I feel like this new year is starting off great! God is really working on me, convicting me, shepherding me, and molding me. I love having good conversations with my husband about our expectations and what the Lord is teaching us in our lives.....car rides are usually a great time for that, never really planned, they just happen! This last week coming home from Huntsville was a time for one of those great conversations.
Anthony and I are not readers typically, we just dont crawl up with a book for fun, but we decided to start reading books together so that we can study on ways to strengthen our marriage and spark conversation of what our expectations of a marriage look like to both of us. Over this last year- I have learned a lot, not only about Anthony, but about myself. I can see how marriage and relationships can be the very thing that God uses to sanctify us.
I am so excited to live life with my best friend- a man who desires to be a Godly man, to lead me, and to make me happy. He isn't perfect, obviously, because he is a sinful human just like the rest of us. But a lightbulb has been turning on for me these last few weeks.
Most relationship books and counselors would probably say that relationships are like an emotional bank- what you put into it is what you get out. I believe that is a wrong way to look at relationships, from a Christian perspective. As women we need love, we desire to be loved- by words, actions and understanding gestures. For men, (Anthony shared) that they desired to be loved as well but in a somewhat different way. They want to have your support no matter what, they want their woman to stand beside them and to look up to them. They need a wife who admires and encourages them in a respectful way. Anthony shared that failure can be a great fear in a man, and to have a wife who continually shows them love through the failures is what helps him conquer through life. Something i have noticed about wives so often are those that admire and respect and look up to their husbands, and those whom you can tell do not have any respect at all by the way they speak about their husbands.
Some woman say- "My husband doesn't give me any reason to look up to him, so why should i sugarcoat or say something that isn't true?" If you want to beat your husband down, if you want to make him feel the lowest of low, then you will do just that by seeing him in a negative light, by saying a snippy comment or putting him down in front of people (even if it was a joke). As a wife, God has placed us in an amazing position- a position to build them up or tear them down. Husbands are going to fail, multiple times- they may even be hurtful, but God still calls you to respect him and show him respect.
Something a girlfriend and I were discussing yesterday was how many relationship books constantly say that if you are good to your husband, he will be good to you. Is this really the goal? Isn't that a selfish goal? Does this goal sanctify us or cripple us? Is God this way to us? If that is the case- God could be a lot more harsher with us because we are no perfect angels to Him. No, i believe that God calls ME to be good to my husband, uplift him, respect him- in front of people and in my home. I want people to look at me and know that i love my husband no matter what and that i adore him. I want to be a Godly wife who doesn't hold things in or gives him good things when he is good to me. No- God calls us to love and respect no matter what life brings. I can see this being difficult and a challenge to my spiritual walk of course, but isn't all pruning just that- a good thing though it hurts?
I welcome the challenge today, a challenge that brings sweetness into a marriage, a bond like no other, a blessing beyond imagined. I am grateful i have a wonderful husband who wants to walk with me down the road of marriage, who wants to be sanctified and willing to see his own flaws so as to give them to the Lord so that i may bennifit. I look up to him and couldn't imagine going through this life without my best friend and partner!
