I really enjoy the movie/musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is fun and colourful and full of life, but there is so much we can learn from the main female character Milly.

If you have never seen the movie go here for full details, this link will tell you all the back ground.

Milly the main female character meets Adam, a typical boy meets girl type of scenario except that these two are older and I am sure it was love at first sight, especially for Milly, and they marry the same day.

Unfortunately the marriage doesn’t start out with a basis of truth. Adam doesn’t tell Milly about his 6 grown brothers or the fact that they all live in the same house. Milly waxes on about how wonderful it will be to only cook for 1 man (after serving at the local tavern) and how much she was going to do and grow – basically on the long journey home she shared all her heart and visions for their marriage.

Adam on the other hand sits there and doesn’t really say anything, nothing to give away what she was about to walk into.

When they arrive Milly is confronted with 6 rather grubby backswoodsmen who might as well have lived in the pig pen for all they cared for their home.  They basically demand some food and then eat it like they were animals. Milly has had about enough and overturns the tables and goes to their room.

I am sure as she grasps her Bible she is wondering about what she has gotten herself into and how God could help her. Adam arrives and was going to sleep in a tree (outside their window) to save face but she eventually invites him in and their marriage commences.

Now I am not saying all of the above to down men – my point is what can we as women, wives and mothers learn from Milly.

She was tough, physically and spiritually, but she was all woman. She loved Adam from the start and decided that she would make it work. She didn’t pack her bags and head back to town, she toughed it out. She trained her 6 new brothers to be men and then gentlemen and taught them manners and how to behave.

She didn’t, that I saw work on her husband, she just loved him and cared for him as a wife should.

She stuck with it even when, at the barn raising, there was a big fight, which Adam is all into but the brothers hang back for Milly’s sake.

When the boys fall in love and Adam and them go and steal 6 young women from town, Milly takes in the girls and loves them and sends Adam and the boys to the barn.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, the 6 brothers and the 6 girls fall in love, Milly has a baby and Adam has taken off to the hunters shack.

When Adam learns of his daughters birth he returns to say goodbye, but just seeing his baby girl makes him realise how much he loves Milly and Hannah and how much he needs them.

Milly must have prayed hard that winter for Adam that he would see the errors of his ways and come home. Maybe she even almost gave up hope, but her prayers were answered and her marriage becomes one of love, trust and security.

So what can we learn from Milly???

Even in the best of relationships issues will arise that give us heart ache, so instead of packing our bags and heading for the nearest bus station, let’s be like Milly and stick with it.

Let’s stick with it and pray for God to change our situation, but to change it only to glorify Him.

1 Corinthians 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.