Words to a Wife in a Troubled Marriage: Part I

Dear TEAMS,

I recently sent a letter to a dear friend who is enduring some big unpleasantness in her marriage.  While I hope you are never in the situation that she is, I wanted you to have a record of this letter, with changes made to protect everyone involved (and for clarification).  While it is written from a wife to a wife, I know my boys are smart enough to make the conversion, because frankly, it's not really too different for you.  I will continue it in the next blog post.

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Dear [name withheld],

I have been composing this letter for a while now, since our return from visiting you.  It deals with what you shared with me on the way home from church on the Saturday we were together.  I hope I am able to convey the concern and love I have for you in it, and the sadness I have for your present situation as well as hope for your changed future.

I do not know if you remember several years back that I went through a depression.  I chose to seek help because I was chopping vegetables with A and all of a sudden felt an overwhelming urge to take the large Cutco knife I was using and stab myself repeatedly in my arm.  It was like I had to stab myself in my arm, the urge was so great.  The only thing that kept me from doing it was my love and concern for A…I knew it would traumatize her terribly and I loved her so much I couldn’t do that to her.  

Since that time, I have learned a lot about myself and the mechanisms that caused that episode.  I have also learned a lot about what the Bible has to say about the situation I was in.  Looking back, the circumstances surrounding where I was in my life right then involved many of the things you are facing with your husband.  I felt like a prisoner in my own home and in my own life and in my own body because of what I was enduring verbally from [my husband] and the kids and verbally from Satan in my brain, as well as the lies I was telling myself.

I want you to know that I am deeply moved at your situation.  It is a very hard thing to feel trapped and hopeless and being told repeatedly what you are doing wrong that makes someone’s life miserable (even if that’s not true).  I was so pleased to hear that you want to do the right thing and stay married.  Truly, I think half your battle is done when you have resolved to do it God’s way, even though it seems that you will not be able to bear up under the demands of Scripture for your particular situation.

I wish to validate for you that [husband] should not treat you and the children the way he does sometimes.  From our brief stay there, I was struck by how many times you had nothing to do with his misery and he brought you into it.  That is not how God intended life to be for you—or any other woman—as a wife.  Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and there are no exclusions for personal stress included in Bible.  Christ experienced the same sorts of feeling unappreciated, feeling overwhelmed by responsibility, feeling unimportant, wondering at the meaning of life as husbands do.  However, Father commands them to do as Christ did when He had those feelings, in spite of those feelings.  Christ still gave Himself up and laid down what He was feeling for the greater good.  As I get older, I realize that the reason the stuff that is in the Bible is there not because it is easy to do, but because God knew how hard life is and we would not naturally do the stuff He asks us to that He sees is in our best interest.  

With this validation, though, are some caveats:  1) I watched [husband] in other times when he was acting “normal” and I truly believe his heart is for you and the children.  I did not sense that he does not love you or the children.  He makes some consistent really bad choices to deal with his own misery that doesn’t convey that, but I will tell you that in the end, his heart has not changed for you.  That encourages me that there is hope for you and the marriage and the happily ever after.  [Husband] is going to have to come to terms with his misery someday, and it will be a tough pill to swallow that the answer doesn’t have much to do with you and the kids.  2)  You need to accept that there are some attitudes and behaviors you are doing that are making your own misery.  No one is ever 100% to blame.  I hope you will see my heart in this and that is why I am being frank with you.  I truly believe from my own experience that you will find your way through this and be stronger and better equipped to handle the circumstances you are in.  But some of that starts with accepting that you need to change some things.

I am thrilled you are in counseling, and I thought that was great that she said you needed to get built back up before you work on your marriage.  I really think that will help, because I wasn’t sure why you were taking some of the stuff you were in the way you were.

The biggest thing I wanted to share with you was some things that God led me to in my own study during that really dark time as I tried to work my way out of where I was.  I was so frustrated with my in-network counselor because he was just a “sit and listen and say hmmmm” guy who didn’t believe the Bible.  However, I needed the drugs, so I would go for my appointments!  The upside is that all I had was my Bible.  I realized that God wanted to tell me things that only He can, and every new Truth I learned or relearned I realized was another key to my wellness.  Every person is different and I know some of these things might not be exactly what you are expecting, but I just ask that you ask God if this is Him trying to help you.

1. Your husband is not [name of husband], it is God.  Even the Bible says so in Isaiah 54:5-6, “For your Maker is your husband—
      the LORD Almighty is his name—
   the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
      he is called the God of all the earth.
   The LORD will call you back
      as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
   
   
   (And you are a wife deserted and distressed in spirit!!)  Think about what that really means and translate that into “husband”…God is your best friend, God is the person that you should be able to run to when you want to tell something funny that just happened to you, God is the father of your children, God is the person that is supposed to hold you when you are upset, God is your provider, God is the one who tells you when you look fantastic in that dress, God is the one who is supposed to be a reliable counsel, and on and on.  
   
   
   I didn’t have a problem understanding that God was my husband when I was single and wanted to be married, but I had forgotten the significance of that concept once I had a human husband.  And I was really convicted about all the stuff I was thinking [my husband] should provide for me, when the Bible right there in Isaiah was saying that God is my first husband.  He wants to be my best friend, my most intimate friend and lover, my “go to” guy.  And I wasn’t letting Him be the very thing He wants to be for me.  And there is not a more faithful, attentive, kind, compassionate, selfless Husband in the world.  I really wasn’t being a very good wife to God, because I wasn’t even giving him any time in my day to talk to Him and let Him talk to me, nor was I finding out what was on His heart for my life and for the world in His Word.
   
   
   When I started treating God as my husband, I realized that I stopped expecting so much from [my husband].  Whether he was fulfilling the Biblical mandate for what husbands should do was no longer an issue for me, because God Himself was fulfilling the needs I thought [my husband] was supposed to fill.  I also started seeing [my husband] for what he is:  just another human being on the planet who feels the same things I do and faces the same fears and frustrations I do.  It gave me compassion for him and for what was driving him to say the things he would say or his short fuse or his unfair treatment or passive-aggressive actions or sarcasm.
   
   
   
   
   (Click here to go to the next blog entry)
   
   
   Love,