I’m so glad you liked this post! Thanks!