Love & Respect

Y'all, this book...it rocked my mind and humbled me to the core big time!

Respect is hard...really hard! And, I didn't even realize it!

Marriage it seems is always talked about from the "love" point of view. There is no doubt that I, and most women for that matter, are good lovers. It's how God wired us.

I've understood for a long time that God commanded men to love their wives like Christ loves the church because loving does not come as naturally for men. Women are told to submit or respect their husband as the church submits to Christ because this does not come naturally for us. God didn't have to tell us to love our husbands because we're already good at that.

I even became okay with the term submit, which the world so strongly hates these days. God isn't telling me to be inferior; He's commanding me to respect and defer to my husband's leadership.

What I didn't realize or had never learned was what that looks like to Stephen.

This book opened my eyes and whoa! I am not so great at it.

There were points in this book where I was like okay, I'm decent at that.
There were other points where I flat out knew I was terrible at that. (Did you know men build relationships shoulder to shoulder as opposed to face to face like women? This means husbands are energized by just hanging out and doing nothing. That is SO hard for me. I feel like there are always a million and one things to be doing. Why should I just sit and watch TV with him? But, Stephen needs me to stop and spend time with him, without talking. Who would have known?!?)
Then, there were the points where I got SO defensive and angry reading. (Why should I do that if he isn't doing this, this and this?!?...) These were the most humbling chapters, places where I need to be more intentional and selfless as opposed to selfish and self-righteous. Tough stuff.

I intentionally did not read the 6 "for men only" chapters because I did not want to come out of this book with the mindset of "I'm going to wait until he does this before I do _______ (fill in the blank)"

It's tough! Even as I was reading it and trying to be specifically intentional about putting some of these respect practices into play, there were days where I failed. Just the other night we were having a conversation that wasn't going "my" way. I realized I was being disrespectful and just said, "fine, we'll do it your way" and proceeded to not talk to him the rest of the night...like that was any more respectful than my first response.

If you want a humbling, challenging, rock your world marriage book, this is the book for you!

There were some parts that I didn't love or completely agree with and his writing style is not my favorite, but I would still recommend it.