My Husband Loves Me
I don’t think there is ANYTHING more honorable or important that a wife can say than “My husband loves me.”
Scripture says for wives to respect their husbands and for husbands to love their wives. I think it was written this way because women NATURALLY love, but we do not NATURALLY respect. We can be quite disrespectful in how we look at, think about and talk about our husbands. I know I have been very disrespectful in how I spoke about my husband over the years and it should come as no surprise that I have been hard for him to love.
Men, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s not as hard as you’d think to get your wife to respect you. I did not always feel loved and for two decades I had very little respect for my husband. I BEHAVED for the most part respectful of him but my heart resented him because in the deepest recesses of my soul, I did not feel loved.
If your wife is not respectful towards you, ask God to help you love her and see what happens!
Women, I’ll let YOU in on a little secret. I had to LEARN to respect him BEFORE you might say he “deserved” it. I had to CHOOSE to respect him long before I could FEEL and believe his love for me.
I tell young people all the time, “Marriage and parenting are THE two GREATEST opportunities to learn self-denial and sacrificial love life can offer you.” Marriage and parenting are the best examples of what the LORD talked to me about in the letter “Refiner’s Fire.”
Done well, they will give you the most BLESSED life!
Done poorly, they can make you despise life itself.
Can I sit here and tell you my husband understands me completely or agrees with who I am or how I show up in the world? Absolutely not.
Can I tell you that he wouldn’t change a thing or two about me if he could? No, I’m afraid I cannot.
I imagine some days, it’s especially challenging to choose to love being married to me. The world would likely label me eccentric for Jesus. Some of my eccentricities appear to be for “religious” reasons, but they are simply personal preferences and others genuinely are for the LOVE of Christ.
One of my little quirks that has become a personal preference is that I have gotten rid of almost all of my clothes. It started out as the LORD asking me to let certain more flashy, attention seeking pieces go, and over time it became the joy of simplicity.
I wear the same 12 Walmart dresses with black leggings, decorative knock off Converse shoes and jackets nearly 365 days a year. I asked my husband recently, “Which color should I wear today?” He replied monotonely, “Something other than the same dress you’ve worn every day for more than a year.”
I get it, but what he cannot fully understand is the PEACE and JOY I have in making NO decision in the morning more than what color I’m in the mood for and the length of the black legging is dependent only on how warm it is outside. I LOVE the simplicity of my wardrobe, but HE is the one who gets to look at me everyday.
When I thought about the Amish or Catholic Nuns, I used to think, “Man, it would be WONDERFUL not to have to decide what to wear every day.” Now I don’t have to!
While I KNOW he would love for me to do this differently, he is very intentional to LOVE me anyways. I recently decided to let him pick an outfit or two at the store he would like to see me wear and on special occasions, I’ll wear them just for him.
Another of my eccentricities is with food. Food is the most essential thing in our lives. Without it, we die. For many, my husband included, food is also one of the most ENJOYABLE things in life. For me, it has been a source of great internal conflict and pain, and I’d be content to live the rest of my life without ever making another conscious decision about food again.
I spent 33 years with a disordered relationship with food, my body and the scale. My husband has put up with 28 years (including dating and engagement) of my ridiculous relationship with food.
Whatever was my current obsessively specific way of eating or exercising, he didn’t have a say in it, and I saw obedience to my own man-made rules as a life or death necessity. My poor husband.
I now have a strong conviction to honor God with what I put in my body, not so I won’t be fat (because I don’t live in fear anymore) but because I’m asking God to let me live and tell of His goodness until my 120th birthday (Genesis 6:3) and then to call me Home. If He sees fit, I’ve got 73 years left in this body, so I will do what I can with the natural wisdom He has given me to be healthy while trusting God with the rest.
When I first formed this conviction, I was rigid about food. It probably looked to my husband like a familiar pattern of disorder….who knows, maybe it still does.
When I recently considered the call to respect my husband, I heard a very familiar Bible passage differently. I was not to let my eating be a stumbling block for my husband, and I was free to eat all things with thanksgiving in my heart.
I decided that I will eat my whole foods, sugar free, mostly processed free foods lifestyle 99% of the time but when I’m having intentional time with my husband, I will joyfully consume exceptions with thanksgiving in my heart whatever we choose to enjoy together. In those times when I am eating differently than my family, I will not use my words to guilt, shame or manipulate them into what I consider better choices as I have witnessed so many other well intentioned women do.
God gives us free will. Who am I to impose my will or lifestyle choices on my family if even GOD doesn’t? I am free to choose how I will live, what I will or won’t wear, what I will or won’t eat, where I will or won’t go….the people in my life are all free to do the same.
If you struggle to want everyone around you to make the same “good choices” you’re making, “for their own good,” I get it, but I’m going to say six of the most freeing words you will ever hear.
“THAT is NONE of your business.”
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 says, “But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.”
These examples may seem like such silly little things, but daily exposure to something you don’t prefer in someone you are stuck with for life can be as irritating as a splinter in your shoe IF YOU LET IT BE. I don’t want to be a splinter in my husband’s shoe. I want to be the greatest blessing in his life and honor God with how I do that.
This ministry, the conversations with God written as letters from my Daddy, Bible study every Tuesday night, worship nights twice a month on Thursdays and book deliveries to pastors and principals…..these things are more real and more important to me than anything else in my life because there is an undeniable calling on my life and I am grateful for the opportunity to obey and honor God in these things.
While these are the most important THINGS in my life….my husband and daughters are the most precious PEOPLE in my life. It has been a learning process and there has been a learning curve as I seek God for how to honor what He has called me to do AND to love and serve those He has given me to love and serve well. It’s a balance.
My family doesn’t get ALL of me, and some might argue they don’t get the BEST of me, but when I am given the freedom to LOVE God with all my heart through obedience to Him, the first thing He tells me is to do is to respect my husband and care for my family. If I fail to do that, I am worse than an unbeliever.
One thing I know about God is that He is a God of order. He does not rob from one arena to provide for another. He does not call us to ministry in a way that will destroy our homes. Our calling might cause a disruption as we learn to listen clearly, but if a man truly LOVES a woman, he will give her the space to follow God’s calling on her life and if a woman truly RESPECTS her husband, her desire will be to honor him in the execution….and the other way around too!
We are still learning, but I can tell you this, I now FEEL deeply loved by my husband even when I know he is biting his tongue not to say what he’s thinking and I have NEVER respected or adored him as much as I do today.
Ephesians 5:23-33
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30 For we are members of His body, [b]of His flesh and of His bones. 31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
1 Timothy 5:8
But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Romans 14:13-23
13 Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.15 For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. 16 So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. 19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.