My "Wife" Story

In 2008 our lives were drastically changed when the death of our 3rd daughter happened. When something like this happens, it either changes you for the good or for the bad. For us, we were changed in a way that was beyond imagining, coming to love the Lord more, individually but also together as a family.

Over the next year, my husband and I worked on our marriage and love for each other since, before Ellie's passing, we had grown apart in many ways. There was no love from his end and no respect from mine. Over the course of time, I had become the nagging, negative, bitter woman I had never wanted to become and I was comfortable with it. And he had become a self involved man who care little for his wife as he no longer desired her.

How does it get that way? How can there once be such a passion and a love and then one day realize, there's nothing there anymore. Thank God for the conviction in his heart that he himself would never divorce his wife because I asked many times and he always refused.

When Ellie died, our lives did a 180. We grew to love each other again and relied on God with our struggles...together. It was where our marriage should have always been.

We started new again. We were 3 years married, but we were newlyweds. Our relationship stated over. So there was a lot of work to do. And just as any new couple, we had a lot of new struggles. We went through a couple more rough spots and we tried to deal with those with what knew. Eventually things got better and we realized we needed to be doing something with our whole lives, dedicated to the Lord. So, we decided as a couple, we would head to Urbana to find a missions group we both felt called to. This in itself is a really really long story so maybe I can share that in another post but to make a long story short, we ended up on the west coast in Oregon, serving as missionaries. This is really where God transformed us.

One day my husband asks me, after many discussions on wives, husbands, church etc "Ames, do you think you submit to me?" I thought about it and this is how I answered: "Yeaaahhh...Mostly. I mean there are some things that I don't but for the most part I think I do." And from that moment on, I realized, the answer was not yeah; it was a firm NO. I was right in saying most of the time because I did try to most of the time but there were other times when arguments happened because of my stubbornness and this is why the answer really is no. I would fight with him about petty things and nag him still, just to feel the satisfaction of being right. From that moment he asked me that question, once again, our marriage changed drastically.

I made the decision to submit to him. It is a scary word in todays society but it is a beautiful. And it's the model Christ lays out and lives for us. The purpose of this blog is to tear down the stereotype of submission and share with you what that really looks like. It is not a scary thing, but a beautiful, life changing thing.

The moment that decision was made in my life, to learn what it means to be a Godly Mother and wife, is when I discovered a love for my man that I never knew was possible. Let me share that with you.

Amy