Recently I came across a blog entry written by a woman who communicated
so effectively the mutual fear couples often experience related to a husband’s
spiritual leadership and authority. She nails it! So this week I’m honored to share a portion of
her blog, with her permission. Thank
you, Bekka!
~Emerson
I've been a little quiet this week because Tim has been home.
After four weeks working at a job site more than 14 hours drive away, I tried
to take advantage of as many moments as possible with him…I’d asked Tim to book
the time off to include the weekend because this weekend, a combined effort of
our local churches led to the hosting of a Love & Respect video seminar in our
community centre.
At first he was all like “Do we really need to go
to this thing?” to which my reply was that we didn’t really need
to go, in the sense that we’re not in any kind of crisis stage of our marriage.
However, I posed the issue of maintenance. As my friend recently
pinned on Pinterest, the grass is greener
where you water it.
Session One began Friday evening, and it went over well. It was
humorous and enjoyable (I particularly liked the statement “There’re no
vacancies in the Trinity”) and we went home, both of us thinking “Great
stuff, but we already knew that.”
Then began Session Two on Saturday afternoon, followed closely
by Session Three. And that’s where we realized what was missing in our
marriage.
Dr. Eggerichs made a comment much to the effect that most
Christian wives are looking to their husbands to be the spiritual leaders of
their families. They expect their husbands to be the
representation of Christ in their households. I was sitting there
thinking, “Wow, ain’t that the truth of it! That’s exactly what I want of
my husband.”
But with one little word, I realized where I
had messed this up. In the middle of the acronym “CHAIRS”, is the word
“Authority”. Dr. Eggerichs began to describe our spiritual relationship to the
letter. Essentially, the wife looks to the husband for leadership, but she is fearful
and apprehensive and so she asks questions and looks
for reassurance. The husband interprets this as trying to take
control and wear the pants of the relationship and so backs off
or responds negatively to the wife and a cycle begins. I believe Dr.
Eggerichs fondly refers to this as the “Crazy Cycle” – which
comes in part from the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and
over expecting different results.”
And that’s where our crazy cycle began, with authority.
I wasn’t letting my husband have any because I was allowing my fear to
intervene. And what was I afraid of? I was afraid that my husband would
stretch me.
Tim is a self-taught philosopher and theologian. He is incredibly
intelligent…So I was worried my husband… would stretch me further than I
thought I was ready to be stretched.
When I confessed this to my husband on our drive home and asked
for his forgiveness, I was once again rocked to my core.
That same segment about spiritual leadership had impacted
him as well. And he confessed that he was afraid. He was
afraid that I would somehow crush him if he had taken on that role. He never
thought he was afraid of anything – this is the ironworker who climbs 150
feet into the air and sends me a text message to let me know he loves me,
because 150 feet above ground is the only place his cell phone would get a
signal.
Last night, as we were lying in bed, God gave me an image of my
husband walking up the steps of a raised dais to a throne. On his shoulders was
a black mantle of fear, worry, apprehension and something else I couldn't place. As he walked up the steps, his mantle fell off and he was able to sit on
the throne. And then he was crowned.
I’m excited for my husband to take his rightful
place as the spiritual leader of our family, where I have so desperately longed
for him to be, yet have unknowingly set up road blocks all these years. I’m
excited to see what happens next.
I give the Love &
Respect seminar an A. I highly recommend it to anyone who is wondering just
what seems to be missing from their marriage, or who feels like they’re just
going through the “Crazy Cycle” all the time, or even for people who think they've got it all together right now and just want to go for some
encouragement and maintenance.
3 comments:
Well said! And I live the imagery of the black mantle. God is good! And look! Second Baptist Church, Houston -my home church <3 thank you Bekka!
How do you go about restoring a relationship that was on the verge of marriage,but he has walked away? I am struggling? I recognize that I did not respect him as he needed...so how do I fix it???
Every relationship suffers through rough patches of time.But new counseling and family therapy helps me a lot.
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