Holiness and Honor

Many years ago, family members noticed a lack of respect between J and I. Somewhere during that time frame my mom also mentioned that whenever I spoke to J I had a nasty tone of voice. What was going on inside our home was leaking out. In case you don’t know us well, opposites did not attract in our case. We are both incredibly strong willed and independent, full of energy and easily excitable. We do balance each other out well, but if we both think we are right, and neither is willing to yield, then, well…

It is hard to live a lie, and we were living a lie. Things at home were awful. We were in love, but we did not like each other. We both strongly agreed that marriage was forever, him because he had witnessed its demise and me because my family was full of lifelong marriages. Marriage is a big deal and even though we eloped 3 months after meeting, neither was willing to throw in the towel. I knew that he was the head of the house, even if he had not earned that right. Even if he was disrespecting our home and causing mischief. But, just knowing that information and even believing the Word to be totally true, did not make it easy to show him respect. In our culture we believe and teach that respect is to be earned. God taught me through some tough years in our marriage that you can respect someone into respectability. But in order to start being respectful I had to start allowing God to soften my heart and take away my need to be right.

Mom mentioned not long after she corrected me that she had never seen someone correct a problem so quickly. She said my voice and tone were like night and day. But, it has still been a long journey to where we are now. I offer you this backstory to tell you a new story.

After a long day of hard work serving in the aftermath of hurricane Michael, riding home in the truck, still seeing such utter devastation everywhere we looked, I leaned over and said to J: I am so proud to be your wife, your servants’ heart is amazing. I love how you lead our family. He smiles, blushes and says: it shows. After a few minutes of wondering what he meant, I had to ask. He answered: if you didn’t believe in what we were doing you would be bucking the system, instead you make me so proud to be your husband, you are one hard working woman.

Mutual honor. Submission. Words that make most Americans cringe. But in our home, it has become a beautiful thing. 1 Peter 3:1 ‘Wives, respect and obey your husbands in the same way. Then the husbands who do not obey the word of God will want to know God. They will want to know God because their wives live good lives, even though they say nothing about God.’ Most often when talking about respecting our husbands we talk about the Ephesians 5 passage but this passage right here, is what grabbed a hold of me and transformed our lives.