Submission….ohhh…that word. Never been a word that I really have fully understood when it comes to marriage and never I word I like to use around Christopher…sure don’t want to give him any ideas! We have been married for 9 years and dated since we were 16 and by no means has it been an easy road. When I married him I was in love with him but I think I was in love with the idea of marriage. After dating that long marriage was the next step and I think I pestered the “buhjesus”( not really a word but I use it a lot)  out of him until he thought if I ask her to marry me she will be quiet. Six weeks after we got married I got pregnant with our first child so our newlywed days were over pretty quick. Pierce came 5 weeks early so we had a baby within the first 11 months of our newlywed bliss.  

  

I have always loved Christopher but it wasn’t until I saw how much he was in love with God that I became even more in love with him. Don’t get me wrong he still drives me crazy. I think God designed men to do that to their wives. When I think of submission I kind of think of being a servant or doing anything they tell you to when they tell you to do it….Well I have been reading in Ephesians and trying to get a better understanding of what the bible really is trying to say to couples about submission.   Ephesians 5:21-28  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her  to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

After reading this passage I think submission means following my husband’s lead and serving him out of love, the kind of love that Christ has for his church. The kind of love that develops in a relationship with time and trust. My husband is to submit himself to me just like he is to submit himself to the church. Submission means putting God and each other first. Submission is not about doing whatever your husband tells you to do, it is about a mutual love and respect we should have for each other. Reading God’s word makes things in life so much clearer if we simply try to listen to what he is trying to say to us. 

Love and respect is all a couple really wants from each other and deserves from each other.

I always do a lot of writing and I read a lot of different blogs from a variety of people from a lot of different backgrounds. I always find it refreshing to know that other people around me have the same daily struggles that I have. I was talking to a friend Sunday at church about a blog I read and I told her I thought about doing one myself and she responded go for it…so here it goes!

You might wonder why I said we live in a fish bowl…well….being the youth ministers family it always seems everyone is watching as soon as we walk into the door of the church and everywhere we go for that matter. I grew up in a church were the ministers family always seemed to have it “all together”…and once my family became the ministers family I thought we were supposed to have it “all together”…haha..boy was I wrong. Anyone that knows me knows we do not have it all together and guess what I have finally realized it is alright. If you see me  pinching Palmer on his shoulder during church it is because he is begging for communion, if you see me talking thru my teeth at Pierce it is because he is whining about something and if you see Piper with us it is because I made her leave her precious Gaga’s house to be with us.

My only quiet time is during my lunch break which I come home to a quiet house most days and I have my conversations with God about regrouping my life so I like to call it. Today was one of them days at work that I wanted to hurt someone to be honest. My job at DSS is stressful at times and today was one of those days. Nothing was going like I thought it should. I came home in a foul mood at lunch. My devotion that is emailed to me daily had a couple of verses that spoke to me and I wanted to share. Philippians 2:4 “Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take others, too.”   The other verse was Acts 20:35 ^“ In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

Every day I am amazed at how God uses different people and situations to clear speak to us and remind us… Rebecca you crazy self centered person it isn’t about you.