Dear Daughters,
When I was dating Dad I was so excited when my birthday, Valentine’s Day, or Christmas came along because he always got me the greatest gifts. Once it was a beautiful piece of luggage (he knew I was soon to take a trip to California.) Another time it was a smaller piece of luggage matching the first, then a necklace…
Well, when we got married, all that gift giving stopped. I didn’t figure it out or ask about it at first, but over the months when the gifts had become rare I asked Dad why things had changed so much after we married. I was hurt and did not feel as loved anymore. No gift equals no love, right? Then the truth came out. His mom had been the gift-buyer while he had been single, now it was up to him and during his many hours of work he just never thought about it.
Did he love me any less? I don’t think so, but in my heart it felt as if love was waning.
The reason for the lack of gifts was simple enough, but that knowledge of why didn’t take care of my hurt and feeling of rejection. I had some expectations from Dad and they weren’t being fulfilled the way I thought they should be. Ann Voskamp has so wisely said Expectations kill relationships.
When we expect our husbands to satisfy us, make us happy, fill the emptiness in our souls, we are setting ourselves up for a disastrous marriage. All humans are leaky buckets, sieve-like vessels, holey jars – however you want to say it. We all run out of love quickly and completely on our own. We simply cannot fill another’s soul with our own love, and when we expect our husbands to fill our souls with their love it’s just not going to work.
In Love and War John Eldredge says it so well:
The human heart has an infinite capacity for happiness and an unending need for love, because it is created for an infinite God who is unending love. The desperate turn is when we bring the aching abyss of our hearts to one another with the hope, the plea, `Make me happy. Fill this ache.’ And often out of love we do try to make one another happy, and then we wonder why it never lasts.
Our husbands are not capable of giving us the love that our hearts and souls desire, and we’ll be terribly disappointed if we insist they try. Every woman has an insatiable need for relationship. Every man aches for affirmation, to know that he has what it takes to make a relationship work. There is an intense fear of failure in all of us when we rely on ourselves for the love we need to make a marriage work.
I have talked to many women about marriage and they all have said that they are, in one way or another, disappointed with their marriage. It’s ok to admit that. Most likely your husband is disappointed as well. There’s no way that we can possibly be enough for each other.
Early in our marriage I complained about how Dad did things, I tried to change him to be more like me, I gave guilt trips. Nothing worked even though I was an amazingly proficient fault finder and constant corrector. One day he finally said to me “I’m never good enough, am I? You’re just never satisfied.” And it was true. I never could be satisfied because I was looking to him to make me happy and he was not capable of doing that. As a young 20-something, what did I know about love? Not much.
In time I learned that the greatest gift you can give your husband and your marriage is to develop a real relationship with Jesus Christ. You need to have someone to turn to when you’re hurt. You need comfort and understanding for the healing of your own brokenness. And you need that Person to be available 24 hours a day. Your husband can’t do all that for you, nor can you do all that for him. In Psalm 62:1 David says: “My soul finds rest in God alone.”
God is the deepest, truest love that you are longing for and He shows you in so many ways that He loves you. You can see it in the beauty of creation, the fresh alfalfa fields, a beautiful sunset, snowflakes melting on your tongue, the warm sunshine on your face, the songs of birds and the ears to hear them.
The most important prayer you can ever pray is to simply say: “God, open my eyes to your love. Draw my heart to you, and teach me to love like You love.”
We are all leaky buckets looking for a waterfall that never ends. And that waterfall is Jesus Christ, the Living Water. David Wilcox sings about it so vividly in his song Break in the Cup.
We cannot trade empty for empty
We must go to the waterfall
For there’s a break in the cup that holds love…
Inside us all.
When I depend on God’s love to fill me up, (and I need to be filled again every morning) I can love Dad much better because I don’t feel the need to change or control him.
You too, will find so much more joy in your marriage once you stop looking to your husband to make you happy and instead look to your Creator, the maker of your soul.
Love, Mom
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPeVIuRjUi4
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