Respect

      I have read marraige books on the importance of respecting your husband, and I believe that it is important to respect your husband as it is to respect anyone.  But respect is  a loaded term....Children lose respect for parents when parents are continuously and needlessly cruel.  And wives lose respect for  their husbands when they are needlessly cruel or continuously inconsiderate and selfish.  If respect must be earned, then it can be lost, right?
  
         Respect is like honesty.  If someone lies to you all the time, it would not only be impossible but foolish to put your trust in them.  And the same with respect.  But certain  marriage books claim that respect is essential in the marriage, and you know what?  It is.  So how does that make you feel?  If you respect your husband then you feel fine, but if you do not and your husband continually does things to lessen and lessen your respect for him, then what do you do?  Well I used to think that being in a marriage where a wife did not respect her husband was hopeless.  I have had seasons where I have not respected my husband at all.  I always love him, but respect is not the same as love.  I believe you can love someone and not respect them.

          There is one thing you can do if you do not respect your husband, and it is not to 'pretend' that you do.  And maybe your issue is not respect....if not, just fill in the blank here and what I am about to say will apply.  I guarantee there will be dysfunction in your marriage if you do not respect your husband or wherever the relationship may be lacking, but God can overcome anything, even  a marriage that lacks respect.  So your situation may be desperate but not hopeless, NEVER hopeless. 
 
        And this is how you should pray....'Lord, I do not respect my husband (by the way He already knows) but Lord, you can show me how to be the wife I need to be to thrive in a marriage where respect has been lost...and Lord, you can overcome this problem in my marriage because you are more powerful and bigger than all of this.'

       And then you seek God like you never have before.  If you have a heart for God and you truly desire your marriage to be what God designed it to be, then God will show you how to be a wife to a husband  who is verbally wreckless and does any number of things which cause disrespect to grow in your heart.

      And what if your husband never appreciates how you fight and how you seek to always make things right  and make things better?  What if he never tries to earn your respect no matter what you do?  What if all your efforts fall flat?  What then??  What you will soon realize is that marriage is much more than what you get out of it.  Our God is a Giver....and he will use every drop of your efforts to make you like He is.  This is a hard truth, but once it is received, the blessings will flow through a life fully reliant on God centered giving.

       In a marriage where only one partner really strives to make things right, all you can really do is give.  And as long as you give in hopes of only to receive, then giving will be bondage for you.  You will see that this applies beyond the issue of respect.  Take, for example, a marriage where sex is not equally valued.  I have many friends, if not all of them, who experience this very problem.  What do you do if your husband or wife does not desire you sexually either rarely or never?  Ok, so we know right off the bat that this is going to cause problems.....and this may be you.  Now, let me explain that marriages come on a case by case basis.  Each marriage is unique just as each person is unique.  This could be happening for any number of reasons which I am not interested in discussing at this point.  The more important subject to me at this moment is the underlying issue.  Marriages are all too often generalized.  Generalized problems with generalized solutions, at least that is how I often feel when I seek counsel or read books.  But the complete opposite is true.  Books and general counsel can only take you so far.  Marriage is about details and raw honesty if things are ever to truly change.  And God is never about 'half rear' changing, He is about all in or all out changing.  You cannot halfway follow him so it would be safe to assume that you cannot halfway 'do' marriage, right?  So, back to our question, 'Can a marriage thrive if one partner has a healthy sex drive and the other does not?'

        You must ask God, 'Father, show me how to live in  a marriage where my husband/wife does not desire me....show me how to be the spouse I need to be regardless of whether this issue is addressed.'  I can imagine what it would feel like if my husband did not desire me physically because I experienced this to some degree not long after I was married.  This has been resolved but the scars are still faintly apparent, but to deal with this day and day out over years and years is hard to imagine.  But who is to say that a lack of respect in marriage is just as damaging if not more so....

       Lack of respect or whatsoever the case may be, you must be prepared to be  completely honest and vulnerable to God.  You do not know how to handle these issues because this is not the way it is supposed to be.  It was never God's plan for marriage to be in the hands of those who are not in constant relationship with him.  If there is a solution, it will not come from you, it will come from God.  So just admit to God that you have no idea what you are doing...I cannot tell you how many times I have prayed 'God I have no idea what to do at this point in my marriage...'

      One of the first things that C. S. Lewis says happens in love, between  a husband and a wife, in his book The Four Loves, is that the ability to distinguish between giving an receiving is lost....and if we are to resemble Christ, we must do what is right regardless of what our spouse is doing, no matter the cost.  I am not saying that I am there yet.  And I am not saying that I am not...I am saying that I get it.  I give because it is right and sometimes I feel like a slave, but better to be a slave to doing good than to selfishness, right?  Point being...it doesn't always feel good and rewards are scarce and appreciation is very rarely felt. 

    I believe that we all can feel like we must be wrong if we are not reaping the benefits we are sewing into our marriage.  I sometimes feel like I must not be doing something right if my marriage is not getting any better or my marriage is not full of life.  But that cannot always be true can it?  People still make their own decisions, which should really give us some peace shouldn't it?  Knowing that has given me much frustration, but I have been wrong.  I know many women believe everything is their fault when their marriage goes bad because after all, they did decide to marry this man, but remember this man or that man or this woman or that woman can always choose to do right after all.  So there you go....if you have ever felt guilty or felt like you married someone you should not have, well the person you married could have chosen to treat you right but they chose not.  No one is ever made to do right, but no one is ever made to do wrong either......

        So if it doesn't make a difference in your marriage even if Christ himself showed up and performed five hundred miracles in front of your spouse's face, then what is your faithfulness?  Or what is a faithful wife, even if God has not penetrated by now?  This may sound very negative, but if it took Christ coming down face to face with your destructive partner, don't you think he would do it? 

       God has already done it all, all you have to do is believe that and offer what you have....and that is love.  You will need God's constant presence to offer love.....and there will be times that you feel distance from God, that you feel he is not answering you and that he does not care, but that is a curse.  That is the curse of flesh.  Take heart that God is also more powerful than any curse.  He wants us to want Him more than we want peace or fulfillment or blessing or respect or desire or passion or happiness or anything because.....Christ gave up all of that for us.  He so loved the world, that He gave,  He gave,  He gave.....

      C.S. Lewis puts it so eloquently again in his book The Four Loves  on the issue of love and giving.  He explains that a man wants to be with a woman regardless if there is any happiness to be had at all, and if there is happiness to be had outside of his love for her, then he forfeits happiness.  What is happiness in the face of love?  What is happiness in the face of our relationship with our Lord? 

      Marriage has sure been abused by such ugliness....marriage in our culture has been dragged through the mud.  I could compare as dragging a beautiful and pure bride all dressed in wedding white through the mud and laughing about it.  Marriage is beautiful and people heap ugliness upon it.  When husbands are disrespectful and careless and wreckless and they never repent or acknowledge their fault, I am sad not only because it causes pain, but because it is dragging something beautiful through the mud.  It is the ignorant and ugly capturing the pure and beautiful. It is good verses evil and evil prevailing.  When evil is shown prevailing in movies, isn't it just appalling?  Think of William Wallace at the end of 'Braveheart,' being tortured by fools and ultimately killed.....it is heart wrenching.  And it is reality....but would you say all his efforts for good were worth nothing because of the way he died?  Were his efforts in vain because he was hated and abused?  By no means!!!!  Which makes my final point....we are always in the battle of good verses evil and everthing that you do matters no matter how it is received.  You may be the victim of ignorance or foolishness but it is never for nothing and how you handle it is not only important but eternal....