Believe it or not, your marriage is always seeking wholeness.
Strange, I understand. But hear me out!
Our bodies are a wonderful creation our Heavenly Father has created. By design they are meant for healing and wholeness. From a minor cut, to a broken bone, or an infection, our immune systems and fighter cells rush to the wound to begin the healing process.
You could even say that our bodies were meant for restoration.
Even the act of bearing children bears witness to this. A new life created and born in the image of our Heavenly Father, to a Mom and Dad, intended to reflect the wholeness of God’s kingdom.
Marriage, like the human body in many ways, was created for the exact same thing
Marriage was instituted by God for wholeness. It was created to be one with God and with one another. By design, its intent was always to mirror the perfect unity between Christ and the church. Sadly, marriages today—many of which are within the confines of faith—are divided. This was NEVER in God’s original plan for marriage as scripture clearly states that a house divided cannot stand (Matthew 12:15).
Even though this division exists, the manner for which marriage was created and intended remains
Just because your marriage isn’t as God intended it to be, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cry out. Day after day, the failing marriage reveals symptoms of a surgery that IS DYING to take place.
Just as our body was meant to heal and restore, marriage in a constant state of wounding will try to heal itself.
After all, That is why you’re here, isn’t it?
Are you beginning to see that what you’re after is healing and wholeness for your brokenness?
Unfortunately, this longing can and does look a lot like fighting when when we choose to operate on ourselves. We detect that something is wrong and act rashly because…well…something needs to be done. Right?
Right! But the methods can still be wrong!
When we take healing into our own hands, fighting can occur because we don’t understand the proper methods. We can actually do a whole lot of damage in the process of trying to create a good marriage according to our system (by the words we say in anger, hello!). God however, who is our good surgeon, has methods that far exceed our own (submission and obedience to our husbands as unto Him alone.) He is the only one who can undergo surgery and begin healing that will LAST for years to come.
You may find yourself in a place of desperation where you are seeking wholeness at all costs inside your marriage
Timeout! Desperation is key here, please don’t forget that.
If you’re not desperate, God’s model will not work for you because it will require you to do something different in order to get a kingdom result. But if we’re not careful we can mistake a longing for peace with wholeness.
Think about it for a second. Peace and wholeness. They really are quite different. Believe me, I’ve been there and still visit it from time to time. I just want the fighting to stop, is what I’ve cried in deep desperation many times in my marriage.
I have got to be the one to say it to you Wife— because no one else is—peace isn’t what you’re really looking for. Peace in your marriage will be a byproduct (fruit) of what you’re really after, but it isn’t the end all, be all, here.
It is something else and it is wholeness! After all, fighting with your husband is merely a symptom of the real problem.
Today, I will seek to show you the signs that cry out for wholeness…And it’s not just with your husband.
Fighting is actually a sign that you’re looking for wholeness
Well, yea, duh—that’s what got this whole ball rolling in the first place. Fighting. I am so sick of it and I just want to end it.
Have you ever been there? I know I have.
So desperate and so sick to death of fighting, I wanted change at all costs. On the other side now, not with a marriage void of conflict by any means, I have realized that the fighting was a sign telling me something was wrong. Fighting was merely a symptom of a larger disease. Despite the fighting being a symptom, I can now see that it was a sign that I had not given up.
Fighting is actually a good sign, Wife
It means that your marriage is still alive!
Much like the symptoms of a cold being that of a runny or stuffy nose including but not limited to sneezing and a headache, it is a sign that the body is rejecting something in the body. My marriage was rejecting how my husband and I treated each other and because I didn’t know how to go about getting rid of those things properly, it resulted in fighting. Even though my means of fighting with my husband were wrong, it meant that we both expected there to be more in marriage than what we currently possessed at that time.
Like a moth to a flame
So if what your marriage is seeking is wholeness, there will be fighting— like a moth to a flame!
I know this is how it was with my husband and I. Whenever we were around each other, we fought. Something was not right and that is the only way we knew how to handle it. We were performing surgery on our own marriage, but the surgery was the WRONG ONE.
Wanting Your Husband to Change is actually a yearning for wholeness
This is why we’re all here, right?
I mean, we were drawn to these truths with the promise of peace that is found in them. But really in our messed up way of thinking, what we Christian wives who have messed up our marriages want is for our husbands to change, right?
Peace? That’s good! My husband changing? That’s even better!
The truth is, chances are pretty high that you wanting your husband to change is your soul looking for wholeness. You and I have thought at one time or another that if our husbands would change their behaviors and transform into another version of us, we would be complete. Our marriage would be mended, the fighting would stop, peace could be found—in other words, we would be made whole.
But let me fill you in on a little secret
Wanting our husbands to change is an indication of a desire to change ourselves. This may not be the case for every woman reading this now, but for the silent majority it is. Usually when something is out of hand we try to control the things that we can manipulate.
For example
When I feel like I’m losing control, what do I do? Instead of digging deep within myself to solve what is going on, I turn into a clean freak, going throughout my house with a magnifying glass to clean it with a toothbrush. Why? Because each of those rooms is something I can control as opposed to deeper things that I can indeed control but will take more time and effort than I want to spend.
It is a whole lot easier for me to say that the problem is my messy house than it is to say that I need to work on where fulfillment really comes from. Having very little children, my house will never be 100% spic-and-span and so now the “problem” is that my children are such slobs, which is not true but is removing the pressure from me and placing it on them.
Do you see it?
By casting blame, I put more distance between me and whatever issue I’m dealing with, making me feel less likely to be the problem. Try as a may, I AM THE PROBLEM in moments like those! I am not saying that there is never an issue that doesn’t include me that needs to be dealt with seriously. But in most instances, I am more a part of the problem than I let myself believe.
Back to this phenomenon in my marriage
What I could be seeking to address when I judge and condemn my husband’s lack of change in any number of areas is my hypocrisy of what I know I need to change within myself. As a human being hardwired to Christ, I am seeking wholeness but projecting it onto my husband as if he is the problem.
Let me let you in on another little secret
You and I can never change our husbands.
God is the only one who can do that! On the contrary, I can instigate my change by acknowledging and confessing my sin before God. Granted, God still does the final work, but if I don’t even acknowledge my error, then even His hands are tied.
Discontentment is a sign that you’re after wholeness in your marriage
Have you ever looked at your husband to fulfill you? I know I have.
There were and are still days when I was/am crabby for reasons that I thought were/are his fault, and I project them onto him like they are. This of course resulted in fighting and still does to this day because I am nowhere near perfect. The true nature of what started these kinds of fights was and is discontentment.
my husband is never going to give me wholeness
It takes a huge unveiling to see that the wholeness you have been seeking with your husband has been a wholeness with your Heavenly Father.
Your husband nor mine can fulfill our lives on a heart level.
You may think just as I have done so many times that if and when my husband does ______, then I will be happy. If he just quits treating me like _____, then I will be able to move on with my life to bigger and better things that God has in store.
Sister, you can spend your entire life living like that and you know what, it is wrong
You just might waste 50 years trying to draw that kind of water from that kind of well.
Your husband can not and should not give you wholeness in this way.
I remember an argument my husband and I had, and he was really trying, bless the man. He said, “How can I fix what I’m doing when you don’t even know what I’m doing wrong?”
I was projecting my need-for-a-Savior problem onto him and that’s unfair. My husband, as amazing as he is, was never created to fulfill my heart and bring it lasting peace. Truth is, it took me years to figure this out. All those years early in our marriage and those needless fights I was trying to draw from him what he didn’t have to give.
The wrong well
And on that subject of drawing water, what we Christian wives can so easily do is realize that we’re not getting water as we expected from the well of our husbands, so we turn to other wells to get that lasting peace, satisfaction, and love.
Am I right?
How many of us reading this now have poured our lives into not just shopping and homemaking, but our children? Our children are a wonderful gift and one that needs constant sowing but this well of sowing will not give you living water either. Oh, it will bear fruit (good or bad depending on how much you sow into it), but that too was never intended to produce life-giving water.
The real problem is that there is a disease that goes much deeper
It is that our soul needs a savior.
Yes, I said it! We, Christian wives, need a Savior. Saved or not, our default setting is wretchedness! More than being saved, we need God every single day which is the solution to that very problem.
in conclusion
Deception within marriage is so misleading and can get your eyes off of the truth. It promises that once the fighting stops between you and your husband, you can be happy. It is a liar that has you convinced that the end to the fighting is your happily ever after.
This simply is not true.
It takes true searching to realize that what you are really after is wholeness in every form, not only with your husband but with God as well. Once you realize this truth, you will be an unstoppable wife. Fix the lack-of wholeness issue and only then can you find healing for all else that ails you.