Switching Cycles

Before I got married, I believed that marriage was a kind of end-all-be-all of life.  Then I got engaged.  And I realized that, once I became a wife, I would still have a life.  It would just be life with a husband rather than life on my own.  And the new me — the one where I was a wife — would now have a choice to make everyday for the rest of our lives together.  The choice live within that context of intimacy referred to at the top of this post.  Or the one where I help perpetuate the cycle of self-protection, which is the exact opposite of God’s design for intimacy.  The cycle in which I seek to preserve my own value rather than looking to God for my value and, consequently, imparting to my husband his God-given value as well.

So today I ask — which cycle are you perpetuating?  The one where you feed off of the perception that your husband does not value you, and you in turn undermine and humilate him which then leads to him seeing you as unlovely and you see him as incompetent. 

Or are you working towards deeper intimacy in your marriage?  Not just physical intimacy, but the kind where you respect and complete him.  The kind of intimacy where you seek out his needs and figure out how to communicate that respect to him.  Where you figure out how to let him know that you trust him and believe in him.

It’s not easy.  Especially when he might be leading your home in the self-protection cycle that makes you want to curl up and make him pay for devaluing you.

But what if  you committed this week to stop the cycle and seek out his language and use it to speak value into his life and respect and honor and love?  What if you found your worth in who God says you are so that when you feel devalued by your husband you have the wherewithall to switch cycles?

I believe that if each one of us committed to this kind of respect and honor in our homes, at least on our parts, we would soon learn that intimacy is so much better than own self-protection.  I believe our husbands would have to sit up and take notice.  I believe they would be drawn to us in ways that maybe they have never before been drawn.

Wanna’ try it out?  Let me know what you think….  Leave me a comment here — I would love to hear your thoughts.  And feel free to leave a link too if you’d like to join in the Vigilant Wives Club challenge.