It's 5am on a dark, warm, late summer's morning. I have been awake since 2:30am. Sleeping has become difficult lately with me averaging about four to five hours sleep most nights. Sometimes less. It's horrible! But my sleeping pattern is not what I want to share with you today. Today I want to share something that I never dreamed I would ever struggle with. Submission. A word that many recoil at. A concept that the modern woman finds outdated and irrelevant and many modern Christian woman believe it's a cultural thing for times past. I however have always been a massive advocate for submission and have passionately preached about it, written about it and believed it with all my heart - or so I thought. Well it's easy to think you are submissive when everything is going your way!
Eric keeps asking me why I won't follow him. I can see he is hurt by the fact that I am not fully behind him in his new church, in fact I am totally opposing him. I am 100% in disagreement with him about his choice to attend and work there. I have been very clear and direct with my disapproval and we have argued many times about the fact that he expects me to follow him wherever he goes and to trust him. Most of all he has made it clear that he expects me to submit to him. Aargh I hate being told to submit, it goes against what I believe submission is so I dig me heals in even deeper. I believe submission is given by my own free will as a gift to my husband and cannot be demanded of me. Despite everything else I am about to share with you I still believe this to be true - anything else would be domination in my opinion and I don't believe a husband should dominate his wife in any way at all. This whole church situation has really thrown me! I can't understand why I so passionately resist the church that Eric is working at. It's not the people or the church, I believe that they are Godly and have a great church. It is a firm conviction that we are not meant to be going down that path again!
My past has affected me. I don't blame anyone or any past experience but I also don't want to put all the blame on myself either. As you may or may not know from my other writings, my dad was not the greatest of dads having crossed over boundaries that he should have. My step dad wasn't any better, in fact he was much worse. I had a string of hurtful relationships and a failed first marriage (because I was an idiot sadly). So to me the thought of completely trusting and surrendering to a man is ludicrous, even to a man as wonderful as Eric. I have always felt to keep my cards close to my chest and always make sure I have the winning hand. Never consciously but definitely subconsciously making sure I always have a way out, an emergency exit. Divorce thoughts plague my mind regularly and have done for 12 years of marriage. There was a season when I thought I cracked it but they came back. Knowing that there is a way out if I get too hurt is a comfort to me. The thought of having someone have full control over me is... well... unthinkable. Only God gets that much of me.
My prayer was something along these lines this morning:
"God, I don't want to give my husband, or anyone, power over me. Why should I give up the free will that you gave me. How can a trust a man. I trust you completely but I don't know how I can trust my husband. I don't want to give him power over me. I want to keep the door open to leave it I need to. What do I do as know all of this is wrong but you know it's the truth of how I feel. I give you all my heart and all of me, I trust you but I can't give that to another human being. I am tired of always feeling hurt. I don't want to keep myself in that position when my husband or anyone else can hurt me. What do I do? I know this is displeasing to you and I desperately want to please you but I can't see a way forward."
As I sat on my sofa in tears I saw a large thorn stuck in my flesh with a bloody wound around it. I felt like God was saying to me that He could remove the thorn if I wanted Him to. He showed me how I had been protecting and holding onto this thorn, not wanting to let it go. My pain was caused by this thorn but if I didn't allow Him to remove it I would continue living with pain that it brings. It made sense to me, why would someone knowingly hold onto a splinter or thorn in their flesh? Even though it would hurt to take it out it was a no brainer that it has to be removed. Yes I still resisted. The thorn was an obvious metaphor, perhaps of me holding onto my divorce thoughts or of me not wanting to submit. It could also be the fear of losing my power and giving a mere man his way with me. What if losing this thorn meant I became a mindless zombie who just did whatever my husband said and lost me in the process of blindly obeying. Yuck! I don't want to be that kind of person!
So I surrendered to God, not knowing for sure what the thorn was, how painful it would be to have it removed but fully confident that willing living with a thorn in my flesh is painful and foolish. I do trust God with all my heart and I know that He only ever wants what is best for me. I know that I can't 'fix' myself, this problem is too big and probably too deeply rooted. So I surrender. I will wait and see, trust and obey.
Eric keeps asking me why I won't follow him. I can see he is hurt by the fact that I am not fully behind him in his new church, in fact I am totally opposing him. I am 100% in disagreement with him about his choice to attend and work there. I have been very clear and direct with my disapproval and we have argued many times about the fact that he expects me to follow him wherever he goes and to trust him. Most of all he has made it clear that he expects me to submit to him. Aargh I hate being told to submit, it goes against what I believe submission is so I dig me heals in even deeper. I believe submission is given by my own free will as a gift to my husband and cannot be demanded of me. Despite everything else I am about to share with you I still believe this to be true - anything else would be domination in my opinion and I don't believe a husband should dominate his wife in any way at all. This whole church situation has really thrown me! I can't understand why I so passionately resist the church that Eric is working at. It's not the people or the church, I believe that they are Godly and have a great church. It is a firm conviction that we are not meant to be going down that path again!
My past has affected me. I don't blame anyone or any past experience but I also don't want to put all the blame on myself either. As you may or may not know from my other writings, my dad was not the greatest of dads having crossed over boundaries that he should have. My step dad wasn't any better, in fact he was much worse. I had a string of hurtful relationships and a failed first marriage (because I was an idiot sadly). So to me the thought of completely trusting and surrendering to a man is ludicrous, even to a man as wonderful as Eric. I have always felt to keep my cards close to my chest and always make sure I have the winning hand. Never consciously but definitely subconsciously making sure I always have a way out, an emergency exit. Divorce thoughts plague my mind regularly and have done for 12 years of marriage. There was a season when I thought I cracked it but they came back. Knowing that there is a way out if I get too hurt is a comfort to me. The thought of having someone have full control over me is... well... unthinkable. Only God gets that much of me.
My prayer was something along these lines this morning:
"God, I don't want to give my husband, or anyone, power over me. Why should I give up the free will that you gave me. How can a trust a man. I trust you completely but I don't know how I can trust my husband. I don't want to give him power over me. I want to keep the door open to leave it I need to. What do I do as know all of this is wrong but you know it's the truth of how I feel. I give you all my heart and all of me, I trust you but I can't give that to another human being. I am tired of always feeling hurt. I don't want to keep myself in that position when my husband or anyone else can hurt me. What do I do? I know this is displeasing to you and I desperately want to please you but I can't see a way forward."
As I sat on my sofa in tears I saw a large thorn stuck in my flesh with a bloody wound around it. I felt like God was saying to me that He could remove the thorn if I wanted Him to. He showed me how I had been protecting and holding onto this thorn, not wanting to let it go. My pain was caused by this thorn but if I didn't allow Him to remove it I would continue living with pain that it brings. It made sense to me, why would someone knowingly hold onto a splinter or thorn in their flesh? Even though it would hurt to take it out it was a no brainer that it has to be removed. Yes I still resisted. The thorn was an obvious metaphor, perhaps of me holding onto my divorce thoughts or of me not wanting to submit. It could also be the fear of losing my power and giving a mere man his way with me. What if losing this thorn meant I became a mindless zombie who just did whatever my husband said and lost me in the process of blindly obeying. Yuck! I don't want to be that kind of person!
So I surrendered to God, not knowing for sure what the thorn was, how painful it would be to have it removed but fully confident that willing living with a thorn in my flesh is painful and foolish. I do trust God with all my heart and I know that He only ever wants what is best for me. I know that I can't 'fix' myself, this problem is too big and probably too deeply rooted. So I surrender. I will wait and see, trust and obey.
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