Teach the older women to be quiet and respectful in everything they do. They must not go around speaking evil of others and must not be heavy drinkers, but they should be teachers of goodness. These older women must train the younger women to live quietly, to love their husbands and their children, and to be sensible and clean minded, spending their time in their own homes, being kind and obedient to their husbands so that the Christian faith can’t be spoken against by those who know them. Titus 2: 3-5
Train the younger women to… love their husbands. Well, the other day our co-ed bible class started tearing into these verses. I noticed two interesting things. #1- A lot of men had a lot to say. #2- They kept making distinctions between like and love. These men said things like, “They might not always ‘like’ us… BUT…”
That’s interesting to me because the scripture is pretty clear that we ladies have to be trained to love our husbands. And its interesting because I think men have a hard time accepting this reality. So here it is. I’m going to say it. Guys, we don’t always love you.
I heard the bathroom chatter Sunday morning. It was pretty consistent. Sometimes you are honestly hard to love.
That may be hard to hear and I am sorry to be the one to break it to you. But there are moments in marriage that we don’t love you. There are moments in marriage that we don’t want to stay with you. There are moments that we don’t want to look at you or breathe the same air as you. There are moments we believe marriage has become our curse.
We aren’t proud of these moments. We don’t particularly enjoy these moments. But they are the real, gritty challenges that we face. They are the hurdles that we jump and the obstacles that we overcome to stay married to you.
We don’t always give voice to these moments. We don’t like to talk about this dirty little secret to you or even to other women. In fact sometimes our shame keeps us from admitting these moments to ourselves.
The fact that we don’t always love you doesn’t diminish marriage, it can make it stronger. It can make it stronger because we make a decision to stay with you no matter your flaws and faults. We will stay with you no matter how we feel. We will stay because it’s right.
Now, we must pray that our decision to stay is coupled with to a desire to grow in love towards you. Sometimes we do need experienced wives to help us with this. It is not always natural. We need help. We need to see grace in motion. We need to see joy in service. We need to see contentment in submission.
Please don’t begrudge this in us. Pray for us. Allow us the opportunities to have older women mentor us. Allow us the freedom to struggle. Allow Jesus to work out our imperfections. Let us be the wife that God molds us into , not the wife you always wanted.
Please just understand, we won’t always love you. But through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome that. We can, with God in us, love you with a holy and divine love that only comes from Jesus working through us.
But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.) Rom. 8:9
