The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s love from head to heart for Christian professionals
The way your spouse is wired differently from you is not a problem to manage; it is a gift God placed on purpose. You may know the differences well, how your spouse decides, recovers from a hard day, or spends a free Saturday, and have settled into working around them. Have you ever considered that working around a difference and being thankful for it are not the same thing?
C.H.E.W. with Me
New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.
C – Clarity: Tolerating a Difference Is Not The Same As Treasuring It
Most couples know the other person is different. One decides in minutes and one needs a whole evening to decide. One talks a hard day out and one needs quiet first.
Over the years we get skilled at working around each other, and that is a real accomplishment. But tolerance has a ceiling: it treats the difference as a cost you have learned to carry.
The deeper possibility is to notice the difference closely enough to be thankful for it, the way you would be thankful for a skill on your team that you do not have.
H – Hear: God Arranged the Parts as He Chose
If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were hearing, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. (1 Corinthians 12:17-18)
Paul wrote this to a church dividing over who mattered most. His subject is the church, and the principle is wider: God builds a body out of differences, deliberately. A marriage is also a body of two, so the principle carries over on a smaller scale.
The Greek verb for “arranged” is etheto, from tithemi, to set or place in position. Paul describes God setting each part where He wanted it, “as he chose,” a phrase that carries the sense of willing and desiring. Then in verse 21 he adds, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.'” Tolerating a difference can quietly say a version of that.
What does this show about God’s love? Paul points to “a still more excellent way” (verse 31), and chapter 13 names it: love that is patient and kind. The God arranging the parts is the God of that love, and His love does not leave the placement to chance. God set eyes, ears, and hands in one body exactly as He chose, so the way your spouse is wired differently from you is a placement, not an accident.
E – Exchange: From Tolerating the Difference to Treasuring It
What needs to be exchanged is the quiet assumption that the difference is a cost, something you tolerate because you love each other anyway. The truth in 1 Corinthians 12 is that God’s love placed the difference on purpose, and the ways your spouse is different from you is exactly what you need.Treasuring starts with noticing: what your spouse sees, handles, or feels that you do not, and what it has done for your life.
Because the extent of God’s love isn’t confined to your specific personality type or wiring, how does that change the way I see how my spouse is wired?
W – Walk: Name Three Ways They Are Wired and Thank Them for One
Take five to ten minutes today with the Wiring Notes below. Write three ways your spouse is wired differently from you, and what each one has given you or protected you from. Then tell your spouse one of them in a sentence: “I noticed how you ___, and here is what it has done for us.”
If you are single, widowed, or divorced, use the same page with your closest relationship: an adult child, a sibling, a close friend, or a mentor.
This week’s practical tool (Spouse week): Wiring Notes
- How they decide. Fast or slow? Gut, data, or counsel? What it has protected us from: ___
- How they handle a hard day. Talk it out, go quiet, stay busy? What it has taught me: ___
- How they spend a free hour. Plan it, leave it open, be with people, be alone? What it adds to our home: ___
- One strength of theirs I lean on without saying so. ___
- The sentence I will say. “I noticed how you ___, and here is what it has done for us: ___.”
- One question to ask this week. “What do you wish I understood better about how you are wired?”
Closing question: Which of your spouse’s differences has quietly shaped your life for the better?
With you on the journey,
Ryan
Ryan writes these with AI to help him say it better. Read more →
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