Ending Well: The Wife I Want to Be | Episode 389

Welcome back to the Ending Well series. This is week five of looking back over the year, letting God redeem the hard parts, and choosing who we want to become as we step into a new season.

Today's episode is all about marriage — but even more specifically, the kind of wife you want to be. Not the Instagram version. Not the performance version. The real, healed, whole version.

This year, God radically reshaped how I see myself as a wife. I didn't set out to "become a better wife," but as He broke my addiction to productivity and constant performance, it transformed our marriage into an even safer place, a deeper gift, and a stronger home base.

Episode Snapshot

In this conversation, I share honestly about:

• The "strong, high-capacity, always-on" identity I lived in for years

• How that mindset spilled into our marriage and made me controlling, critical, and exhausted

• The follower's question that changed everything:

  • "What did you do to change that brought this out in him?"

• Why sometimes you have to go first in doing the inner work

• The difference between survival-mode marriage and a marriage built on connection

• How God used pruning, slowing down, and healing my nervous system to completely shift my role as a wife

We also name an important reality: There are marriages where abuse, betrayal, or deep harm is present, and "trying harder" as a wife is not the answer. I am not speaking into those situations; I am sharing from a context where I am married to a good man, and our biggest battles were often with our own mindsets, wounds, and habits.

Key Shifts God Made In Me This Year

• Letting him lead

  • Moving out of constant control mode

  • Asking for his thoughts and actually listening

  • Giving him room to step forward in decisions and in parenting

• Becoming less reactive, less critical

  • Recognizing how perfectionism makes you hard on yourself and everyone around you

  • Learning the difference between reacting and responding

  • Owning moments where I project my own embarrassment or anxiety onto him

• Allowing myself to be supported