Submitting to Authority

I can relate to all of what this gal writes about in this blog. I especially like what she says about how doing our relationships the way God has designed, always works.  Submitting and honoring anyone who has authority over me is commanded and is beneficial to me.

“We Don’t Argue Anymore” 

By, April Cassidy, “Peacefulwife”

http://peacefulwife.com/2012/08/04/we-dont-fight-anymore/ 

Let me say that “fighting” or arguing for us was pretty one-sided  before God opened my eyes to all that was truly involved with respect and biblical submission. (Keep in mind, I used to think I WAS obeying God’s commands to respect and submit to my husband. But I probably only saw about 3% of what was truly involved in obeying God’s Word about that stuff!) 

OUR OLD WAY OF DEALING WITH CONFLICT 

(I really do not enjoy sharing the spiritual “before” pictures of myself. But I know that it must be done. I pray that God might use my awful sin from earlier in our marriage to bring great glory to Himself. He alone changed my heart, life and marriage. And I thank Him every day!) 

I would tell my husband what to do and he would often ignore me.  Usually, I wanted him to do something about whatever the issue was RIGHT THEN. I was VERY impatient.
I knew I was “right”.  So I would insist on my way and demand that he do what I wanted… And he would ignore me more. Usually, he’d watch tv and just keep looking at it and act like I wasn’t even in the room. So I would increase the volume more and start to feel VERY angry. I would NOT drop the issue – EVER. 

Sometimes I would wait for an answer – you know – all of 5 minutes. Then I would demand an answer. And he would continue to ignore me. I would emotionally and verbally blow up. 

Sometimes I would wait up to 30 minutes – on my SUPER “godly” days – sitting there impatiently scowling at him the whole time, watching the minutes tick by on the clock, angry that he wouldn’t JUST TELL ME what his answer was! What was so hard about that? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HIM?????? He had no communication skills at all, right? I thought he would know what he thought immediately like I did. And if I had refused to answer someone after more than about 30 seconds, it would mean I was the most unloving person on the planet. So I was sure my husband was extremely unloving and really needed God to FIX him! 

Then I would get REALLY ANGRY and say something about how ridiculous it was that he couldn’t even give me an answer to a simple question (in a scolding mama tone of voice) – and I had waited ALL THAT TIME. And I would storm off full of anger, baffled, hurt, confused and convinced that HE NEEDED TO CHANGE. Look at what an unloving, difficult man I had to live with! He was IMPOSSIBLE! 

Then he would stay shut down and I would fume and the entire day would be ruined.
The whole time, my husband was protecting himself from and reacting to MY disrespect.  I didn’t see it at all.  It’s hard for me to fathom now how blind I was then.  But there is NO WAY I would treat my husband like that now that I can see the damage and destruction I was causing!