Sacred Influence (9 page)
Obsessing over your husband’s weaknesses won’t make them go away. You may have done that for years — and if so, what has it gotten you, besides more of the same? Leslie Vernick warns, “Regularly thinking negatively about your husband
increases
your dissatisfaction with him and your marriage.” Affirming your husband’s strengths, however, will likely reinforce and build up those areas you cherish and motivate him to pursue excellence of character in others.
Guys rise to praise. When someone compliments us, we want to keep that person’s positive opinion intact. We love how it feels when our wives respect us; we get a rush like nothing else when we hear her praise or see that look of awe in her eyes — and we will all but travel the ends of the earth to keep it coming.
Isn’t this approach, based in God’s Word, at least worth a try?
To make this realistic, you have to keep in mind that no man is ever “on” all the time. This explains why your husband can be so thoughtful, caring, and attentive one day, and so aloof, harsh, and critical the next. You have to give your husband room to be a less-than-perfect human, to have bad days, “off” days, and “average” days. The spiritual challenge comes from the fact that you are likely more apt to define your husband by his bad days than you are to accept the good days as the norm. Hold on to the good; begin to define him by the good; thank him (and God) for the good — and thereby
reinforce
the good.
The rest of this chapter will provide practical spiritual exercises to help you learn how to appreciate an imperfect man. My prayer is that it will guide you away from taking your husband for granted and toward becoming intensely and consistently grateful for the man God has given you as a companion in this journey of life.
Nurture Instead of Condemn
In my boyhood days, our family had a pet toy poodle that loved to chase cars. One fateful afternoon, she finally caught one and got seriously injured. My dad ran out to the road to retrieve the dog — and our family pet became a monster. Frenzied with fear and pain, that poodle kept biting my dad as he gathered her into his arms. He had rushed to help her, to try to bring her healing, but the pain so overwhelmed her that she could only bite the very hands trying to nurture her.
Your husband can be like that. Even if he had extraordinary parents, he most likely still brings some element of woundedness into your marriage. Maybe his siblings teased him. Maybe a former girlfriend broke his heart. Maybe he had a cold and calculating mother. The possibilities are endless — except that he comes to you as a hurting man. Maybe you even married a
deeply
wounded man. Unfortunately, hurting men bite; sometimes, like our dog, they bite the very hands that try to bring healing.
Before a casual relationship morphs into a permanent commitment, many women see a hurting man and think, “I want to help him.” But something about marriage often turns that around and makes her say, “Why does he have to
be
that way?” The man’s needs once elicited feelings of nurture and compassion; now these same hurts tempt his wife toward bitterness and regret.
Before
you get married is the time to make a character-based judgment (“Do I really want to live with this man’s wounds?”). Once the ceremony has ended, God challenges you to maintain an attitude of concern and nurture instead of one of resentment and frustration.
Can you maintain a soft heart over past hurts, patiently praying for long-term change? Or will you freeze him in his incapacities with judgment, resentment, condemnation, and criticism? Can you maintain a
nurturing
attitude instead of a judgmental one?
Give Your Husband the Benefit of the Doubt
Some wives can literally stew in their disappointment about their husbands’ relational shortcomings — “Why won’t he help me?” “Why won’t he talk to me about this?” “Why doesn’t he seem to care?” — all the while failing to realize that their husbands may not know what to do. Many women accuse their husbands of being uncaring or unloving when, in fact, he may just be incompetent! He’s not
trying
to be stubborn, uncaring, or unfeeling; he just honestly doesn’t know what you need or what he’s supposed to do.
Norma Smalley, wife of Christian author Gary Smalley, found this to be true about the people in her married couple’s small group:
Women often feel that if their husbands loved them, the men would know what they are thinking and what they need. This simply isn’t true. As wives, we need to learn to speak our husbands’ language; we need to be direct in our communication and tell them what we want them to do. When we want them to listen to us and not give us advice, we need to tell them so. When we want their help on something, we need to ask them directly.
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My brother once frustrated his wife even while trying to please her. The kids had run out of toothpaste, so he went to the store and purchased something he thought his kids would love — Star Wars toothpaste gel. His daughters squealed with delight, but his wife hated it. “Have you ever tried to clean up that blue gunk?” she pointed out. “It’s terrible, and it sticks everywhere!” Thankfully, she understood this as a case of good intentions gone bad.
Sadly, far too many wives refuse to give their husbands this ben-efit of the doubt. They assume he doesn’t care or, worse, that he’s trying to make their lives more difficult, when the reality may be that he just doesn’t have a clue. My sister-in-law could choose one of two ways to look at the toothpaste fiasco: either my brother cared enough to make the trip to buy the toothpaste (despite his poor choice), or he intentionally made his wife’s life more difficult by purchasing a brand that creates a cleaning nightmare.
How you choose to view your husband’s actions will largely determine whether you feel pleased with him or furious with him.
May I slay a very destructive myth? Perhaps you think that the more your husband loves you, the better he’ll become at reading your mind. That’s a romantic but
highly
unrealistic, and even destructive, notion. It can create havoc in a marriage, and it hinders mature communication by keeping you from being direct, while at the same time tempting you toward resentment when your husband proves utterly incapable of telepathy.
Let me suggest a much healthier strategy. Instead of resenting your husband’s occasional insensitivity, based at least partially (remember — you’re giving him the benefit of the doubt) on clue-lessness, try to address him in a straightforward manner. Be direct instead of hoping he’ll “guess” what you need. His seeming reluctance to help may well result from his having no idea what you want. My friend Donna Burgess told me that, early on in her marriage, she said to her husband, “Honey, the lightbulb is out” — and her husband thought she was making an observation, while she thought she was making a request of him to change it.
Consider some other examples:
“Honey, I’d really love it if you would rub my feet for ten minutes. I’ve had a hard day.”
I’ve seen too many women want these things but never directly make their requests. They think, “If you loved me, you’d know what I want.” But the truth is, if he loves you, he’ll listen to your concern and act accordingly. Love is a commitment and a policy —
not
telepathy! It is far healthier to be direct and ask for help than to hope he “guesses” what you need. Most of us guys aren’t nearly as clued in to you as you are to us. So help us connect. Please, just ask — directly, concretely, and regularly.
Respect the Position Even When You Disagree with the Person
The Bible calls wives to respect their husbands: “The wife must respect her husband” (Ephesians 5:33). It doesn’t say wives should respect
perfect
husbands or even
godly
husbands. It says that husbands — no qualifier — should be respected.
Respect, in some instances, comes with the position, not with the person. The apostle Paul insulted a man by using bold language (“you whitewashed wall!”) but then apologized after he learned he had been speaking to a high priest: “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written, ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people’ ” (Acts 23:3 – 5).
Your husband,
because he is a husband
, deserves respect. You may disagree with his judgment; you may object to the way he handles things — but according to the Bible, his position alone calls you to give him proper respect. If you withhold this respect, your husband may very well stop hearing you.
Give Him the Same Grace That God Gives You
Elyse Fitzpatrick, a counselor, once told her small group about how God had moved her from a legalistic, works-oriented faith to a “grace-filled, peaceful existence with my merciful heavenly Father.”
“The pressure is off me,” she told them. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I’m not pursuing holiness. It’s just that I know that my Father will get me where He wants me to be and that even my failures serve, in some way, to glorify Him. My relationship with God is growing to be all about His grace, His mercy, His power.”
Then Elyse’s friend “astounded” her by responding, “That must be such a blessing for your husband, Elyse. To be walking in that kind of grace must enable you to be so patient and so grace-filled with Phil. To know that God is working in him just as He’s working in you must make your marriage so sweet and your husband so pleased. It must be great for him to know that the pressure is off for him too.”
The reason this friend “astounded” Elyse is because Elyse rarely made the connection her friend made. “I scarcely ever extended to Phil the grace I enjoyed with the Lord. Instead, I was frequently more like the man in Jesus’ parable, who, after he was forgiven a great debt, went out and beat his fellow slave because he owed him some paltry sum.”
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It takes great spiritual maturity to love mercy, to offer grace, to give someone the same spiritual benefits we ourselves have received from our heavenly Father. Get in touch with how much God has done for you — how he has seen every wicked act you’ve ever committed; heard every syllable of gossip; noticed every malicious, ugly, and hateful thought — and still, he loves you. Even more, he adores you. And he’s forgiven you.
