Wife In The Fast Lane

Life in the fast lane

Surely make you lose your mind

Life in the fast lane

Life in the fast lane

Everything all the time

Life in the fast lane.

Life In The Fast Lane, The Eagles

Hotel California Album, 1976

This wornout track on my Eagles album tells of a couple taking their excessive lifestyle to the edge.  Since my first post of 2 Much Too Busy, its like Don Henley’s voice has been humming on a backburner.  To make the fast lane a little faster, my maid, my cook, my nanny and my prayer partner left abruptly.  Well, at least that’s what I said to mom as I hugged her good-bye last Friday night.  (She travels here from 2 states over ever year to bless us for a month, and its the closest we’ll ever get to having a Christian Alice living in the house).  Sigh.

In mulling over my next posts, and prayerful considerations of my calendar and commitments, I’m also reminded of (Socrates? Plato?) who said “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

So, Granny left, and I’m back to planning full boat dinners by myself and digging out the Endust.  Two days after her departure, the upstairs is a mess, the catbox needs cleaning, I have two more doses of antibiotics to give sick kids, and I’ve abandoned my knitting project (again).  

In working through this topic Scripturally and prayerfully, the first thing I came to realize was that I’m a little offtrack with my #1 ministry (my husband - not my kids.  I learned that from Martha Peace in a study of her book, The Excellent Wife).  Good wife-ing is hard business.  (Which, as a sidenote, I’ve taught or taken classes in pretty much every Christian topic under the sun, but studies on how to be a good wife have been few and far between.)  And so, God’s first pit stop for me in my considerations of my next installment of 2 Much Too Busy, has been to consider my recent ”wife in the fast lane”, and how this affects my husband.  I love how J.B. Phillips puts Colossians 3:18:  Wives, adapt yourselves to your husbands, this is your Christian duty.  He doesn’t adapt to me, I am to adapt to him.  Selah.

Sigh.

 So, a less than excellent wife has this bit of wisdom to share with another wife who may be one-half of an excessive couple today (or at least the fast lane excesses of kids, husband, home, job, ministry, yadda):

Pull over.  Stop.  Think about your man.  Really sit and think about him and all he brings to the table.  Where can you adapt?  Secondly, be excessive to your husband today.  Excessive thanks, excessive praise, excessive kisses and hugs, excessive words to build him up.  Excessive respect.  Excessively build him up, according to his needs. 

And please, I don’t want to hear all the caveats and “what about this” and “okay, but you need to consider that” and all the disclaimers from the well meaning. 

Let’s keep it simple:  Take a pit stop from wife in the fast lane and be excessive to your husband in some way today if you have a good man who loves Jesus.   

And if you’re still waiting to taste wife in the fast lane, i.e. you’re single, pick someone close to you.  Where can you adapt?  Where can you give them excess?  You’re in Drivers Ed.  Pracise