The stress of work, church responsibilities and post-wedding busyness and change had finally caught up with me. I went home from work every night, sat on the couch and watched TV until it was time to go to bed. Then, I would curl up into a ball under the covers and sob uncontrollably. And then I got up the next day and did it all over again.
What little interaction my husband and I had consisted of me telling him about how terribly stressful my day was and how awfully depressed I had become.
I thought I was a bad wife.
The house wasn’t clean, I hadn’t cooked dinner for my husband in days, and my stress was bringing out a depressive and anxious side of me that no one had ever seen before. I stopped eating and started getting sick. I didn’t want to talk to Michael, let alone look at him, and I wasn’t reading my Bible or talking to God.
Then, one night, as I reached my lowest of lows, Michael crawled into bed next to me, hugged me tight, and started praying. And when he was done, he picked up my Bible and started reading from Ruth.
…Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God …” (Ruth 1:16)
He was quoting the verses we used as our vows at our wedding. When he finished the entire book, I turned to him and cried. I apologized for failing him as a wife and cried out to God asking Him to forgive me for letting the stress of my life get the best of me.
Michael assured me that I was, in fact, not a bad wife, and that I was just going through a tough time. He also encouraged me in my walk with God. And every night since then, even though I’m reading the Bible and praying on my own, we take time to read the Word and pray together.
I wondered why my husband, instead of letting me “cry it out,” confronted the situation and began to pray and read Scripture. He knew that if he didn’t pick up the Bible and read it to me, I would stay stuck in my stress and not hear the truth I so desperately needed. Turns out, husbands, it’s a biblical thing.
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot of wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:25-27)
There’s a tiny part of verse 26 that sticks out to me. “[H]aving cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…” Loving your wife doesn’t just mean praising her when she cooks the best biscuits and gravy ever or gets every speck of dust off the coffee table. Love doesn’t mean showering your wives with gifts and flowers. Loving your wife means praying over her and reading the Word to her so that she can be spurred on toward a closer relationship with Christ.
These days I’m much less stressed and am growing closer to Christ each day. I’m so thankful for Michael—that he takes seriously God’s call for husband, stood in the gap for me, and helped me find my way in post-wedded bliss.
