“Aunt Becky's home holds a lot of things that have been passed down from wife to wife over generations. There's a loving legacy that sits on those walls and inside them. My mother-in-law's home is very similar....Is it just a matter of making things beautiful? Or does it go deeper than that? Does it go to the spirit of what beauty is? Does a beautiful home ensure a beautiful spirit? Not necessarily. But a beautiful spirit can make a beautiful home. And maybe that's what I need to work on creating.”

“....The wife is the heartbeat of the home. She serves as the thermometer--if she's warm, so is the rest of the family; if she's cold, so is the rest of the family. And if she's an extreme temp--boiling or frigid--the family will follow suit. Calm or chaos comes from her.I've resisted this responsibility often. It's much easier to point to my husband, the biblically appointed leader of the household, and to examine what I perceive are his flaws, his failures, his lack of whatever. But ultimately, I'm just denying what I really know--that I have a great role to honor and live up to in my marriage and in our home. The questions is, do I embrace it? Or do I run from it? My fear is that I've run from it for a while now. But I'm not running any more.”

“I'm learning what it means to focus less on me and more on God, because when I focus my attention on him, he enables me to focus my love and my patience on those who matter most to me.If there's anything I have learned from going through this experiment--which really became much more a challenge of the heart than any kind of domestic diva contest--is that as a wife, as a mom, as a woman, and ultimately as a daughter of Christ, I have much influence. And I can use it for good and for blessing, or I can use it for harm and for cursing.I want to be the wife who is a blessing to her family, who is praised and remembered, not for the activities or projects I checked off, but for the smiles I wore, the peace I shared, and the deep love of God I hope I instilled wherever I went....”

“When Cliff has gotten sick in the past, I have not been the best of nursemaids. Especially if there's a lot going on.I want him to be like the paraplegic and just get up and walk. But I am not Jesus and Cliff is only human. And right now he's sick. If I am learning anything from the Proverbs 31 wife, I'm going to guess that being kind and loving to my husband when he's not feeling well is a lesson I need to learn. So I resist the urge the freak out and moan and complain about all we have to do and that he just needs to suck it up and be a man and push past the fever and phlegm and pack some boxes. Instead, I push him gently into bed, pull the comforter up to his chin, and bring him cold medicine...and tell him I hope he feels better better before I quietly shut the door behind me. And resist running around the house waving my arms in despair.Six hours later, as I'm packing up the kitchen, I see Cliff walk out of the bedroom with boxes in his hands, heading toward the office. And I breathe a silent prayer of thanks that I have indeed married a man's man. And that Tylenol works really, really well. And that honey gets a lot better results than gasoline.”

“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”

“A lie is a statement that something is, which is not. then, since the Spirit's statement or conception of anything necessarily makes that thing exist, it is logically impossible for it to conceive a lie. Therefore the Spirit is Truth. Similarly disease and death are the negative of life, and therefore the Spirit, as the Principle of life, cannot embody disease or death in its Self-contemplation. In like manner also, since it is free to produce what it will, the Spirit cannot desire the presence of repugnant forms, and so one of its inherent Laws must be Beauty. In this treefold Law of Truth, Life and Beauty, we find the whole underlying nature of the spirit, and no action on the part of the individual can be at variance with the Originating Unity which does not contravert fundamental principles.”

“Home is the true wife’s kingdom. There, first of all places, she must be strong and beautiful. She may touch life outside in many ways, if she can do it without slighting the duties that are hers within her own doors. But if any calls for her service must be declined, they should not be the duties of her home. These are hers, and no other one’s. Very largely does the wife hold in her hands, as a sacred trust, the happiness and the highest good of the hearts that nestle there. The best husband—the truest, the noblest, the gentlest, the richest-hearted—cannot make his home happy if his wife be not, in every reasonable sense, a helpmate to him. In the last analysis, home happiness depends on the wife. Her spirit gives the home its atmosphere. Her hands fashion its beauty. Her heart makes its love. And the end is so worthy, so noble, so divine, that no woman who has been called to be a wife, and has listened to the call, should consider any price too great to pay, to be the light, the joy, the blessing, the inspiration of a home. Men with fine gifts think it worth while to live to paint a few great pictures which shall be looked at and admired for generations; or to write a few songs which shall sing themselves into the ears and hearts of men. But the woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.”