Recently my brother sent me a picture of Jackson, my 3-year-old nephew, photocopying one of his storybooks. My brother realized the reason he was doing this was because he had seen my brother making photocopies from one of his own books. Children watch and copy.
My friend, Tim, knows the patterns he lives out will be the standard his daughters will grow to expect from the future men in their lives. This is my favorite part about this post. As I think about my future sons, or even my friends’ children who are watching me, I hope the model of how I treat and speak about others is something worthy of being copied.
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When I talk to Chris, my wife, I am doing more than transmitting information from me to her. Little ears perk up from behind the couch and catch every word. My words carry weight. One day, my daughters will find them acceptable or unacceptable from the boys they date and the men they marry. “My dad never talked like that to me,” they will say. At least that’s what I want them to say.
When I talk to Chris, I model for them what a loving husband sounds like. Sometimes the sound stings.
When I think about the diminishing of God’s intended brilliance in men—as fathers, husbands, workers, adventurers, lovers, life-poets, and the sacrificial lambs for their wives—I cannot hold back the shame. How I’ve blown it again and again.
I remember being alone in the truck one day during my second year of marriage and wondering out loud, “What am I doing?” I doubted my decision to marry. I doubted my ability to be what I already thought I was: a good man. I was arrogant and delusional. If beauty existed in marriage, I couldn’t find it.
When things were good, early on, they were great. When they were bad, they were downright ugly.
But now, Chris and I have waded into new waters—knee deep in our twelfth year. We continue to chase dreams and through it all, Chris and I must continue to communicate. It’s the glue to our marriage.
How To Talk To A Woman
I’m a talker. My words, however, do not always bring joy. Often, because I can wield them with pith and thrift, I bash and claw over those I love most.
Each Sunday our church sets the Communion table and then offers the wafer and the wine. We’re given time to reflect on the message and encouraged to search our souls for unconfessed wrongs.
God has taught me the power of confession through this time of Communion and reflection. I may bash and claw, but I know that I do it. I’m aware. After awareness, however, I must climb my steepest relational hill: confession. It must move from my lips first. It must pull in my love and whisper to her. This is the hardest thing a man can do.
When I hear the music play, soft and ethereal in the background, I run to God. I no longer sit in my church chair but am transported to the foot of the cross. And there he sits mangled and disfigured. He gasps for breath. The sky looks like a dark vise, pressing the life out of him.
And there hangs the thief. I can hear him confess.
I love how Billy Graham frames Golgotha. He says on the day Christ died, he became every sinner. I look at Christ again and see someone else—a prostitute, a murderer, a rapist, an adulterer, a molester, a liar, a cheater, and an everyman sinner. No matter how heinous the sin, he took it all.
There I sit at church and atop Golgotha. I see him become my sin, and then the confession comes out of me like the water from his side. I pull Chris close and whisper, “Can we pray?”
She approves and grabs my hand. I pray and thank Christ for her and the girls. In her ear I ask God to forgive my words and my unkindness. She hears me ask for his strength as I struggle to follow his way.
We don’t always need to confess during Communion—we do have good weeks. We even have great weeks. But the hard weeks, the weeks in which my words crash into Chris and the kids, I know of nothing I’d rather do than run to Golgotha.
How To Love A Woman
One professor in graduate school told me an eye-opening story about his mentor. The mentor was offered his dream job at his dream school. But his wife didn’t feel they should move. She wanted to stay. The common response from many of my evangelical friends when I asked them how they’d react was, “Well, she should follow her husband.”
But the opposite is true.
My professor told how his mentor chose, instead of pulling the family-leader card, to nail himself to the tree and die. Paul exhorts all men to die in service to their wives.7 Loving my wife and children the way Christ loves the church sounds like beautiful talk. Sometimes I feel a burst of manliness quake inside me. But if I stop and step back, I find it’s not manliness at all. It’s a pitch of lies pushing up through my old flesh: You’re the man, make them listen, make them follow, make them, make them.
I’m far away from the doubting and confused Tim in the pickup. My girls inspire me. They breathe a life in me I never thought existed. Their love beckons my true manliness. It’s not in the making. It’s in the quieting. It’s in the caressing. It’s in the playing. It’s in the wooing. It’s in the singing. It’s in the storytelling. It’s in the whispering—the whispering upon Golgotha while holding Chris’s hand: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
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Thanks for the kind words, Charli! Definitely a challenge for us all, but one of utmost importance. And, I see you mentioned the Proverbs 31 Woman … you should see MJ’s comment below about our “Proverbs 32 Man” 🙂 I think you’ll like it.
Wow! I love this post so much! Growing up, I did not have a healthy relationship with my father (and mother). Even to this day, my dad chooses to belittle, shame, put down, discourage me and my siblings. This is so good and so important for the little ones because they really are watching and copying. Thanks for this post.
Dear Faith, thanks for sharing your story so openly. I think sometimes, and this is just my opinion, men act unaware. I know I am constantly reminding myself to be still, to be aware of how I’m acting and what I’m saying. If I’m not careful, I can trample, and I don’t want that. And obviously women need to be aware as well, but from my experience as a dude, I need to be submitted to Christ first, and then keep aware and not trample. Thanks for reading!
This looks like a fantastic book! Looking forward to its release. Hope I’m lucky enough to win a copy of it. Love Tim’s article here. Inspiring for sure.
God bless.
zack
Thanks, Zack! And hey, It’s already out 🙂 If you don’t win one, hop over to Amazon and give it a look: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Behind-Sun-Brilliance-Everyday/dp/1400205662?&ref_=custrec_signin_redirect_same_page
This was beautiful! Thank you for sharing 🙂 It’s refreshing (and sometimes a little scary) to hear or read about the real, get-your-hands-dirty side of marriage. I’m getting married in 5 weeks, and it’s already more work than I could have imagined to bring someone into my life and create something new. It’s good work though! Not always easy, but worth it.
Dear Pam, thanks for the kind words! And hey, just stop by my house sometime if you want to see marriage live and in real color. Ha. 🙂 Blessings to you in your coming wedding! That’s so exciting. Yes, it is all hard work, but it’s the most beautiful hard work you’ll ever be a part of. When kids hit the mix, the beauty rises and so does your blood pressure! You’ll love the journey.
Love this. I have a father who modeled love, respect, kindness, gentleness, sacrifice…and both my sister and I have grown up understanding and believing that our hearts are worthy of men with such character.
This is so true, not of just the men, but of us women as well, in the way we speak and react:
“My words carry weight. One day, my daughters will find them acceptable or unacceptable from the boys they date and the men they marry. “My dad never talked like that to me,” they will say. At least that’s what I want them to say.”
I remember reading an earlier post of his and really liking it, the Veneer book looks great!
Dear Rachel,
Thanks for reading! Kudos to your father! I hope some day my daughter will say that about me–that’s my goal. That, and to not let my little pixies dress me up like an American Girl doll 😉
If you pick up either book, drop a line and let me know how your thoughts!
LOVE THIS! Always looking for pictures of marriage that are bigger than guilt-free sex. Will be sharing this post with the Future Marriage University (FMU) community at https://www.facebook.com/FMUniversity!
OH, and here’s another post by Tim that blew me away: http://www.timothywillard.com/blog/2014/5/16/the-proverbs-32-man. What a HUGE CHALLENGE this was to me as a man. And it put in perspective how women must feel when they read Prov 31.
Dear MJ–Great line, “Always looking for pictures of marriage that are bigger than guilt-free sex.” Thanks so much for reading and sharing and following. Looking forward to interacting. 🙂
Beautiful! Sacrifice…selflessness…it’s something we all have to work on and it’s only by God’s grace that we can even come close to acting in love toward our loved ones and forgetting ourselves. Thanks for sharing this!
Dear Sarah, Yes, yes, yes! Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! I need it. I thirst for it, and your right, without it sacrificial love can seem so far away. Thanks for such a good reminder!
Wow, that was a beautiful post. I saw so much mutual submission from just the brief stories shared here. What a cool way to live.
Dear Lindsey, Thanks for sharing this! Submission to Christ = the key for me; it’s those times I find myself acting in pride and selfishness that show how unsubmitted I am and can be.
Brilliantly said. The concept of Pattern is intensely important. to me. It was exciting to hear it spoken about by someone else. I’ll be checking out your work. Thanks!
Dear Lynn, thanks for generous words. I agree with you 🙂 And let me know your thoughts on the book if you check it out.
There’s a part of me that rejects out of hand the idea that we don’t ‘need to confess every Sunday…we have good week.’
That seems completely unbiblical. I know for a fact that I can’t go an HOUR without sinning. His statement seems to infer that he can go a week without sinning, but I find that not only physically and mentally impossible but also unbiblical. I don’t know that that’s actually what he was saying. Maybe he simply meant that some days we don’t have to confess it all right there in church because God sees our hearts, and if we confess our sins he’ll forgive us. It’s not a Catholic view, just a forgiven-on-impact kind of thing.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the idea that we won’t have anything weighing on us because we had a ‘good week’ is preposterous to me. Yes, we do have good weeks, but that doesn’t mean we have sinless weeks wherein we don’t need God’s grace and forgiveness.
I love the rest of the post, but that one specific thing was just a thorn in the rose for me.
Dear Molly, thanks for your honest and kindness. If I can, let me clarify the statement that was your thorn in the rose. 🙂 What I meant by “we have good weeks” was that there may not be something between my wife and I that needs confessing at that moment. I was not referring to all sin in general. God knows I need to confess all the time for all my sin, just as you suggest. But I was simply contextualizing the situation of confession with my wife. There are plenty of times we have great weeks, or weeks of mutual struggle, or weeks of victory, or pain. So we’re not always saying, “I’m sorry.” Sometimes, in quiet moments of prayer we will voice our thankfulness or adoration, or confusion. So yes, confession of sin in general is something I feel everyone should do. But I don’t always have something that requires confession each week–in fact, there are plenty of times that if there’s a “discussion” (read: argument) between my wife and I, we discuss it and hash it out, and often confession and forgiveness is done right there on the spot. Hope this helps.
The paragraph about the grad student’s mentor really drove the point home. I hope many Christian men will take to heart that a true leader leads by sacrificing. Do you want to force someone to follow you, or do you want her to follow because she knows that you always try to put her first? So many have been hurt by people who think leadership is the former.
The paragraph about the grad student’s mentor really drove the point home. I hope many Christian men will take to heart that a true leader leads by sacrificing. Do you want to force someone to follow you, or do you want her to follow because she knows that you always try to put her first? So many have been hurt by people who think leadership is the former.
Dear Melissa, thanks for your thoughts here. I’m glad that paragraph struck a chord. Obviously, it did with me as well. 🙂
“One professor in graduate school told me an eye-opening story about his mentor. The mentor was offered his dream job at his dream school. But his wife didn’t feel they should move. She wanted to stay. The common response from many of my evangelical friends when I asked them how they’d react was, “Well, she should follow her husband.”
But the opposite is true.”
With all due respect, I’m going to be the one to disagree here.
This is just more Feminism in the Church.
The husband’s job is to follow God’s lead wherever that is, and the wife is to pray and share her thoughts with her husband, but then let him make the final decision for the family, choosing to follow her husband’s leadership instead of her own desires – even if she disagrees with a choice that he makes that is not necessarily unbiblical. Sometimes God will want husbands to do something that happens to be in agreement with the wife’s opinion, and sometimes God will want husbands to do something that contradicts the wife’s opinions, but wives don’t have the authority to make that final decision. Husbands, absolutely, are not directed to “love” our wives by submitting to their dreams and desires for family decisions.
That is exactly what God punished Adam for – “heeding the voice of his own wife,” rather than obeying God.
The Christian world keeps telling men that we are being “loving” and “like Christ” when we surrender our “headship” authority to try to please our women – when we prioritize the opinions and desires of women above what God wants and directs us men to do.
Our priority should be pleasing God more than mankind – even when that means “making our wives unhappy.” This is the same thing as fearing God more than what any “man” could possibly ever do to us.
We do love our wives, but are not supposed to live life afraid of ever “making them unhappy.”
“Happiness” is not the same thing as biblical love. Churches talk about biblical love, but then do things to contradict that to enforce the idolatrous outcomes of “happiness” (for women only).
We are on dangerous ground when we measure the quality of male “leadership” and “godliness” by any levels of female “happiness.”
Churches encourage women to worship the idols of “self,” “romance,” “wedding ceremonies,” “marriage,” “men” (designed by God to be their own personal butlers), “prosperity,” “feminism,” “equality,” and many others, and Pastors and Churches judge men as “poor leaders” and “less spiritual” whenever women become unhappy. But pointing out and challenging the idols and poor teachings that Cristian women hold onto is more “loving” to them than allowing them to remain in their blind rebellion to God – even when the act of challenging women “makes them unhappy.”
This Feminism is apparent when Churches teach constantly and repeatedly how “husbands are accountable to God for how well we lead our wives” (to make sure female needs and desires are met), but then those same Pastors cut husbands off at the knees when they speak directly to all the wives, asking wives to “grant their husbands special permission to come to Church “Man-Up” meetings to be “fixed” by the Pastors to become “real men” that are “more like Christ.” (How are Pastors or husbands “leading” wives by asking for the same permission that wives already granted their husbands in their own wedding vows? Husbands don’t need permission to lead.) Pastors fail to teach women anything at all about submission, and give wives permission to ignore and disobey their husbands whenever they disagree or feel “unhappy.” – even the failure to correct disobedience is implicit permission and validation of women’s/wives’ sins.
The truth is that husbands really are “loving” our wives, and being “like Christ” to them, when we are more obedient to God than our wives. Sure, this will make make most wives angry and upset, and they will claim that we men are being “unloving,” but their opinions are not God’s opinions, and they don’t yet understand what God has prepared for them through their submission and obedience to their own husbands, and Him.
When Churches teach that “heeding the voices of our wives” instead of the will of God is being “loving” and “like Christ” to them, they are prioritizing female happiness (Feminist idolatry) over obedience to God, teaching many beautiful sounding lies. Husbands can’t “love” our wives by idolizing their “happiness” over obedience to Christ.
Husbands will not be held accountable to God for how well we “make our wives happy,” but for how well we “lead” them in godliness and obedience to Christ.
When Pastors ignore and tap dance around this whole issue of God’s commands for wives to respect and submit to their own husbands, they are demonstrating not only their own Feminist idolatry to “making women happy,” but also that they fear the opinions of women more than the opinions of God. If they are concerned with avoiding any possibility of upsetting and offending women in Church by teaching the correct commands that God requires for women and wives, then they are the ones that are being “unloving.”
The power of a godly father!
“When I talk to Chris, my wife … Little ears perk up from behind the couch and catch every word. My words carry weight. … When I talk to Chris, I model for them what a loving husband sounds like.”
After pursuing Jesus, probably the best thing a father can do for his kids is to love their mom well!
Life lessons are best caught by regularly observing an excellent model!
Powerful! Loved the part about true following of Jesus and nailing our dreams to the tree for our spouse. I too, would be one of the common responders – in believing ‘well, she should follow her husband, and especially because its his dream job’.
How refreshing! thank you for your wisdom Timothy!
Every time Tim Willard guest posts, it’s like reading poetry in the form of an article. I love every word. Yes, yes yes yes yes. This is beautiful. It reflects the Jesus-love we see in scripture, leading the Church, his Bride. Men aren’t perfect, women shouldn’t expect them to be, but oh how beautiful it is to see men humbly, lovingly lead! Not to mention the call to recognize the impact that words have on little ears, and actions on little eyes! This is a great encouragement and reminder.
This made my heart ache with excitement and sadness. These are beautiful words that have been among my prayers for so many men and women I have know and those I’ll never know. This past year I was a ministry partner in a women’s dorm and hearing the tragic need for this truth and healing in us, women, and in men has really begun to be unveiled in a huge way unlike before. I will be a RA over a women’s hall this coming year and this is a topic that has been a passion for me and will be something I pray to touch and work through with women and hopefully to the guys in their lives and in the dorms. I’ve already checked into the book on Amazon but I would be ecstatic to win a copy (especially as a college student when money is tight). Thank you for sharing! It’s much appreciated!
This is so good. Thank you for these words! I think you’ve posted before, on Joy’s site? I recognize your bio. I like how you refer to your kids as pixie girls. Your humbleness and writing are gifts to be sure!
This is such a challenge. A challenge in the every day. Wow.
Charli Vance thinks...
Wow. I absolutely loved this. I think what Tim is doing is powerful. It makes a HUGE difference to a little girl how her daddy treats her and her mom. It is all so true. Every man should strive to be this way. As well as wives to be a respectful, loving, Proverbs 31 woman. Great post!
P.S. Joy, I first saw you speak at the Smart Conference 2014. I have been blessed by you ever since!
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