If you want something you've NEVER had, you have to do something you've NEVER done before.
That just caused my brain to slam into the front of my skull.
I remember waaaaayyyy back in the beginning of my stand I heard something that really resonated with me at the time...
"If you're asking God for something big, be prepared to stand LONG"
I knew I was asking big...
But little did I know back then all that would occur to ME during this long stand; how I would be changed, how MY eyes would be opened, how I would slowly relearn love.
Everything that I knew, every way that I naturally acted, each predisposed thought, idea and perception that was ingrained in me over all the years of my life...they were each systematically flipped inside out, upside down and dealt with. I didn't do it myself. God in His grace and mercy did it. I kicked, screamed, cried & denied most of my way through it. But always, at the end of every day, I would put my family back into His hands. I promised countless times that I'd leave them - and myself - there but until recently I never did. I always took all the control back trying to mend things on my own, "fix" things with some new hairbrained scheme I'd cooked up. My efforts were always in vain. These marriages, these messes, they were made by us (with the help of our spouses be they the walk away or the one left behind), but to those of us that believe...we are called by faith to turn them over to Him and that's the single most difficult thing I found I had to do.
I quit a lot over the course of my stand. But it wasn't until I truly gave up - and I quit that one last time - that the final changes started to take shape. Again, they were IN ME.
Phil, I'm not one to automatically suggest therapy because I know first hand that issues and bad habits can be changed by a person simply having the will for it to happen. If you see negative behaviors in yourself that you want to change the first step is to stop blaming them on other people's negative behaviors. Make yourself accountable to God and to yourself. Not to anyone here or your wife or anyone else. When you do that and take it seriously, change will come and when you change, your wife will naturally be forced to react differently to you.
In the middle of typing this post I had to stop because my husband called me. That used to never happen. I just spent the last hour talking with him about work, the storm, the kids and we also got into a discussion about a Christian woman he knows through work who is standing for her marriage while her husband is having an affair. We talked about what the bible says about forgiveness and also what it says about adultery being an acceptable biblical reason for divorce. I casually mentioned what it said about forgiveness if the spouse has shown true repentance. All that was very dangerous territory for us but we had a good conversation. It wouldn't have happened had I not long ago laid down my own tendency to make excuses for my past - which means that there was a time that I blamed HIM for MY behavior. That was before I saw the light, though. Anyway, we wrapped up the call by making up silly southern rock classic song titles if they would have had the word "muskrat" in them. Don't ask. It was due to some silly stuff he and the boys got into at work today and we just took it to the extreme and it was hysterical. We were practically crying we were laughing so hard. It may seem stupid but really, it's priceless to me and it took a long time to get here.
A long time standing.
And being changed - as opposed to begging for someone else to change.
Sometimes people need inspiration and an example Phil.
