The One Thing You Can Control - The Uncommon Marriage Adventure

CORE PRACTICE #5: Wives: Show love and respect to your husband.

In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands. Then, even if some refuse to obey the Good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives. —1 Peter 3:1-2

Lauren

I learned a long time ago that the circumstances of my day often dictate my attitude. They can determine whether my day is going to be sunny or cloudy—no matter what the weather actually is.

My personal situation may affect how I make decisions and color my perception of comments I hear others make. They frequently determine what comes out of my mouth in response to what others say or what is happening around me.

My circumstances are that powerful. The question is: Do they have to be?

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl recounts the unspeakable horrors of his longtime imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz and Dachau. As a prisoner, he was stripped of everything. His father, mother, brother, and wife all died in similar prison camps. Though he survived, Frankl suffered from hunger, cold, and brutality. He had lost every possession and knew he could be killed at any hour, but he still found value and hope in his day. Life, he discovered, was worth preserving.

Even in our most desperate circumstances, he noted, we are never stripped of the “last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”^a In other words, though we can’t always choose our situation, we can always choose our attitude—which makes it possible for us to rise above those circumstances.

That’s a healthy, relationship-enhancing reminder for me as I strive to show love and respect to Tony—even on those days when what’s going on around me leaves me feeling tired, overlooked, or annoyed. When our two oldest children were small, Tony took a job coaching the defensive backs for the Kansas City Chiefs. During the season, he often didn’t return home until 2:00 a.m. That meant I had to run the home on my own for much of the year. If the car broke down, I took it to the garage. If one of the kids was struggling in a class, I contacted the teacher. If the lawn needed mowing, I took care of it.

As difficult as that was, it was almost harder when the season ended. As you can imagine, Tony was anxious to reconnect with the kids—which sometimes meant disrupting their homework and bedtime schedule. Even though I knew his heart was in the right place, I was frustrated. After I’d spent months establishing household rules, was it right for Tony to disturb them just because he wanted to take the kids out for ice cream?

But other than blowing off some steam, what would I have gained by lashing out at Tony? What would I have taught the kids about working out differences and honoring others within our home? I realized that I always had the choice, no matter what was going on or how I felt about Tony’s actions, to control my response. I had the choice as to how I would react. I wanted to win over my family, to model in some small way God’s extravagant love and forgiveness. That often meant I had to check my words and my attitudes.

If we show our spouses the respect they deserve in spite of our circumstances, we can make a difficult moment better. The apostle Peter says that when wives demonstrate love for their husbands by respecting their position, they may win their husbands over without the use of words. Who knows? That might even encourage husbands to respond to us with increased love and affection.

Adventure Application: Offer a sincere compliment about your spouse this week in front of your children, your parents or siblings, or your friends at church, at work, or in the neighborhood. If possible, do it when he is there too!