Key Bible Verse: Your wife will be like a fruitful vine, flourishing within your home (Psalm 128:3). Bonus Reading: Proverbs 31:10-31

When we married, I was a youth pastor in Denver. But when I decided to become a writer, Jana and I moved to the Chicago suburbs so I could take a job as an editor.

About four years later, with one child added, I became restless and began working on an MBA. I also had a book contract. So I was working full-time, going to graduate school two nights a week, and writing a book. Now we had two children, and I wasn't the one sacrificing; she was. The week I told her I was leaving my secure job to start my own business, she told me she was pregnant. Again, who sacrificed?

Recently Jana told me she wants to go back to school. I became unsupportive and critical. I thought, We don't have the money. You actually need to work more, because … It hadn't mattered that we didn't have the money for me to get my MBA or to start my business. I had a great opportunity to sacrifice some things I wanted to help my wife with her dreams. But I told Jana, "I know in my head that I need to do this, and it's killing me because it's so difficult." Why? Because I think about giving up my goals.

—Dave Goetz in Marriage Partnership

My Response: I could help make one of my wife's dreams come true by …

Thought to Apply: People who establish successful loving unions do so by letting the other person be a whole person, rather than forcing him or her to be only one-half of a whole.—Ari Kiev (psychologist & investment coach)

Adapted from our sister publication Marriage Partnership (Winter/06).

Prayer for the Week

Deliver me, sovereign Lord, from attempting to manage You. Help me to honor You by trusting and submitting to Your control.

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