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Michael Gäbler, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-3.0 |
This Airing of our Laundry has been approved by my husband, Brett, because it is his prayer that our story may help others who may be struggling in their marriage. However, this particular post does not provide the solution; it just sets up the problem and provides a picture of what NOT to do. While we have yet to "arrive," this is not the current state of our marriage, but a snapshot of when it started to get tense.
In our last post, I shared a conversation that Brett and I had about how biblical marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. If we're following the model that's laid out for us in Scripture, it'll preach. For example, in John 13:35, Jesus said, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (ESV). A marriage filled with love is a testimony of the power of love, to a world full of broken marriages.
But if we're not following the biblical model, not only will we suffer for it because things are out of balance, but we'll be messing up God's object lesson, and we will be held accountable for that too.
There seem to be two main ways to get things off balance in marriage, and these are basically just extremes on a spectrum of responses. We'll call the middle ground "the narrow path," so to veer too far to one side or the other will land us in a ditch.
And now we come to the part of our journey where we really started to have some conflict.
In our previous conversation, Brett's emphasis on the role of the husband was to uphold the standard that the rest of the family should conform to. He talked about discipline and submission. What he didn't really address was his need to demonstrate love, and this bothered me, because that's the primary command to husbands in Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (ESV).
So I brought it up to him. And I started out in a fairly diplomatic tone, but pretty soon, I found myself fuming, as he resolutely stood his ground. He said, "Love encompasses discipline."
"Yes," I said. "But that's not the role of the husband and wife; it's the role of the father and child."
"But wives are to submit to their husbands."
"Yes, but that submission should not feel like an obligation; it should flow naturally because of the love the husband demonstrates to his wife." And then he cited an article that I don't even want to mention because I can't recommend it, and its author doesn't even use his real name anyway, but the gist of it was that since Jesus chastens those He loves, a husband should discipline his wife when she doesn't submit to him.
I don't remember if it was that night or shortly afterward, but I had delegated dinner to a somewhat competent child, instructing said child through the process while I myself was playing a game on my phone. I felt that I was able to multitask in this way, and things were progressing well, so at one point, I told Brett, "15 minutes," and then I left the kitchen and sat at my desk in the other room. Big mistake. Cooking Child came in to ask me a question; meanwhile, another child and I had become engaged in an amusing conversation, so Cooking Child stood waiting for my reply, when in walked my husband, wondering why dinner hadn't been served yet. He saw me playing a game and laughing while two previously-working children were standing idle, and he rebuked me for not managing things better. I scurried to the kitchen to find that the soup had been on too high and had not been stirred well, so the bottom was sticking and burning. Brett was not happy. Understandably.
Later that evening, he announced that I was forbidden to play my game for several days. I was grounded. Like a child. For the first time in nearly 25 years of marriage. I set my jaw and rather bitterly accepted my well-deserved fate.
Over the next few days, Brett began to test my obedience in ways that I perceived as unnecessary and arbitrary. For example, we had no obligations one morning, but he ordered me to get up earlier than usual to make breakfast. From scratch. I hate to cook. I am not a morning person. We had cereal in the pantry.
Later that day, I began to protest his policy, going back to our previous conversation and restating my view that the biblical mandate for a husband is to love his wife, not discipline her or demand from her. I said, "A father should discipline his son, but there is no mandate for a husband to discipline his wife." He stood his ground. He issued another demand, one that I deemed to be selfishly motivated. I said I was willing to comply but I wasn't happy about it. He clarified that I should not do it grudgingly, but as unto the Lord. I countered, "What difference does it make to you if I'm happy about it or not? That's between me and God. It should be good enough for you that I'm willing." The discussion escalated. I blew a gasket and started yelling at him. He was having none of it. So, to prove his point and correct me for my outburst, he doled out my punishment: I was not welcome in our bed that night; I was to sleep on the couch. I bitterly told him that I had already decided to do that. He threatened to come up with a better punishment but relented when I calmed down enough to apologize for yelling.
But you know that biblical adage that you should never go to bed angry? I forgot about that. I was infuriated. As I lay on the couch that night, I began to console myself with thoughts of packing up and leaving.
I'm going to leave our story right here. This wasn't just a ditch; it was an abyss, and we were sitting on the edge of the cliff with our feet dangling over the edge of a very slippery slope, so a cliffhanger seems appropriate.
Stay tuned. (Continue reading)
Spoiler alert: things got worse, but we're in a better place now.
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