Food for thought

Last Sunday during the service it was like God himself was talking to me. Our pastor was giving a sermon about worshiping God and suddenly he started to share a life experience. He shared of how after his becoming a pastor his wife was always the one arranging and keeping meetings and he was ok with that. After getting their 4th child she became ill having what we call a “Burn-out” which means she was mentally and physically exhausted and needed to reduce her activities. To make a long story short our Pastor then realized that he had to step up his game. For him it became clear that he needed to be the husband God intended him to be so that his wife can be the woman as God intended in the marriage. I was so happy because I got a confirmation of God regarding my own marriage and my role in it. This example clearly showed me how easily we can get caught up in the things of every day life where we take up responsibilities and behaviors which were not intended for us. This has unintentionally a negative influence on our marriage. Of course I am speaking from the point of view of a woman. Also in my case it was only when I became ill and could not function anymore as before I realized that I was doing things that I should not be doing. Therefor this part of my blog I want to put more attention on how realizing that changes not only affect ourselves but also our marriage is important.

Changes are always personal but when you are in a marriage it also affects your marriage. So it is important not to only deal with the personal consequences but also the consequences for your marriage. In order to deal with the consequences for the marriage I think we should first understand our marriage, where our marriage is and what goal(s) our marriage has.

The bible is our guideline how a healthy marriage should be. One of the bible versus about the marriage : “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. ..each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Ephesians 5:31-33 (NIV)

We always say no one is perfect so inherently we give room for development. Well marriages are also not perfect so a marriage should also get room for development. From day one a marriage is in development. It requires constant and hard work from both the husband and wife.

Our marriage went through stages as well as I did. From being a do-it-all woman to a do-it-all-mom and then to a do-it-together-woman/wife. I am still struggling with the do-it-together-woman/wife role.

I believe that how you see your husband or unconsciously treat your husband is very important in this process. Whether you see or treat him as one of your children or see him and treat him as the man of the house/ your husband will surely determine your marriage. It is the difference in giving someone the honor/ attention/ place they deserve or not. It is said that:’ What you sow you will reap “. So If you sow disrespect you will reap also disrespect.

Take for instance my husband and our marriage when I started showing symptoms of PLS(Primary lateral Sclerosis) I was a super wife without realizing that. I was the one taking care of nearly everything and I was also the one bringing in the highest salary. We never talked about this and I think that my husband was ok with the situation. When PLS knocked on our door we then had to deal with PLS but also with the effect it was having on our marriage. Suddenly I was not the super wife anymore. My husband as well as our children suddenly had to chip in doing the things I was not doing anymore. But apart from the symptoms of PLS my husband and children also had to deal with a depressed woman who suddenly left all fall out of her hands (of course not literally but figuratively speaking). Simple things like going to the supermarket, cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry became an issue. I stopped all my chores and my personal care became also very poor! I was only focused on my illness and fear started to creep in. But thank God that notwithstanding all that was going on I kept holding on to my faith in God! I can now say that after as family going through a valley of shadows of death, we can now say that the roles in our family are now more evenly distributed and that we respect each other more as it should. We are definitely not there yet but we have a good guideline (THE BIBLE)!