This past weekend, my new husband and me spent 3 days learning about how to become better spouses and future parents. I was pretty confident in two things going into it: That we were doing pretty good and that we also needed a lot of tools that we hadn’t already learned. We were thinking, a tune up? Haha, were we wrong. There’s the little boxes in the workbook where you rate certain areas from 1-5. I’ll openly admit, a lot were around 2. How could my scores be so small, yet I hadn’t felt like things were dismal? We’ve held onto the fact that God brought us together. This is something you can’t replace. I also think that we’ve had the state of mind, “We’re comfortable and this must be as good as it gets.”
Going through the weekend I had to pray everyday, multiple times, that I’d focus on changing myself–not my husband. It’s so easy for me to see the specks in others, and ignore the log of my own eye. As some joke about themselves, the sawmill. Doing this and truly seeking to be a better woman, God honored that request. Here’s not only what I learned, but what’s growing in my heart.
Submit. The scary word that is usually taken the wrong way. How it was described in the meeting was this:
If you have two generals, on the same side and leading in the same battlefield, what will happen? You will have two people butting heads and causing confusion for the team. So,one of them needs to rank down, in order to win the battle. Since God has given this role, leading, to a man as a responsibility, us women are to rank ourselves down so that we can have a clear leader. We are still equal, but in a different position of service. We are the helper, which is the same word used to describe God in the Hebrew language of the Bible. It describes how he helps us here on earth. It’s not a lowly position. We bring something to the marriage that our husbands cannot. He needs us. Too many times I have been trying to direct things, an eldest sibling tendency, and hurt my husband. This does not show trust and to my husband, distrust equals disrespect. He is and becomes what I tell him. And if I tell him “I don’t believe in you,” he will start to not trust in himself. It goes with the quote, “Behind every successful man, is a good woman.” Keep in mind, to him, trust is the same as love to us. So if I think about him being unloving in comparison, that hurts and i don’t want to do that to him.
This is the first realization that went from a knowledge before, and to the heart after the conference.
Put in Action: Today, if this is a struggle for you, pray to God that you would be respectful to your husband and to help him lead. Then, when something comes up that you disagree with personally, and it will, that you would support his decision as your leader. Watch him try to conquer. If he succeeds, he will gain confidence to lead you without fear of being rejected. Also, if he fails, he will learn. And most likely, since guys don’t like to fail, he’ll do it different next time, without you having to tell him every instance. (I’m guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit)
For a lot of women, maybe what I wrote up there you already do well. If so, that’s awesome! Tips are welcome below. 🙂
