Loving our Wives Well

This was a talk given at the Biblical Fatherhood Conference at Holyrood Evangelical Church on 23rd March 2024.

Kent Hughes tells the story in his book ‘Disciplines of a Godly Man’ of a farmer and his wife who lived in the Midwest in America. One night the funnel of a tornado lifted the roof right of their house of and sucked the bed out with them still in it. The wife began to cry, and her husband said 'this is no time for crying'. His wife replied 'I can't help it but I am so happy, it is the first time we have been out of the house together in twenty years!'

If I was to ask your wife and my wife 'what is it like living with your husband?'  I wonder what she would say?  Its not an easy question is it?

Would our wives testify to out tenderness, our gentleness, our patience?  Would they say that you as their husband daily point them to the glory and beauty of a great God and a beautiful Saviour?

The best way of loving our children and pointing them towards Jesus, is to love their mother well.

We can instruct our children, we can bring them to church, but the example of a loving marriage will have a profound effect on our children.

The Bible presents marriage as a picture of Christ and his church so what better way to demonstrate the goodness and love of God than through a loving, grace filled marriage?

But the challenge is how do we love well after children?  How do we continue to love well when the pressures and the storms of life hit us?  How can we find renewal and restoration after seasons of hardship and dryness in our marriages?

Well, we need to start with some understanding of what marriage is.

I’ve just finished a 6-part podcast series on the Titanic with The Rest is History.

Many marriages look like they are unsinkable.

So, what happens?  Well marriages hit the two icebergs of expectations and reality.  

1. Great Expectations

We start out in marriage with unrealistic expectations.

We look for the person who will be our best friend, our soul mate, someone who will meet our every need, consistently and perpetually.  We seek a Saviour other than Jesus, our spouse.  The person must be incredibly attractive and remain like that throughout our entire married life.

This is what Tim Keller calls 'apocalyptic romance'.  He says: ‘It is the illusion that if we find our one true soul mate, everything about us will be healed; but that makes the lover into God, and no human being can live up to that.’ Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.

Our marriages are crushed under the weight of cosmically impossible expectations.

2. The Rubber Hits the Road

I was chatting to somebody recently who said that he and his wife never had a 'honeymoon period'.  They were plunged into the stress of ministry in a new county as soon as they were married.  This is so often what happens in marriage.  Expectations crash into the reality of life.  With high, often unrealistic expectations marriages hit the reality of:

• Work
• Kids
• Finance
• Church
• Family

Our marriages come under pressure.  Maybe we don’t like each other’s families?

This is why it is critical that we see marriage not in a consumerist way but as a loving and lasting covenant.

“In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions you must BE tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love.” Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.

God gave marriage as a gift in the garden of Eden – it is for lifelong companionship, for sexual purity and as the best place to bring up children.

It is not a mood, or a flutter in our stomachs, or a panacea of all our problems.  Love is a decision to love someone consistently and in covenant for life.  Love is fundamentally an action rather than emotion.

Our marriages should be characterised not by harshness or anger, but by love and warmth.

Marriage is not so much about who we do love as who we can love for our whole life.

A Stanger in a Strange Land

Maybe today your marriage is floundering in disappointment.  

Maybe your marriage has hit the iceberg of reality and you are thinking 'this isn't what is signed up for.'

You believe in marriage, you know it is a gift of God, but often you feel that your wife has become a stranger.

Marriage, at times, can feel like a bit of a wilderness, we feel lost, overwhelmed and hopeless.

• Intimacy can be challenging;

• communication can feel strained and

• even in a marriage we can feel so lonely.

Marriages can and do fail.

None of us are immune to the breakup of our marriages.

I’ve heard in the last 4 weeks of somebody whose marriage has broken up very acrimoniously and publicly. He was the last person who I would have though that could happen to.

Marriage is a very precious gift, and it mustn’t be taken lightly.

So how can we love our wives well?

Make the Gospel Central

What is the tone of your marriage and home?

If you want to love your wife well we need to have gospel centred marriages.  We need Christ to be at the centre, not us.

It is not your job to enforce every rule, and correct every fault in your wife.

Your job is to love her like Jesus does and point her to a Saviour who loves and cares for her.

We see this in Colossians 3.

The pattern is resurrection, death, life, love and family.

• We put to death what is earthy, and we put on the new self.

• We put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,

• And above put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony v 14.

What we have in Colossians 3 is the gospel.

The secret to a good marriage is dying to our sin; ‘Marriage is a call to die, and a man who does not die for his wife does not come close to the love for which he is called. Christian marriage vows are the lifelong practice of death, of giving over not only all you have, but all you are.’  Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man.

Marriage is about sacrificial commitment to the good of another.

We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church selfishly and sacrificially;  ‘The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope,’  Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.

Loving Well

How do you express love to your wife? Is it in a language she understands?

Are you on the same frequency?

Many husbands think they are appreciative and loving towards their wife but the reality is that the wife feels unloved and unappreciated.

Over 33 years ago Gary Chapman wrote 'The Five Love Languages - the Secret to Love that Lasts.'  He argued that there are 5 main love languages that communicate love.  

• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Physical touch
• Acts of service
• Gifts

Wives need affection, they need words of affirmation, and they need reassurance.

Have you ever asked you wife how she like to receive your expressions of love?

When was the last time you looked your wife in the eyes and told her you loved her?  

Ask her what makes her feel loved and valued and do that over and over again.

Communication

We need to set aside time to talk to our wives.

We need to practice being present in conversations.

Not with one eye on the football scores but giving our wives 100% attention.

Try and go to bed at the same time, try and have breakfast together if you can, eat together as a family.

Carve out time in every week for good, clear communication.  Put phones aside and look at each other and listen to what your wife is saying.  

Find out what is on her heart, what she is concerned about out.

Refer back to discussions you have had; 'I was thinking about what you said, I've also been praying about it.'

Shared Memories

Its so important to plan great memories together.

Holidays, camping trips, meals out, concerts, having friends over.

All these things create special and lasting memories.

My wife and I recently got an allotment 10 minutes from our house.  Its been hard work but we already have some lovely shared memories.  What do you have planned this year to share amazing memories?  

Elevation

The Bible calls us to lead but not dominate.

Matthew Hendry famously said: “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

We need to build our wives up by our gratitude and our words of appreciation and kindness.

Our wives need to be embraced, but they also want the dishwasher emptied, the potatoes peeled, and the kids bathed.

Are we lightening our wives load each day? Or do we add to her burden by our laziness, ill discipline and lack of engagement.

Monday Night Football needs to wait until after you've loaded the dishwasher and put the kids to bed.  

We are called to build up not bring down.

Cultivating Friendship

We need to cultivate friendship in our marriage.

If we believe 'time is the currency of relationships', this will take time and effort.

Often loving and liking our wives can be quite different and friendship grows and develops over many years.

My wife and I are quite different, we like different things.

Marital friendship is about more than going to concerts together, its about the deep oneness that develops as two people journey together towards a shared destination.

As Tim Keller says:

‘What then is marriage for? It is helping each other to become our future glory selves, the new creation that God will eventually make us. The common horizon husband and wife look toward the Throne, and the holy, spotless, and blameless nature we will have. I can think of no more powerful common horizon than that, and that is why putting a Christian friendship at the heart of a marriage relationship can lift it to the level that no other vision for marriage approaches.’ Tom Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.

Your marriage is worth fighting for.

You might feel you are in the wilderness at the moment.  You may feel disappointed having had great expectations.  But grace can redeem the darkest situation.  

Bring Christ into your marriage.  Love like Jesus.  Let Him guide you away from the icebergs.  Marriage can be tough, dying to self always is.  But loving your wife well is one of the greatest models of gospel living in a sinful world.  It shows that love is not about us, we love because we have first been loved.  Your marriage can be a model of grace.  What better legacy to leave for your children.

Growing up Scratchy - Living with Eczema

For the last 40 years I have lived with a fairly low profile but very high impact disease - eczema.  It's difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't have eczema just how much it affects your life.  Perhaps the best way of explaining what eczema feels like is to explain that it comes from the Greek word 'ekzein' which means 'to boil'.  Eczema at its worst feels like your skin is on fire.  Incredibly 1 in 5 children and 1 in 12 adults in the UK suffer from eczema.  There is loads of different information about the different types of eczema here.

Eczema is a 'non-disease.'  It's not high profile or life threatening so the medical response is patchy and poorly resourced.  I may be paranoid but I can't help feeling that some of the doctors I have seen seem to imply that I could be doing a lot more to help myself.  A recent consultant gave me the third degree for missing my patch tests (we were on holiday at the time).  While this is my own experience our son Alasdair has a very supportive GP and dermatologist at the moment.

I had fairly extreme eczema as a kid but have always suffered with bad eczema on my hands as an adult.  At best it can be irritating but at worst it can be debilitating and can make work complicated.  Last year my hands become infected 5-6 times over the summer and autumn.  Large blisters appeared on my hands and my fingers became infected.  I lost 3 nails on my right hand with the infection and was on non-stop anti-biotics for months.  The result?  After about 25 years away from dermatology I am back on their books. 

The smell of cold tar and the familiar names of dermovate, betnovate and eumovate are part and parcel of the Dermatology Dept at Lauriston and it feels like I've never been away.  There is an almost Victorian feel to the Dermatology Department with a complete absence of any high tech equipment.  The Victorian feel is backed up by the patriarchal system of male doctors giving instructions to an army of female auxiliaries who fetch and carry files and take blood samples from willing victims.  My first visit back to dressings after nearly 25 years away involved red paint being dabbed on my cuts, cold tar smeared on my hands and walking out with mickey mouse gloves.  I had some strange looks as I sipped coffee in the Elephant House before going in to the National Library!

Last Saturday we attended our first family weekend with Eczema Outreach Scotland.  It was great to meet other parents affected by eczema and hear some fairly familiar stories.  The event was in the Howden Park Centre in Livingston and while our boys politely declined the dance workshop they had a great time at the arts and crafts (no. 4 son Ali was a bit scratchy and shy).

As with so many inspirational charities, Eczema Outreach Scotland, was set up by one mother frustrated with how little support there was for families affected my eczema.  The founder is called Magali Speight (pictured below with Kirsteen) whose daughter suffers from eczema.  Magali proves what one person can do with energy and vision.  After only one year the organisation has around 150 families who have received their welcome pack and attended their growing number of events.

Those with kids who have eczema are affected in all sort of ways - from sleep deprivation, food allergies, to endless hospital appointments and the usual round of comments in the supermarket as you explain that your son (or daughter) isn't a burns victim.  Most of us have experienced the frustrations of a less than zealous medical response.  I remember sitting in a consultants office with our 2nd son Calum around 7 years ago.  His face was red raw with weeping sores and he was screaming in pain night after night.  Despite this the consultant said there was nothing else he could do for us.  Not for the last time we walked out of a medical appointment feeling unsupported and very alone. 

Of our 4 boys 3 have eczema with little Alasdair (centre below) being by far the worst.  When we tell people that he has hardly slept all night for the last 3 years, people think we are exaggerating.  He can go through phases when after 2-3 hours of sleep he can be unsettled for the rest of the night.  At times I've gone in to work on 3-4 hours of fitful sleep.  Talking to some other fathers at the event last week, sleep deprivation comes up the most challenging issue.  Some spoke of being in medical jobs where a mistake could lead to disastrous consequences and found little support from their employer.

Is there hope?  Yes there is.  Kids can get better - there is always hope they can grow out of it.  Calum (10), despite having extreme food allergies has almost outgrown eczema apart from the soles of his feet.

Family is a huge help.  James (13) has eczema so has an incredible bond with Ali.  Often he will help him calm down when he is in a scratching fit. Use extended family to get a break, have a meal and have a good sleep!

As a couple it is important to work as a team.  If both of us are having a sleepless night it can be horrendous.  Better that at least one sleeps and the other tries to calm down the scratchy kid or that we take 2 hourly shifts.  All the couples I have spoken to say that having a child with eczema can have a significant impact on your marriage and family life.  Acknowledging this and talking about it can be first step to seeking more support.  If possible get other family involved so that even once a month you can have a full nights sleep.

Organisations like Eczema Outreach Scotland are excellent.  Bringing families together for mutual support is such a help and even though it doesn't solve the problem, at least people feel less alone as they struggle through. 

Assertiveness can help.  Some GP's don't routinely refer eczema sufferers to dermatologists.  If you are struggling, insist on a referral and keep fighting until you get one.  Once you see a specialist you will hopefully remain in the system until things are a little better.

Lastly, and most importantly for us, faith is a huge element of our life with eczema.  We believe in a God who hears and answers prayer and in a Saviour who knew what it was like to suffer.  We don't believe that suffering is meaningless but we believe that 'for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose' Romans 8 v 28. 

The Psalms are also a great comfort to us - in them we find a great reality and comfort.  Let me leave you with one of my favourites; 'You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.  You will increase my greatness and comfort me again Psalms 71 v 20, 21.