Wives, submit to your won husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Eph.5:22
I personally have had a love hate relationship with these inspired words of God. Lets remember that the Creator of our bodies, souls, spirits and personalities wrote this. This is God's heart, desire and COMMAND for us married gals. So what do we do with it? I can tell you what I have done with it. I had despised it. I have obeyed it. I have pretended it wasn't there. I have stayed up late after a terrible fight studying it in the Greek word by word and the conveniently forgotten to walk it out. I have walked it out in many situations and seasons. I have failed to walk it out as well. Bottom line God has been growing me as a wife these last 11 years and 3 months. Recently (like this morning) God has shown me something new and wonderful about the submit thing.
My man and I just went through something hard. It didn't have anything to do with submission or so I thought but God used it to unearth some serious disobey in my life. I have not truly followed my husband yet. Its embarrassing to state this 11 years in but I am comforted that I have the rest of my life to change. So this is what I used to do (like last week). If my man asked me to do something or change something or try to lead me in any way I would evaluate if I agreed or not. If I did agree I would do whatever the things was joyfully and slap the submission label on it. If he asked something I didn't agree with I would reason away why I didn't need to do it. He doesn't understand, I wasn't brought up that way, he isn't perfect so it might not be safe to follow that and the list goes on! I am talking about the entire gamut of life issues from parenting to "Babe, please turn on the exhaust fan when you cook."
During our recent hard time God challenged me about this controlling attitude towards when I felt like obey Him or not. Obeying Him, God by submitting to him my husband. He (God) said to me, what do you think would happen if you just did the things Paul asked you to do? I made a list of all the big and littles I had been rebellious with my husband about. Turns out every single one was for my benefit. Like if I followed him in the things he asked of me or in directions he wanted to take our family I would receive good things. One example, I have struggled with my health as in not eating well and working out consistently. My sweet man would gently encourage me, "Babe, I know its hard but you just gotta stay consistent with eating well and working out." In my heart I would get annoyed, like "ahhhh don't tell me what to do you have no idea how hard it is to home school, run the house, work out and eat well." Really the only thing that fuels that kind of response to our men is pride.
So now that we have some of the problem pin pointed, PRIDE, lets talk about the other thing that stops us from submitting to our husbands. Not TRUSTING God.
I have let God know more that a few times that I think its incredibly ridiculous that He expects me to follow and submit to an imperfect man. I'm OK with following and submitting to Him because He is perfect and wont mess up in leading but how in His goodness does he expect me to lay down my "right" to manage myself and give it to a fallen person? His answer to this very destructive attitude of mine was not what I expected. I wasn't even asking it recently but though the challenges Paul and I faced this week God showed me through my man. GRACE.
I messed up. I hurt my husband. I allowed the sin of coveting what other have and I don't to tell my husband he wasn't good enough. Yuck. God used this to show me that I really am a wretch. I really am a mess and a sinner. See growing up "good little church girl," this being an utter failure apart from God concept has been difficult for me to grasp. I hurt my man. You know what he did? He loved me. I was so undeserving and he was so kind. It blew my mind. It taught me about God's love for me and taught me through experience just how wonderful grace is. I needed grace and it was freely give. Back to why it is safe to follow our fallen husbands. Because the same grace that saved us from and eternity apart from God and saves us daily as we screw up is the same grace that God pours out on our men. God is big enough to handle our men. He loves them more that we do. It might feel like a tall order to submit but could you imagine the pressure of leading. Our husbands don't need us to drive them but fallow and support them. While in the midst of our struggle this week we did have separation as far as connectedness. In that time I took God seriously with His challenge to just follow with deciding if I agree. (obviously I'm not talking about following blindly in to sin stuff) Even when Paul was on shift and not even home I felt more connected to him than ever in my life. I don't know about you ladies but feeling united with my man is like a top favorite experience in my whole life. The benefit of submission is connection. God created marriage to be this great mystery of oneness with our spouse. There is not greater experience on earth that I have had than that.
I hope this is encouraging to someone. I am so excited to follow my man through the good choices and bad. To actually trust God enough to do this marriage thing His way. I know that God has blessing in store as I obey that I can't even fathom! I also know that it will take work. It will take staying focused on God, it will take allowing Him to clean out the junk in my heart and refill it with Himself. It will take a continued growth and learning about grace and humility that I have never know before. I am so thankful for Jesus, I am so thankful for marriage and I am so thankful for my Paul.
