Respecting your Valentine

Valentine's Day.  Do you celebrate it?

No, I don't mean the pink and red construction paper, or the dainty chocolates.

Or the cheesy, store-bought Valentines--which the retail industry elaborates on each year, in an attempt to suck even more money from our pockets.  There used to be an aisle for Valentine cards and chocolates, now.....there's everything from heart-covered underwear, to baking supplies, to picture frames.  Big business, this love day.

What I mean is, do you use the day to think about your spouse, and how well you've loved him over the last year?  Or, as it translates to men--how well you've respected him in the last year?  Respect equals love, for our man.

Ephesians 5:33
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I do respect my husband, in theory.  But there is this one thing about him that works to erode my respect.  My heart doesn't react with grace, so my words and actions plummet into sinful territory--into disrespect.

And that disrespect hurts not only my husband, by also my children.  Their sense of security depends in part on how gracious I am toward their daddy.  And the health of their own marriages depends on this as well.  In short, the stakes are huge.

The one thing of which I speak is small, trivial.  A simple personality trait that he never chose.  It embedded in his genes, quite without his permission, just as some of my unlovely traits did.

It's his pessimism.  I hate that about him.  I spend so much energy wishing he were a glass-half-full kind of guy.  While pessimism is technically a personality trait, if allowed to run wild, it leads to the counting of hardships, rather than blessings--and then dwelling on those hardships with a hardened heart.  Eventually, thanklessness takes root--replacing gratefulness.

The most humbling thing about my graceless sin (my irritation), is that my husband is a better husband, than I am a wife. He is much better at loving me unconditionally, than I am at respecting him unconditionally.  Much of the not-so-good stuff in our marriage stems from my heart--not his.

Can I say in my defense that he's been a Christian since age 7, and me only since age 31?  Okay..probably not.  I can't think that.

A breakthrough occurred for me, recently.  We were discussing something and his mother's traffic accident and death came up.  He seldom speaks of this, unless I ask.  Even then, few details come forth.

He mentioned that when he (at age 16) and his sister (at age 13) went to the morgue to identify their mother's body, they found her skull crushed, and her face disfigured.  Few such tears ever emerge, but when he mentioned this, there were tears.  He added that he was never the same after that....that he didn't know how someone could be the same.

Unfortunately, neither he or his sister were ever offered grief counseling.  And I don't understand why they, rather than their father, went to the morgue.  My husband said they chose to, but I feel law enforcement or someone else should have counseled their father against sending his children.

When our first baby, a boy we named Isaac Abraham (because we had to give him up to the Lord), passed away in utero, my husband chose to look at him as he was born.  I did not, but I held him after the nurse wrapped him up completely--even his face--in a blanket.

The horror of that image remains with my husband.  How I wish he hadn't looked! Our baby apparently had passed away some days earlier--he wasn't just small....there were signs of old death.  The nurse told us he would look like a miniature, but fully-formed baby (and he was fully-formed and miniature).  But she didn't anticipate how old death would change the scene.  Or, because she had seen such things many times, and the babies weren't ever hers, she didn't fully understand the emotional impact.

These two scenes--his mother, our baby--represent my husband's most vulnerable life moments.  God has shown me in the last weeks how these scenes can help me see my husband the way Jesus sees him.

We can love the way Jesus loves, by seeing the way Jesus sees.

Lately, when my husband makes some glass-half-empty statement, instead of becoming intensely irritated, I remember his humanity.  I stay quiet (mercy), or I complement (grace).  It's not a perfect process--I'm still a sinner after all.  But it's moving my heart, words, and deeds into respectful territory.

And I also pray that God softens painful images from the past--in a way that only He can.

I can't fathom what it may be about your husband that drives you into sinful, mouthy mode.

But I do know this.

You can love him well (respect him) when you choose to see his humanity--his brokenness--rather than his faults.  It will remind you that we are all broken.  We all need mercy and grace.

And we were given it.


So we're called to extend it.


Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 
Ephesians 4:2


Read a post by the We Are That Family author, about respecting husbands.


Read a repost by the A Wise Woman Builds Her Home author, about respecting sons.