“Why don’t you ever lead me?!”, I said, frustrated, to my husband. “Lead you in what? I thought everything was going fine!”, he said, in his typical Mr. Peacekeeper fashion. “Well we could be doing more! We could be doing better at what we’re already doing! But you never lead us!”
You could have heard these types of conversations over and over and over between my husband and I during our first few years of marriage. I was the eager beaver, wanting to be involved in everything at church and practice the spiritual disciplines at home, preferably with my husband. But he was quite content to let his walk with the Lord look a lot different from mine and felt a lot of freedom to not be involved as much as I wanted to be. That was painful to me at first, as it crushed my mental picture of us doing all those things together. I cried. I prayed. I begged for a change. And felt as stuck as I could be in that situation.
But over time, God let me see that underneath my drive to be involved in everything wasn’t just a deep hunger for Him, but also that my heart entangled in the approval of man. And I figured if I did all the things, all the involvements, the more liked I would be, and if I were more liked, I would be happier. My husband’s way of connecting with God didn’t involve a 6 AM Bible and prayer time like I thought it would. But at times he walked so far outside of the Christian cookie cutter that it almost made me a little nervous, such as telling me that he connects with God on his bike. I never heard the pastor preaching about that as an option for connecting with God. Anybody get what I’m saying? As much as we discussed and explained ourselves to pieces, the tension between us and our spiritual life continued. I kept “reminding” him that grace compels us to go and do and he’d respond with an, “okay, so go and do. I don’t have to do everything with you.”
Approval Monster
So I went and did the things. I served wherever I could. I strived to stay in community. If there was anything I could sign up for, I’d sign up. And I genuinely wanted to. I’ve just loved being in church and walking with Jesus since day 1 of being a Christian. I could not understand anyone that didn’t feel the same, including my husband. As people asked where he was, the approval monster reared it’s ugly head and I’d default to two answers: either make excuses for him or defend him by explaining all the other godly, wholesome things he does. Both of which had a sliver of truth in them but I left out the fact that sometimes he just wasn’t interested in attending all the things.
I kept on praying for him and for our marriage. I sat in the tension between accepting him as he was right now and praying him into all he could be in Jesus. The more I sought the Lord, he continued to make this clear to me: I want YOU, Lindsey, to work on you. Don’t say a word to Brian. Don’t wait for him to lead you to do the things you want to do. Keep showing up and be responsible for your own obedience. God was right. I was so blind to the ways my own sin was involved. I needed to seriously put to death my approval monster. And I needed to just do what God wanted me to do whether my husband did it with me or not. And most of all, I needed to keep my mouth shut and stop trying to be my husband’s Holy Spirit.
