The first 23 years of our marriage, I was mad at Ken while he worked so hard to provide for our family. I am not alone in being mad at my husband. It seems many women are continually mad at their husbands. Why is this? Why do women expect so much from their husbands and are usually mad at them? What is this need in us to want to control our husbands and have them be and act how we want them to be and act?
It began when sin entered the world. The woman's desire will be for her husband; she will want to control her husband so you can thank the consequence of choosing to sin for being this way. However, if you are a lover of Jesus and His ways, you don't want sin in your life and the earlier you notice sin anywhere in your life, you get rid of it. The hardest part comes from recognizing it.
One of the women in the chat room shared a beautiful post written by a woman that had not been married long. She was stewing about her husband for one thing or another like most women do and had a revelation knock her in the head while she was folding his laundry. Here are her words about this revelation ~
"I took the clothes out of the dryer and threw
them onto the kitchen table. I begin folding, thinking, 'Why does he not
want to spend time with me? We're newlyweds, aren't we supposed to be in the
honeymoon stage?' And as these thoughts are consuming me, I now have two
piles; my clothes and his clothes. Why did my clothes look so vibrant, clean
and new? His were dingy, stained and torn. I stopped folding and just stood
there, thinking. This man provides more than I deserve. If I tell him I want
something, very seldom will he tell me no. I began feeling an overwhelming
feeling of guilt and shame. I couldn't help but feel like I have failed as a
wife. Instead of being grateful that I have an amazing husband who takes
amazing care of me and our daughter, I wait for him to come home to pick a
fight. I get spoiled with the fruits of his labor and he is okay with a pair of
torn boxer briefs. I was acting as if he was out partying with friends; but his
laundry told a completely different story."
Now, many of the woman in the chat room who read this post have been reading my blog for a long time and want to be godly, submissive wives but after reading this post, some could relate to this woman and felt terrible for how they have been treating their husbands; wishing they would have read this when they were first married. One woman was especially touched and wrote, "If there was ever an article where I felt like God had it written just for me, this would be it. I got extremely teary eyes over this and my heart has been convicted and crushed. Thank you for posting this. Seriously. I needed to read this."
So many of us could relate to this and wish we had a godly, older woman teaching us things like this; like appreciating our husbands for how hard they work to provide. Now, I have been teaching this for a long time but for some reason, this article showed us such a clear illustration of how bad our thinking can be and how much we need to change.
If you have a husband who works hard, appreciate him. Stop getting upset and angry with him, for this accomplishes nothing good in a marriage; in fact, it is destructive. Build your man up with encouraging words and love him, okay!
The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:11, 12
