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“R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Just a Little Bit Will Go a Long Way”

Ashley Goulder
04/10/11

I am an abundantly blessed lady, and I know it. I have a wonderful, godly husband who leads his entire family by his own righteous example, and I honestly pray regularly that my daughters can find men of such integrity to marry. My man truly is worthy of the respect I give him, and I freely and openly praise him no matter who is around to hear.

But that hasn’t always been the case.

 When I was first engaged to this godly man I had a hard time showing the proper respect to him. I had this fear that if I submitted or praised him too heavily he would get a big ego and begin to lord over me and treat me as a doormat. He has no history of that type of behavior, but I somehow convinced myself that if a wife gave an inch the husband would walk all over her, and I wasn’t going to stand for it. To worsen the situation, I had surrounded myself with other women who apparently had the same fear. These women and I would constantly berate our husbands and make “just joking” insults about how foolish our men could be. The negative comments would breed further negative opinions. The more I talked about his negative qualities the more visible they became to me.

But as a Christian I also knew and couldn’t escape the guidelines for a wife in Ephesians: “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (5:22) and the real gut wrencher for me, “let the wife see that she respectsher husband” (5:33). I knew I wasn’t respecting Nick by sharing my negative feelings about him, especially since those negative feelings were often exaggerated for the sake of an all-girl’s pity party. I was just trying to prove to the others that I was just like them: an old cantankerous married woman who now had the “right” to complain about the man she married. It was almost like a competition and an addiction until I realized that what I was saying was having an obvious impact on others’ opinion of him, and it took some serious “renewing of my mind” with scripture and prayer to break my sinful habit.

Whatever a wife says about her own husband, others will often take as the truth. She lives with the man and knows him better than anyone else, right? So when she says he is inconsiderate, lazy, and ungrateful, often people will start to believe it. Likewise, if she says he is gracious, godly, and self-sacrificing, people will believe it too. I tested this personally, and I found that when I praised Nick, even if I didn’t feel he deserved it at the time, other people began to notice and respect him more. Other women began to inquire, “How did you win such a good man?” And just because I spoke kindly and positively about my man, he had become the greatest man, and I, the luckiest woman in the room.

Here’s the really great part. At first I was praising him even if I didn’t honestly feel that way about him, but the more I praised and bragged about Nick, the more he strove to meet and exceed my expectations. The more I emphasized his strengths, the stronger he became to me. Over time I honestly had greater respect for him than when we first had started dating. He has always been a good guy, but now, to me he is exceptional! And because I respect him as Ephesians 5:33 teaches, I have no difficulty following his lead as Ephesians 5:22 teaches.

So now I indeed pray my daughters can find men of godly character like their Daddy, but I pray also that they can submit and respect their husbands like God’s word instructs. It is in obedience to God’s word that they will be abundantly blessed in their marriages, homes, families and lives. I am living proof of that fact. Ω