I am delighted to welcome Tiffany Montgomery as a guest blogger today – she shares insights from when she discovered her part in creating distance in her marriage, and what God prompted her to do about it. That forms the basis of a new online course she is launching, Finding Hope and Joy in My Marriage – and there is one free place up for grabs below!
Do you remember when you were courting your husband? (or he was courting you 😉 ). Our romance began with long nights playing cards, drinking coffee and talking about our hopes and dreams, fears and failures of the past. We were so close, the best of friends. What happened?
We don’t talk like that anymore. Distance. It came with time and hurt and life.
I don’t always tell him things and he forgets to tell me things. Now we have to have a time on the calendar to talk deeper than schedule things and kid things. When did that happen? There was a time – in the past – when wild bulls could not have kept me from calling him to talk about the joys and sorrows of life.
As a woman I feel the pain of that distance deeply, but it never crossed my mind that he feels it too. He put distance between us at some point – just like I put distance between him.
The man I love – who once worked day and night to make me happy – his need for respect is as real as his need for air.
When he feels disrespected, when his pride is hurt again and again, he starts putting up a wall to protect himself – from me. I think of it as a dam – with walls that are high and wide – behind which he can hide the well springs of his heart.
My man is human – a natural mixture of good, neutral, and bad character traits – just like me. And, just like me, he puts distance between himself and hurt.
Proverbs 21:19 says: “It is better to live in a desert land than with a contentious and vexing woman.”
This scripture describes a wife with a mouth that can maim her husband. Can you relate to the conviction in those words?
When I am not a safe place for my husband, he puts up a wall between us.
When I challenge him for the leadership role in our home, he builds that wall higher.
This wall grows and grows over the years until he has a built a huge dam. Our husbands are protecting themselves from the pain of not being good enough for the most important person in their world… his wife.
When I think of it this way, my very soul is laid bare.
I created this unsafe place for him? My words, my nagging, my putting my preferences first, my business and forgetfulness, my fear and taking the wrong side… Have you created a similar place?
Did I really crush him so much that he can’t trust me with his heart? I see the distance and know it is true. Can you see your husband’s lack of trust in you? His uncertainty of how you will react to his flaws?
I just want to add a note here that the way he is responding is not all on us. You must not take responsibility for his every mood swing. Often there is more going on in his world. Hurts from his past create some of his behavior; wrestling with God can create some of it as well. He may struggle with insecurity or any number of other things. I want to be sure you understand here that we are only to deal with what our attitude and actions are affecting.
Over the course of the past decade God has shown me how my words affect my husband –deeper than he lets on. I have to look to how he responds to see the real results of years of nagging and disrespect. It took so much to heal this hurt and get my husband to let down the wall to the dam over his heart.
How did I create a Safe Place to remove the Distance in our Christian Marriage?
These I the things that I did, which I humbly suggest could help you too:
- Accept him – flaws and all.
- This required a lot of forgiveness. Forgiving the past hurts.
- It also required a lot of prayer – because some of those flaws are hard to live with. I am now trusting God to change my husband in His time – instead of trying to change him in my time.
- Showing respect with my words and taking complaints and concerns to God instead of my husband.
- Did I mention prayer? Taking my words to God first –- letting Him be my filter – has changed the entire dynamic in our home!
- God deals with the emotional side of what I want to say, then hubby and I can clearly communicate when there are problems. And we can have more fun when there are not problems – because I am trusting God to handle the bigger things for me!
My Husband put distance between us because I was not a safe place for him to be real – flaws and all.
Bit by slow bit I am trying to be a safe place for him. To love him the way I want to be loved.
Does that fix all of our problems? Nope. He still hurts me sometimes and I still hurt him sometimes. But we are accepting the humanness of ourselves and we can work through things now because neither of us expects the other to be perfect!
Are you longing for Hope and Joy in your Marriage?
God took me through a journey of re-learning how to live as a wife with a biblical worldview. It is a joy for me to teach and mentor locally and I am thrilled to launch this new Online Course.
In this 9 week course we will dig into the Bible and find out how to restore our marriages – rebuilding them to last a lifetime!
This Marriage Course will include:
- 10 self paced video lessons on:
- Love
- Forgiveness
- Desires Vs. Preferences
- My Mouth
- Appreciation & Admiration
- The Leader
- Understanding Men
- Respect
- My Priorities
- 9 weeks of personal study
- 5 days each week that should take 10-15 minutes
- 45 days of prayer prompts
I am excited to give away one spot on the course!
Tiffany is a Kentucky Jesus Gal with a passion to encourage and equip wives and moms through practical biblical discipleship on her site HopeJoyInChrist.com. She loves to connect with other women to help grow their Christian marriages inside her growing Facebook Community. She shares: “My heart’s desire is to encourage the women – if we walk this life together we can do it better”!