This dear Christian sister of mine began emailing with me last summer. God has done HUGE things in her heart. It’s totally a God thing. She does not sound like the same person at all! She has such a sweet, gentle spirit now, a humble spirit, and a willing spirit to obey God no matter what. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for her. Her marriage is so much stronger now than it was just 6 months ago. Please pray for her husband to accept Christ as his Savior and Lord. I know her story will bless many wives. Thank you to this precious friend of mine for sharing!
Hi, April.
First of all, I thank the Lord for giving you the gift of words. 🙂
Secondly, I pray that your post today will touch the hearts of many women- even perhaps reach women who may be the “outside support.” I just wanted to share with what I have been going through and an update on what God’s been doing in my life in hopes to specifically encourage those in a spiritually mismatched marriage.
As you know I had no outside support. Even my Christian friends weren’t supportive about me respecting my husband since he wasn’t a believer. I received many mixed messages that left me confused. In all honesty, I may not have taken this long to get started with the respect journey if I had proper godly advice. I’m not blaming my sweet, good willed friends. I just think there hasn’t been much teaching about respecting an unbelieving spouse.
Anyway, when I decided to take that Respect Dare one more time, I decided to no longer vocalize it to my friends or family. I just followed 1 Peter 3:1-6 and prayed and prayed and prayed. To keep myself in check, I have reached out to you several times. Aside from that, I kept my experience to myself– I even kept silent about the positive changes in my husband and in myself. Instead, I would praise God for them, and shared it with you to encourage you on your ministry and to hopefully encourage others.
Sometimes, it does seem lonely. I miss my friends. I miss the face to face Bible study. I miss that awesome Sunday worship I experience in my church (vs. sorry to say it, the seemingly monotonous ones in his). But I am doing my study online. Even there, God has taught me so much in the three studies I have done online so far. My husband doesn’t mind worship music playing.
The Lord is slowly restoring my friendships. My mother is still off-standish with me because she has complained we don’t visit her. My husband leaves for work before the kids and I even wake up and by the time I get home from work, it is dinner and after dinner he’s ready for bed since he has to wake up early. In the past, I complained that my husband hardly does things with the kids. And now, he insists that the weekends is our family time.
He sometimes has to work half a day on Saturdays so that’s when I do my grocery shopping and errands and the other half I clean and Sundays is all family. I am super excited to tell you that, my husband, who despises going to kid places on weekends because it is usually packed, agreed to take the kids to the children’s museum this past Sunday. I found that sexy! I told him so too. A year ago I would’ve said, well, he should go since that’s what parents are supposed to do. But God has also changed my heart and I appreciated what my husband did.
Back to my mom, she lives 40 min away and since my husband drives into the city all week long, the last thing he wants is to drive to the city on his day off. He has said why doesn’t she visit us more?? She isn’t old (not even 60 yet!). I used to think this was selfish of him and there have been weekends when I’d leave him home alone and sleepover my mother. But now I don’t because I realize… I need to spend time with HIM. As I have shared before, she was the very opposite of what a submissive wife is. She always controlled the household.
So there you have it. I am trusting the Lord to work out and restore whatever relationships that have been severed because of my respect journey. To my knowledge, I am not being disrespectful to anyone. I am simply putting boundaries around me. This way, I don’t fall into the habit of “venting” when my husband does things I don’t agree with or have unbiblical advise from outsiders who mean well.
As 1 Peter 3:1-6 says: we are to trust God and accept the authority of our husbands… do what is right without worrying about what our husbands might do.
Thank you for your ministry!