Even now, almost 7.5 years into this journey, I know I can’t possibly revert back to the way I used to interact and think about Greg, myself, and God. I can’t cling to Greg in an unhealthy way. I must be sure I don’t idolize him.
I need to continually take every thought captive for Christ as His power abides, fills, and strengthens me. I must look to Christ to meet the deepest needs of my heart and soul – not Greg or anyone or anything else – even when things are going really well.
I have a new way of looking at things:
- I acknowledge and reverence God’s sovereignty over everything and acknowledge I am not the Holy Spirit and I am not sovereign.
God is sovereign over circumstances and He will accomplish His purposes and at the same time He gives people free will. What a wonderful mystery – the way God’s sovereignty and the gift He has given us to make our own choices work together!
- I acknowledge that my husband has the responsibility and right to control the things that are rightfully his (himself, his personal decisions, his personal convictions, his emotions, his spirituality, his leadership).
- I retain control and responsibility over the things that belong to me (myself, my personal decisions, my personal convictions, my emotions, my spirituality, my biblical submission).
- I seek to bless my husband, yes, but my ultimate goal is not to please him or “do everything he wants” as if he is my absolute lord. I am not to be enmeshed with my husband and lose myself in him. My ultimate goal is to please Christ alone. Jesus is my absolute Lord.
Sometimes wives think to themselves, “Once my husband and I reconcile, I can go right back to all of my old ways of relating to him and make myself, my desires, or my husband the most important thing again.”
Nope.
God has to be the main thing. My main source of everything.
A wife asked me – when I shared this one time – “So I have to be content with nothing?”
NO!!!!! NO, NOT AT ALL!!!!!! We must be content with Jesus. He is not nothing!
He is EVERYTHING that matters!
This is a new way of relating and thinking where my feelings aren’t the most important thing, my husband is not the most important thing, romance and happiness are not the most important thing, the marriage isn’t the most important thing.
I’m not sure how to explain this well. But I think it may be helpful to know this ahead of time:
- It is not “I’ll really trust God right now in the crisis, and then I’ll go back to trusting my husband and myself again.”
- It’s “I’m going to really trust God with everything today, and every day for the rest of my life no matter what else happens.
Nothing is coming between God and me. Nothing is more important than He is. The only thing that matters is His glory and His pleasure with me.
Lord, I seek Your will, Your whole will, and nothing but Your will today and every day in my life, in my marriage and my husband’s life. I am fully Yours!
I trust You to work things out for the best in my life regardless of what I see right now with my eyes. I will live by faith. Increase my faith!”
Jesus is the goal, not my marriage or feeling loved by my husband
Jesus is not a “means to an end.” He IS the goal. He IS the prize. He IS the end. I hope that makes some sense!
The healed marriage is icing on the cake. It is kind of a “side effect” that often happens because of a spouse’s healed relationship with Jesus. It is not the primary goal.
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.… Luke 14:26-27
Compared to my love for Christ, my love for my husband and family will look like “hate” – of course, God commands me to love others, not to hate them. So the point is that no one can come before Jesus in my life by a long shot!
In Christ, I want my marriage to be healed if it is broken so that God will receive much glory – but I can be content with or without the marriage being healed. What I can’t be content without is JESUS!
It’s not wrong to desire my marriage to be healed if it is broken. God loves marriage – He designed it and it is to be a good thing and a blessing to all involved. But most of all, He wants our hearts.
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