This is a motivating post that should cause us to ask ourselves, “AM I an inspiration to my husband….through good times and bad?”

The Wife Desired by Father Leo J. Kinsella, 1950’s

John was dead tired as he left work for home late one Monday afternoon. His physical fatigue partly accounted for his low spirits. He felt that he was on an economic treadmill. He was getting nowhere.

Married five years he and Aeleen and the two little ones were still cooped up in a miserable little four room birth control trap of a flat. And worst of all they had saved pitifully little for their own home It was not like John to quit.

John was not giving up this particular Monday night either. Yet he was worried about the future. He did not seem to be getting anywhere. He had cast about in his mind for some solution till he was in a mental whirl.

Should he look for a part time job on the side? Should he quit his job, take the plunge, and go in with Joe Burns on that gas station? He hated to vex Aeleen with these problems. She had the housework and the children. His was the responsibility of decision.

As he reached for the kitchen door knob, he paused. A dark cloud passed over his face. Aeleen had no bargain in him. She was the beauty of her whole school. Intelligent and bubbling over with personality she could have done much better.

As the door swung open, Aeleen was wiping a bit of spilled milk from the floor. One knee was on the floor; the other balanced Michael, the culprit whose mess she was cleaning up.

Her face came up to meet John’s. It was all smiling. The hug and the kiss told him that no one else in all this world was as welcome to step through that kitchen door. She noticed that he held her just a little longer than usual. “He needs me this evening more than ever.” she sensed. “And what a comfy feeling to know one is needed.”

That evening Aeleen fulfilled with colors flying the greatest function of a wife. She was his inspiration. She quickly drove the black devils of defeatism from his troubled mind. Before bedtime he was ready like Cyrano de Bergerac, to fight giants. Her confidence in him was complete, not that she did not have to chase out disturbing doubts now and then about his capacities.

She was much in love with John and knew his love. This mutual love made it easier for her to discipline her mind, so that her whole being evidenced her assurance in him. Come what might John was her man and he was the best in the world for her.

Thoughts constant and deep have a way of manifesting themselves especially to one spiritually tuned in to the thinker. Aeleen’s faith, quietly evidenced in her husband, renewed his courage. He would not fail her. Aeleen was God’s manifestation to him of all that was good and beautiful. Like David, the psalmist, he felt that, if Aeleen was with him, who was against him?

Aeleen made him conscious that he was the greatest man in the world for her money. There was no pretense in Aeleen’s admiration for John. She loved him deeply. He was her sunshine and the light blinded her from seeing anyone else.

It was no effort for her to stifle within her soul any invidious comparisons between John and other husbands seemingly more successful. On the surface, the husbands of some of her acquaintances might be more successful.

Some of them obviously commanded much more income. “So what?” fought back Aeleen within herself. “It takes more than that to make a husband. John may not be on fire, nor the most gifted person, but take him for what he is, all in all, he is a man.”

From this brief little picture of Aeleen and John, it is obvious that the ideal wife is much more than a companion, a good housekeeper, a good cook, and a good mother. She is an inspiration. Unless she is this to her husband there is danger that all the other fine aspects of her role as wife will be wasted in final failure.

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