A New Kind of Respect

I have a new found respect for what the head of the household has to deal with. Eric used to always say that I just did not get it...the stress and weight of responsibility. I had responsibility: schooling, keeping the house clean, raising kiddos, laundry, helping Eric with his business, ministering to others, etc. But, my load was light compared to what Eric was dealing with. And, now I know full well.
A couple of years ago we went to a Love and Respect Seminar and it changed our marriage for the good. I learned how to show respect to Eric and in return his love for me grew and grew. We saw the benefits of this biblical concept and ended up facilitating quite a few groups over the past few years. Here is the idea...God calls a woman to respect her husband and he calls a man to love his wife. Heard this before? Dr. Emerson Eggrichs states that God is not redundant. He asks a woman to respect her husband because He knows that she will always love him...she will always fix him dinner even when she is upset by a decision he has made. Likewise, God calls the husband to love his wife knowing that he respects her as a person naturally but loving his wife is a much harder task.
I have no regrets....Eric and I had a wonderful marriage and life together. I do wish we had been challenged in this area earlier on in our marriage and I also wish that I had taken more time to show him how much I appreciated all that he did for me.
That is why I now respect his ability to keep everything going around here. He was an excellent manager and I pale in comparison. Obviously the Lord is using this time to develop skills and abilities that had been taken care of for me over the past twenty years.
My gripe? Could I have less to deal with at one time? With a big smile on my face I think of all the things that are going "wrong" right now...my laptop crashes leaving me with a month's worth of missing info, we have rats eating our chicken's eggs, a vehicle that failed its smog test. Those are just the immediate things I need to deal with. Maybe the hardest part of this new life of mine is the never ending things that arise and challenge me to not overreact but take it on.
I did learn how to hook up a new wireless network and an external hard drive to back up all my info. This was a challenge that I would not have normally needed to deal with...Eric would have done it. I even figured out how to retrieve my old data (sadly, I did not back up the last month's worth of stuff so I have to re-input all my finances and so on...ugh!).
My daily prayer right now is that God would get me through each new problem that arises with a little less frustration then the last....and that He would allow me the priviledge to be married again. See, I believe that men were uniquely created to deal with the pressures of life. A husband who has an encouraging help mate by his side is going to succeed in God's eyes. This doesn't mean that a woman can't do it (obviously I am although not well) but the ideal is for a man and woman to do it together. And, since I have walked a mile in his shoes I will know how to respect him all the more and know how to ease the pressure.
So, ladies, take the time to appreciate all that your husband does for you. Put everything down and with a smile on your face greet him when he comes home from work. Don't complain or resist when he wants to be intimate. Make his favorite meal. Ask if there is any job that you can do to ease his load. Thank him. You will not regret it!
~Lazyd