Spiritual maturity and leadership roles in marriage

Grab your coffee - or your smoothie since it's beautiful and sunny today - I've got a soap box to climb on!

After a very long hiatus from reading novels of any kind, I checked out a "Christian romance" from the library. I was in the mood for some light reading, and thought it might be fun to read. Whoa!! Total reality check. That thing - with all due respect to the good heart and intent of the author - was so full of pat answers, easy resolution to difficult problems, Bible verse postage notes, and happy ever after than I was reeling when I finished it.

My first response was a desire to write a book about my love story with Jeff. Something real. Something concrete. Something edifying that would demonstrate reality in romance. My second thought was that I had a good idea and that perhaps I should write a series called "True Love Stories: because truth is better than fiction." My third thought was that I have three children, ages 8, 7, and 3 - and now is not the time to write a book, let alone start a publishing company in order to get this series into print.

Here's the problem, and it's beyond Christian fiction - trust me! We have set up such unrealistic expectations for what Christian marriage looks like, that we don't know a great thing when it's staring us in the face. I have so many thoughts on this that I'm going to have to list them point by point, in no particular order:

1. We have done a huge disservice to Christian young people by only emphasizing that to be "equally yoked" means to marry another Christian. So many singles think, "Well he/she is a Christian, so it must be o.k. for me to pursue a relationship." What about calling, and spiritual maturity, and similar desires for ministry, life, family? Young people are getting MARRIED, for goodness sake, based on these warm romantic feelings and the fact that the person they fell in love with is willing to occupy a pew on Sunday at church.

2. Our views of the husband as the spiritual leader and the wife as the submissive partner are so messed up that we don't know which way is up. I want to say for the record, that Jeff Roth is 100% spiritually strong in our marriage. He is everything I ever wanted, and more than I knew to ask for. He is intense in his pursuit of God. He and I have deep spiritual conversations. By the example of his life, he is demonstrating a passion for God and a lifestyle of generosity and service. His kids know it and I know it. AND, he very rarely leads any family devotions, and he and I seldom pray together.

So often I hear women bemoan the fact that their husbands are not spiritual leaders - and that's possibly true, look at point number one. What happens to a woman who wants to seek the LORD wholeheartedly only to find the pew sitter she married isn't interested in a lifelong pursuit of God?! It's possible that the reason she senses a lack of spiritual leadership is because there is none. (in which case I believe a course of action is to pray for God to change his heart, while living as a loving and supportive wife. At all costs, avoid having a critical spirit, it will never draw a spiritually immature spouse to the Lord.)

But what if the man she married does love God, and does seek Him, but doesn't "lead" in the way she expects? What if he worships in creation and takes his family hiking every weekend - because that's where he senses most strongly the presence of God? What if he loves God through service and pours himself out on behalf of his family, while never once leading a devotional time? What if he is a fantastic man of God, but because his wife is looking for devotions and prayer times, she misses it? And what if in missing it she's nagging him to do it the way she thinks he should? (I know none of my readers do that, just hypothetically speaking, what if) And what if in being nagged he receives the message that he's not good enough? And what if in facing perceived failure he withdraws and quits trying? And what if in withdrawing he wounds his wife who feels unloved? I know I'm drawing a crazy, unrealistic example here - but what if a marriage fails because of wrong expectations on spiritual leadership in marriage?!! And we, the church, and the authors of pat answers and happy ever after must take the blame for portraying something that simply is not truth. (told you it was a soap box!)

3. We must be teaching young people how to hear the voice of God in every area of their lives, so that when romance hits and their hormones go haywire they might still have a chance to think rationally, seek God, and obey even if it goes against all the electrical feelings going up and down their arm when they happen to bump the, love at first sight, man of their dreams.

4. Romance novels - whether Christian or not - have the potential to create unrealistic expectations both before and after we're married. If you happen to love these books, please take these next comments with a grain of salt and know that I am biased because of how books impact me - but please, pray about it. I think there might be more truth here than we know. I think romance books are female pornography. Where men are aroused by what they see, women are aroused by what they feel. And if the pornography of the eyes gives men a dissatisfaction with the real woman in their life, I believe the pornography of emotions gives women the same dissatisfaction. We come to expect a knight in shining armor who makes us feel all warm inside and whose passion and pursuit of life brings out the best in us and gives us a life of fulfillment, crazy passionate love, and all things beautiful. We want real life to evoke the same kind of emotions that the novel evokes, and we find ourselves disappointed. It trades contentment for make-believe, and threatens our enjoyment of the real. If you are a person who is always buried in a book, may I suggest a fast from books for a specified amount of time (like 40 days) so that you can allow your brain to clear and see if there may be some dissatisfaction in your life that you are hiding from?

5. Back to the thoughts of submission and headship - may I just say that I think we have completely missed the mark on this? For a husband to say, "You have to do what I want because I'm the husband," is not loving his wife as Christ loves the church. And for a wife to say, "He's not leading our family the way I want him to," fails to respect what he does have to offer. The role of the husband is to serve and love his wife and so expose and bring out her strength and beauty. The role of a wife is to serve and love her husband and so confirm and reveal his strength and manhood. We are supposed to be a team - our weaknesses protected by the other, and our strengths exposed by the other.

May God bless your journey on relationships, whether single or married, and may you truly learn to lean into God and listen to His Holy Spirit guiding and giving you counsel and comfort in all areas of life.