This has nothing to do with who you’ll vote for in the Presidential Election. This is all about answering one question:  What would be said of you if the nation suddenly needed to describe you as a wife?

A mid-western gal who shops at Goodwill just found out what people will say about her, and I don’t envy her one bit. From Oklahoma, Janna Ryan is smart enough  to to earn a law degree and a position with a high-powered company outside of Washington, DC. That’s  how she met her husband Paul, now the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party. He’s attracted a lot of attention in the last two years by proposing what’s known as the Ryan Budget. As his influence grows, people want to know about his WIFE.

They have three children and live in a Civil War-era house in Wisconsin. Despite his 14 years in Congress, they’re described as “unpretentious,” and she smiles like someone you could go to Panera with. “Devout” in her Catholic faith, Janna is the oldest of 3 daughters, and they lost their mom due to cancer in 2010.    I imagine that she’s still dealing with her grief, whether or not she’s the wife of a Vice Presidential candidate.  Every wife deals with the real stuff of life, spotlight or not.

What kind of WIFE does he have?

When I hear about a man as a candidate, I always want to know about his wife. Knowing HER reveals a lot about HIM.

• Watching Michelle Obama reach out to children and talk about making healthy food a part of our home lives adds credit to her husband in my book.
• When Jill Biden wrote the children’s book Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops
  about how military families face deployment, I find common ground of compassion and respect for families with her.
• As for Ann Romney, Fox News said, “She is so gracious and she loves him so much that, if it’s important to him, she will come outside of her comfort zone to be where she needs to be for him. But he will do the same thing for her.”

When you see a man with vision to accomplish something extraordinary, look for his wife beside him. This past summer, I saw this all over the world, thought their names weren’t Jill, Ann, Janna, or Michelle. They had names like Nutjakorn, Debbie, Anne, Myrna, and Mary. Not every candidate is a great man, and not every great man is a candidate. 

Great men have great wives.

According to Newsweek, Janna Ryan’s cousin happens to be a Democratic Senator (For my non-US readers, that’s the other political party;) )  who says of his cousin, “Janna is a wonderful parent to their children and will be Paul’s strongest supporter on the campaign trail.” What would people say about me as a wife if God called my husband to extraordinary things? Would I add credit to him? And what about as God calls our husband’s to the “ordinary” things of life?  Do we add credit to our husbands in the daily things of life?

Maybe we should embrace the opportunity to lift up our husbands wherever they are, so together we have more influence on the world around us.   If the goal of marriage is to glorify God, then we want to spread that far and wide. We want to add credit to our husbands and widen their influence.

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus,  that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:5-6).

If you’re a United States citizen, I don’t know who you’ll vote for, but I know it won’t be for Michelle, Jill, Ann, or Janna … at least not this time. 😉 The next leader of my country will be a man, and his wife will contribute to his reputation and his influence, for better or for worse. I will influence my husband’s reputation in whatever God calls my man to do.

 

Prayer of an influential wife

Dear God,

I want to be a credit to my husband’s reputation. Help me to add to his influence and be an asset to him as a man and as your servant. I want good things to be reported about our home and our children and our marriage. Make me aware of how others see us, and help me take an honest inventory of my part in our life’s purpose together and in my husband’s dreams.