A pain filled marriage

Dear Aletha,

All during my married life, I have not only been a victim of verbal and emotion abuse but also an abuser. I truly think that my husband and I are both at fault in our relationship.

Throughout almost 22 years of marriage, he has almost never helped me grow spiritually and has almost never supported me in my endeavors. In my opinion, he has only cared about me for what I can do for him. My assessment may be incorrect, but I can say what I feel. Most of my pain is that I've spent all of my marriage being abused, being an abuser, and being angry. I do not blame God for any of this. He has always been with me, and even though I have grown in the Lord, I don't feel as though I have let Him comfort me and guide me as I should. I am trying to do that now, but I need support.

Trusting Him,
Judy

Dear Judy,

It’s good that you aren’t seeking to change your husband as much as to learn to lean on Jesus yourself. It’s amazing how often others seem to change when it’s actually our own attitude that we’ve allowed Jesus to change.
 
Begin your day asking Jesus to share your day with you. Then when you are talking with your husband, visualize Jesus standing as a third person there. If He were physically present with you, what difference would His sweet, kind, wise personality make?
 
Jesus wants to comfort and guide us. In fact, along with forgiving us, I suspect guiding and comforting us are His favorite things to do. Could it be that Jesus is saying, “Look to Me to meet your needs. I will be enough for you?” Our greatest opportunities to learn to allow Jesus to be all that we need often come right in our homes as we interact with our families. He invites us to welcome the situations we’d like to change as opportunities to look only to Him.

Jesus is with us, and even more than that, He is within us. Our goal is always for Him to live through us, even in our marriages. The secret is to declare with Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).

How do we do that? Paul lived this life of full surrender “by faith.” “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” Moment by moment we surrender to the Holy Spirit and trust Christ to live through us.

By faith we ask Him to give us His ideas, to help us choose our words, and to give us His attitude. As we trust Him to guide our thoughts, we find that indeed we have His way of thinking. Old habits of responding out of impatience begin to lose their power over us. When He lives in and through us—when we are "in Christ"—we have His love, joy, peace, plus the mind of Christ! What a trade it is—our way of thinking for His! Before we surrender, it looks difficult. After surrender, it is glorious.

Seek to allow Him to scrutinize all you do and seek to know Jesus is delighted. This goes for attitudes as well as actions. You will be surprised by joy! 

Aletha