Tattle Tales

My husband ate my lunch!

One Sunday afternoon I saut'ed some matchstick carrots, sliced sweet onion and mushrooms, seasoned it with garlic, red pepper flakes, and Parmesan cheese, put it all in a plastic container, and put it in the fridge for my lunch on Monday.

Sometime between putting it in the fridge Sunday and seeing the empty container in the sink Monday morning, I realized my husband ate it.

He ate it all. My lunch. My lunch.

He ate my lunch!

In his defense, I didn't tell him it was my lunch; I didn't put a sticky note on it saying, "Don't eat this."

On Saturday I'd made some macaroni salad and put it in an identical plastic container. He ate from that and I didn't say anything, so I'm sure Barry thought everything in a plastic container was fair game.

But it wasn't. That was my lunch—and he ate it!

I wasn't so much angry as I was amused, in a ticked off way, if you can imagine that.
However, I acted as if I'd been Wronged. Violated. Put Out and Put Upon. I wanted vengeance and justice! So I posted my grievance on my Facebook page: My husband ate my lunch!

Next, I text-messaged my daughters: Your dad ate my lunch!

Then I went to work and, hanging my head, bemoaned to my friends, "Sorry, I can't eat lunch with you today. My husband ate mine."

Everyone I told commiserated with me. Oh, you poor thing. How tragic. What a terrible, terrible husband. You, among all women, have suffered greatly.

I felt victim-y all day and enjoyed the sympathetic pity immensely.

By now I hope you know I'm being facetious, although I truly did make a big show out of tattling on my husband. But mostly I was goofing around—that time.

I'm ashamed to say there have been other times when I've tattled on my husband out of anger, out of a sense of wanting to be seen as more right or righteous, out of spite.

At one time I freely aired my husband's dirty laundry to anyone who would listen. If he had hurt me in any way, if he had failed to live up to my expectations, if he did or said something I thought he shouldn't, it was nothing for me to pick up the phone and call a friend.

Oh, I'd preface it by saying, "We need to pray," but my true motivation was always to tattle on my husband.

My wake-up call came the day I overheard a former pastor's wife telling someone how tired she gets of hearing women talk negatively about their husbands. "By the time I meet these guys, I already hate them," she said.

I felt my face flush with shame. She could've been thinking of me when she said that. I'd cornered her many times with stories of my husband's so-called atrocities.

Hearing her words was like God whacking me with a tire iron. I was instantly ashamed at how often I had disrespected my husband and maligned his character by my careless words. I begged God to change me, to give me a chance to do it right.

James says, "It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell" (James 3:5-6, The Message).

I've never forgotten my pastor's wife's words, nor have I forgotten the biblical warnings of James, and in the past 20 or so years I've tried my best not to bad-mouth my husband. I think I do okay.

One thing I know for certain, my husband never talks badly about me. People tell me that all the time. My goal and desire is to have people tell him that about me.

P.S. My husband and I celebrated our 34th anniversary this past Sunday. He bought me lunch.

Often when women get together, the conversation turns to man-bashing. How can we stop this? How can we help each other to build up the men in our lives instead of tearing them down?

Read more articles that highlight writing by Christian women at ChristianityToday.com/Women