My message to the ‘other’ woman

Source: My message to the ‘other’ woman

My message to the ‘other’ woman

There are some women that will gladly stand on the pedestal that they’ve been set upon.  Why not?  It’s easy to shine from the top.  It feels good to display yourself in all your glory.  But how well do you do at the bottom, near the lowly and weak at heart?  Can your shiny persona resonate with the hurting woman?

It’s been a couple weeks of the ‘other woman’, both personally and professionally.  Most of the things I want to say are from the perspective of the marriage bond.

This one is for you other woman:

• Glass slippers- not all shoes are shiny and new, don’t presume we wear the same ones because we are both women. Yes, I have heals and I put them on from time to time.  But my shoes are tattered and torn and come from some pretty hard years as of late.  Yours may be tattered too, but let’s not presume we wear them the same.
• Words of affirmation- I have a hard time affirming my husband. This is my issue, not yours and it’s not because he doesn’t deserve it.  We are busy and tired and when I do see him I am usually frustrated in passing that he didn’t help with the dishes.  Honestly, sometimes he doesn’t deserve it.  Sometimes he does and says the wrong things, because we live together and I see his best and worst.  The same is true for him with me.  You see him in his best environment day in/day out.  You think he hung the moon and you communicating that he did may make him think that he made a mistake with his grumpy wife at home.  (PS she is grumpy because she has small children and a full time job and he doesn’t often help with the dishes).  One last thing, would your words of affirmation to my husband be something that makes your husband uncomfortable?
• Stop it with the inside jokes- There is nothing inside your circle of friendship that shouldn’t be inside my circle of marriage. Your inside jokes communicate to him that you ‘get him’. I haven’t ‘gotten’ him since I married him.  He is a puzzle to figure out.  But he’s my puzzle to figure out, mine through God’s bond of marriage and it’s a three cord strand that you don’t get to be weaved into.  I want to joke with him, but it’s hard when he’s working with you and tired when he gets home to me.  And he’s all joked out.  He’s spent his daily quota on you and it’s not helpful to him or me for you to be bonded by humor.  I don’t want to share all his best qualities with you.  His inside jokes are one of the things I miss that you feel you get to share with him.
• Eye Contact- If you can’t look me in the eye it leads me to believe you are uncomfortable with me, which leads me to believe you have more feelings then friendship with my husband. My husband isn’t lacking for friendship, and if he is God will provide some stable friendships through the bond of another male that’s not apt to confuse his marital relationship but affirm and encourage it.
• Texting/Messaging/Calling- If you want to have a conversation with my husband, have it at work. Don’t text him/Facebook message him/call him and have your private conversations of bantering.  I think it goes without saying, but don’t have your friends do it either.  It’s inappropriate and extremely disrespectful to the marriage bond.  If your job requires it, then it requires it.  I know for a fact yours doesn’t, so stop.
• Front Row seating- You don’t get to be his number one fan. That spot is reserved for me.  I know his greatness, his goodness.  I know the areas he lacks that God’s fine tuning.  I really know him, you think you do.  And you think you’re bonded in a way.  You have things in common.  What God has joined together let no man separate.  Now that’s bonded.

Please stop trying to be my husband’s best friend.

Respectfully,

His wife

 

P.S. He chose me.

 

P.S.S I don’t usually ask for feedback, but ladies….do you feel me on this one?

Living Outside of Myself and In Him

Power.

In a recent sermon a pastor shared about the power of God.  It resonates so deeply within me- the need for living, moving, to have our being, in Christ.  It does resonate. But living it…well, that’s a different story.  I believe strongly in the power of God.  I believe it in my heart.  My head, well, that’s also a different story.  My head questions, attempts to reconcile, wants answers.  My heart says, “Believe”!  My head says, “Are you sure, it’s just so unbelievable”?  And so this battle wages within me.  Head verses heart.  And often the head wins, because it reasons, it argues, and inevitably is the more stubborn part of me.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a deeply emotional being, but if I were all emotion, no head….I would just trust.  And I don’t.

So…I am driving.  And the message comes on, the “judgement’ message.  He teaches not to judge others’ motives.  Something I am well versed in doing- judging the heart of someone without the ability to really look into their heart.  Jokingly I think to tattoo on my forehead “Assume the Best”, because I often assume the worst.

Powerful.

So I listen.

And I learn.  And my heart takes it all in.  My heart believes.  My heart agrees.

And then my head starts to process the message.  And starts to argue, the ‘But’…. Instead of the ‘How’….But the ‘How’ is where I am starting to focus, because I think that’s where the answer often lies. How do I shift from a believing head to an active heart?  How do I shift from what I think I feel in my heart, to what my heart hasn’t quite figured out?  Honestly, what my head hasn’t even figured out.  How do I trust the heart in spite of the head?  How do I take two steps forward and no step back in an environment where you can’t see the yellow brick road ahead?

So mostly, I ask questions.  And wait.  And adjust.  Adapt.  Until the only road I see, albeit dim, is the road that was paved by sandled feet, on dust stormed roads, to the place of the skull.  If it is the only road I choose, it’s a road worth choosing.  The power really is in that forward movement, the walk up the hill with full awareness of the cost, and ultimately the sacrifice.  I think it’s the problem with our culture.  Real love, real faith, real power, it costs something.  And often we aren’t willing to count the cost, let alone pay it.