From the Lord

"Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD."  Proverbs 19:14 (NIV)  I have had this verse sitting in the long cue of ideas I have for future posts.  I hadn't looked at that list in quite a while, having no real shortage of things on my mind to write about.  This verse has a very different meaning to me now than it did when I added it to the list a few months ago.

My life is like the epitome of an example to illustrate what this verse is talking about.  My house, at least one of them, was inherited from one of my parents, through a unique set of circumstances, ironically hinging on my parents divorce.  (As was a portion of my "wealth")  But I had already gotten most of the things I was interested in, which could be acquired through wealth, so that inheritance had less effect on my life than it otherwise would have.

Technically, a wife probably can be acquired through wealth.  Isn't that one of the stereotypical surface things that girls are interested in?  Guys want physical beauty, and girls want to be spoiled with extravagant luxuries?  But that isn't how one finds a "prudent wife."  And I have tried a lot of other ways as well, and none of them seem to work.  But any progress I may have made in that direction recently, not much of the success was based on anything I did any differently, so the difference must be "from the Lord."

And there has been no shortage of prayer on that topic over the last decade or so, but I have made no significant change in that regard that should affect the outcome.  The positive changes that I have experienced recently are not really of my own doing.  Now once the right door was opened by the Lord, it was still my option to step through it, and it is now my responsibility to lead certain aspects of that.  But my willingness to do so was not lacking in the past, only the opportunity to try.

So I am very conscious of the role God plays in our human relationships, and hopefully I won't lose focus on that reality anytime soon.  Life is far too complicated to attempt without him, and relationships are the combination of two sets of those complications.  So the gender neutral version of the verse would be: "successful relationships are from the Lord."  And that seems very much true to me, and I guess I can accept that reality, although the idea takes a little getting used to.