Two thoughts on anger and marriage

My friend and I had a pretty candid conversation about marriage and the differences between men and women today. We shared how we are discovering how much anger we can allow in our hearts towards our precious husbands. We discovered two main reasons why this seems to occur for us. We agreed that the first is because we were trained in Bible studies and at church as young college women to save ourselves for our husbands. We obeyed faithfully and consequently expected a fairy tale marriage. Over the years life has sometimes proved to be difficult and sad and hectic. Somewhere along the way we realized that we began to really miss the romance and the fairy tale that we always secretly expected. Even with amazing, loving husbands I would venture to say that most Christian women realize in their marriage at some point that they have had false notions of what marriage would "look like". (We probably have the same false notions of parenthood, as well. No one ever told me that you have a 6 week period after giving birth, that my hips and stomach would never recover or that my hair would turn 5 shades darker, among many other things!)

The second reason we found that we have harbored anger is because we are secretly resentful that our husbands seem to have more freedom to be alone or with friends than we do. They leave the house for work and come home 8 hours later looking exactly as they did when they left! (Meanwhile, we are lucky to get a shower, have spit-up on our shoulders, and look generally frassled by 5 pm.) We often find ourselves longing to run an errand or eat lunch alone or with a friend, and it irks us a little that our husbands have that option almost daily. I remember my husband coming home and telling me once that his friend had treated him to lunch at a restaurant that I love. I calculated that during that fun luncheon, I was dragging the children through Kroger somewhere between isle 1 and 10. I remember feeling deep envy for my husband that day and not serving him with a happy heart, to say the least!

By the end of my conversation with my friend today we were laughing at ourselves. One of God's biggest ways of showing me grace is by honoring my efforts to be open and vulnerable with my own sin to other women. He always shows me how common my struggles are and usually allows me to laugh at myself. Honestly, my friend and I both have newborns that are our third children, so we can excuse some of our desperation and chalk it up to exhaustion. But truly I think every woman I know has struggled in these areas to some degree. Thankfully, God has given me a quick, easy solution. I need to pray more for my husband. I need to beg God to give me a selfless love that is truly happy for him. I need to realize that his needs are just as important and vast as mine. I need to believe that the gospel is true and that He can take away my sinfulness and replace it with love. And I need to be very diligent in having girls' nights and date nights to reconnect.

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." James 4:7-8