Today is a guest post from Kela (fellow 516 gal).  Love her.  Enjoy.

How selfish am I? That is a question that I’ve asked myself periodically in my marriage. I’d been withholding my love from my husband and not even known it.

You may ask, “Just how have you been selfish and withholding your love?” Some of the answer may be obvious…sex; but other things weren’t so obvious at first glance. I had to sit there and stare to see it at first.

It’s true that I am a woman with thoughts, emotions and feelings but God brought me to the realization that I’m to put those things aside or throw them away if I am not obedient to His Word first. The Scripture passage that He used to bring it to light was Ephesians 5:24, “Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”

Yeah, yeah. I’ve skimmed that verse dozens of times. It was in the heat of feeling wounded that “In everything” was laid in my lap. What was I going to do with that? God, please. (Imagine my head and eyes rolling at this point). Uh huh, I went there with Him.

“Do you know what he just said to me?”, I said to my Daddy (Abba Father). His response…”I know full well what he said to you. He doesn’t even know that he hurt you. You just read My Word and you have a choice to make. Either you can sit there and sulk and be disobedient or you can go and grab your husband and apologize for having a bad attitude toward him. I’m your rewarder when you’re obedient. Your goal is to first please me. Love him like I love him (and you for that matter).”

WHOA! I couldn’t argue with that (nor did I want to). At that point I realized that selfishness had played a major role in my attitude toward my husband. It was all about me and how my needs weren’t being met, how he was being insensitive to me, how I’m not the one at fault in this.

Two words; “IN EVERYTHING” transformed the way I thought about my response to my husband. There were and are continually choices to be made in handling situations: be obedient to God’s Word and He will reward me. My attitude is not to be contingent on my husband’s obedience to God’s Word.

Kela is truly a Daddy’s girl (Abba Father). Has been for almost 15 years now. She has a major crush on her best friend and husband, Brian for over 15 years. She is the mother and homeschooler of six wild and crazy kids (but they do know how to act in public). First on her list of things to do every morning is to brew a cup of delicious coffee and spend time with God She and her husband have a heart for helping and enriching the marriages of those around them by being mentors.
She can be found at Pursuing What is Excellent writing about marriage, children and whatever else God is breathing into her to pour out to others.

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The lovely and talented  Lisa-Jo  (The Gypsy Mama) offered to write a post for me during my whatever-the-heck-aches-and-pains-headache-thing I have going on.  She’s great.  Here it is, enjoy…

When my husband grabs our sons amidst shrieks of delight and tackles them with love and outlandish wrestling maneuvers en route to bed my heart wants to jump out of my body and do the happy dance.

He is their hero. I love that they get that. But he was mine first, even if it took me a while to figure that out.

My husband is not tall. He is, however, dark and handsome. But that’s where his resemblance to the Prince Charming of my favorite books and movies ends. It’s not that I expected him to swashbuckle, ride a horse or sport a suit of armor.  My newly-married Prince Charming expectations were more subtle than that.

It’s taken me years to unravel and escape them.

I expected that a husband would intuitively know what I was thinking without needing to be told. I sulked when he couldn’t figure out what I wanted him to do and then sulked some more when he didn’t understand why I was sulking. I resented his inability to understand my whims. And no matter what his own day was like, I expected he would arrive home when the mood occurred to me just in time to sweep me off my feet with flowers and candlelight.

I did not expect all the extra dirty socks and dishes.

Because I had unwittingly bought what the movies were selling – silver screen romantic perfection wrapped up in the ability to please every unspoken desire in a neat 120 minute package – I was disappointed. I was also blind to the fact that I had reduced my husband to a means for accomplishing my own ends; whether those were candlelight dinners or simply involved a thorough cleaning of the bathroom. Either way, my happily ever after was not going as smoothly as expected.

My wake up call came in the midst of a loud and familiar argument about his failure to understand me when he yelled, “Well if that’s what you wanted me to do, why didn’t you just SAY SO in the first place.”

“Because that’s NOT ROMANTIC!” I yelled back.

And there it was staring me in the face. The choice. To be real or to be movie grade mysterious. The choice to be direct or to manipulate. The choice to come down from my tower, stop feigning distress, and meet him as an equal participant in our story. Or to make us both unhappy.

Slowly, grudgingly, I chose to share. I opened up my stash of secret wishes and spelled them out for him. And under his scrutiny, they did not melt. No, in his hands they became real. Suddenly, he didn’t have to imagine what I was thinking or feeling, what I hoped about our future or wanted him to say to me when I was sad. He had a roadmap. And so he could come to my rescue so much quicker and more efficiently than before.

It embarrassed me at first to be so open and direct. It made me feel vulnerable. But all I lost in the process was some of the weight of my pride – and let’s face it, who can’t stand to lose a few of those pounds. Don’t let the books put one over on you, happily ever after is a heck of a lot of work. And marriage is the equivalent of The Shred for getting your faith in shape.

But when you do the work you wake up one day and find despite (or perhaps because of) the aches and pains that the man you married has grown into the man who makes your heart want to do the happy dance. He understands you because you worked hard to let him. He cherishes you because you’ve shared how much that matters. He unpacks the dishwasher because he knows it’s your least favorite chore. And right there, that’s what I now recognize as romance. And I discovered that it’s only when you’re not demanding it, that you find it staring you right in the face.

Lisa-Jo is South African by birth and American by marriage. She writes about life lived in between countries, callings and kids at www.thegypsymama.com. She and her husband have two young sons who color their lives and complicate their frequent travel.  You can follow her on Twitter @thegypsymama and subscribe to her blog here.

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It is so weird to have posted something so vulnerable.

I feel like you all have now glimpsed behind the flesh wall into the soul wound…and it is humbling.  However, it is good…

Because it is real.

And I know I’m not the only one.

Since the time of when I first wrote the “ick” post, some things have changed.  I realized that I could not try harder, do better, make myself feel differently than I did.  I was completely and utterly at the mercy of a God who is the only one who can restore what the locusts have eaten.

It is when I said, “I can’t do it” that He did.  It is when I gave in, threw in the towel, and determined to let God into my heart and soul to do the surgery work while I was knocked out…’cause knocked out I was!

I won’t go into details, but I will say that the bondage I was in is no more.

Is everything perfect?  No.  Is everything much much better and more beautiful?  Yes.  God is that good, that loving, and that caring…He does care about intimacy.  Union.  Marriage.  Oneness.

You are not beyond redemption.  You do not have to live with the consequences of sin forever.  He restores.  He gives life to the dead.

If you are struggling with intimacy, please please please do not not give up…just give in.  Give in to God and let Him heal you from the inside out.  Fight for your marriage.  Your husband needs you, and you need him.  Don’t turn cold on him, let the anger go to God in a heart cry.  You are not alone in this struggle.

And you can be healed.

He promises.

“You did it: you changed wild lament
into whirling dance;
You ripped off my black mourning band
and decked me with wildflowers.
I’m about to burst with song;
I can’t keep quiet about you.
God, my God,
I can’t thank you enough.”  Psalm 30:11,12

Recommended Resources:

Intimate issues, Linda Dillow

Intended for Pleasure, Ed Wheat

Click here and join me on this life journey.

The first thing that came to my mind is 1 Corinthians 10:12- “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” The enemy loves to destroy us and marriage is one of his favorite targets. I want to remain always humbly thankful to and dependent on God for my marriage and not my own wisdom or goodness. With this in mind, I also believe that God has given us wisdom principles for marriage.

1.) There is a good and right jealousy in marriage. In marriage, we should follow God’s example of His being very jealous of us. Dave and I right from the start knew that we wanted to be each other’s only “best friend” of the opposite sex. I won’t discuss intimate issues with any other man and he won’t with any other woman. We stay far away from traps of getting emotionally involved with others. Also, we won’t be alone with other men/women. When Dave needs to meet with women, I am there or someone else is. These are just safeguards as we strive to “put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3) nor make any “opportunity for the flesh” (Gal 5:13).

2.) We choose to stay best friends. We have “dates” still. Usually this means for us to go out for lunch (we love “buy one, get one free” coupons) and then do errands together. We know each others’ wounds and fears and “core lies” and try to speak truth and be kind to each other.

3.) I choose to respect and show respect to Dave. I believe all men struggle with the question: “Am I enough” and know they aren’t. I try to let Dave know that “You are enough for me.” To do this I must continually not try to expect Dave to be God for me (who will provide for all my needs), nor even another woman (who knows how I’m feeling without me having to say much.)

4.) Think and act rightly about sex. I do not know of a husband who strayed from a wife who warmly receives him emotionally and sexually. I am reading a great book, “What’s He Really Thinking” by Paula Rinehart and today I read “Having your support and advocacy is what a man feels most acutely as respect…. (also) sex translates directly into respect.”

A little while ago, I saw Dr. Laura promoting her book “The Care and Feeding of Husbands” and she boiled her suggestions into 3 tips: “Tell him you respect him, tell him you appreciate him, and have sex with him.” I think she is a wise wife.

Hope this is helpful!

*Update* Addundum Added from Cathy:

I do agree that a man’s unfaithfulness is not always the woman’s fault.  Some men do have such ego problems and sexual addictions that are not related to his wife’s failure at all.   I think of pornography and the control that has on some men who have wonderful wives.   In her study, Barbara Mouser talked about men who get power often want more women (think of a former president and many other powerful men) I agree that sometime it is just total sin and evil involved on the man’s part.

You can read my Lady of Wisdom interview with Cathy here.

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Today’s post is from Sarah Markley, owner of the blog The Best Days of My Life.  She would love to sit across from you and tell you her story in person, but for now, she’ll settle for her blog as a place to meet and get to know one another.

My affair began because I was a crazy emotional mess.

What led me down the road to eventually sleeping with someone else’s husband in the beginning was the fact that I was unable (and unwilling) to find a valid outlet for my emotions.   My husband was “over it” and there was someone else who was willing to listen.

Simply that. That’s how it begins. Or at least it did with me.

It wasn’t my husband’s fault.

It was ultimately mine.

However I was living in a marriage with diseased habits where my husband was willing to let another man emotionally fill what he should have been his responsibility.

And now here are all the “shoulds”:

We should have created routines and rules for talking things out when I was feeling depressed or unable to control my emotional instability.

If my husband wasn’t willing to listen to me, I should have poured my heart out to God.

I should have begged to go to counseling so that we could find ways to love each other better in the midst of my emotions.

I should have been aware enough to find someone to help us.

But instead, I turned to someone else. And I poured out myself, my heart and eventually my body to another man. One that wasn’t mine.

And we became inextricably entangled.

It’s been 6 years since that affair ended. Six years of healing, miracles and restoration. My husband and I have created new methods for working through my emotions, I’ve recommitted my heart to both him and to God, and frankly, my emotional swings are not nearly what they used to be.

My advice to women: Avoid becoming attached emotionally to another man. It won’t just stop there. Or at least, you won’t want it to. Instead, entangle yourself with Christ.

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Over the last three days you have heard from women who have put themselves and their sin out there for you to read, explore and critique.  My hope is that someone out there will be helped by these stories and that marriages will be stronger as a result.

My goal for next week is to have some uplifting, wise older women who have gone through the ups and downs of marriage faithfully share their wisdom with us all.

Let’s pray for one another in love, grace, and truth.

Avoiding Affairs, Part 1 -I Married The Man I Had An Affair With

Avoiding Affairs, Part 2 -”How Could She Do That?!”

I’m hearing those words quite a bit lately…from Christian women.

Serena, Amber, and Sarah have been courageous enough to share their fall into affairs, and I am grateful for what we can all learn from their stories.

Friends, I know that affairs can be avoided if we guard our hearts and our minds…if we set boundaries and stay before the Lord.

If you are struggling with thoughts of another man, whether real or imaginary (movies, books), or you’re just not contented with your husband, please read my series, “Ex Prep.” I wrote the series in response to my own fears of not being able to control my emotions or my self if.   Below are the links:

Ex Prep – What Would You Do If An Ex Called?

Ex Prep, Part 1 – Who Does Your Heart Belong To?

Ex Prep, Part 2 – One Woman’s Story (Guest Post)

Ex Prep, Part 3 – Your Loyalty & Your Heart

Ex Prep, Part 4 – I Can’t Help Who I Love

Ex Prep, Part 5 – How Do I Know I’m Married To The Right Person?

Ex Prep, Part 6 – It’s Not A Mistake Who Your Spouse Is

Ex Prep, Part 7 – Something Greater

I also encourage you to read through my Core Lies series – so many of us operate out of the lies we believe and we don’t even know it.  Figuring out and dealing with my core lies has been a tremendous help for me in my spiritual and emotional maturity.

Breaking Free From Your Core Lies

Remember, we have a God who will help us.  We are not alone in the battle.

“In order for any affair to happen, a man and a woman must be alone at some point.  Don’t be alone with another man or woman and don’t engage in deep conversation with another man/woman and I guarantee you won’t have an affair, whether emotional or physical.” My man’s two cents