SO my wife and I separated over 6 weeks ago. We technically only be separated for almost three weeks, as far as living in the same house goes. During this time, the last week and a half shes been wanting to some face time at night. Then last couple nights met up at a park to walk and talk. She says she still loves me and that she wants to do life with me., But is scared of letting her wall down right now. So I continue to pray and Give it to God despite missing her and our family together. her wanting to meet up and communicate I feel is a good thing, but Im so confused. Is this normal
I'm sorry to hear of your marriage crisis.
Unless one of you is abusing the other (or you're both abusing each other), separating from each other is a mistake. Doing so makes moving toward divorce easier since you're already physically apart (which fosters emotional distance). The obvious feeling one has when one departs the company of a powerfully irritating spouse is relief; there is, perhaps, no greater, positive feeling than that of relief. This feeling
reinforces separation, though - the very opposite of what God wants in your marriage. He wants you to find relief from the contention between you and your wife by means of
Himself, not by the route the World urges (separation) that leads almost always to divorce.
What do you mean by "pray and give it to God"? The two of you are already out of His will in having separated from each other. And the conflict that has driven you apart is a further token of how He is not at the center of your marriage where He should be. So, when you "pray and give it to God" what are you doing exactly and why?
Are you aware that so long as you live in rebellion toward God, which is what our sin always is at its core, He will not hear you? When we don't act in accord with God's will and way, we sin, and that sin prompts God to turn His face away from us. (
Psalms 66:18; Isaiah 59:2; 1 Peter 3:10-12) In such a condition, asking God to act on our behalf in some way is useless. Until we restore our fellowship with God by repentance (
James 4:6-10; Revelation 2-3), confession (
1 John 1:9), submission (
Romans 6:13-22; Romans 12:1; 1 Peter 5:6) and obedience (
1 Peter 1:15-16), our requests to God fall on deaf ears.
When your marriage "comes to a boil", the sourness of the experience God intends should crowd you both
to Him, seeking from Him the answers to your marriage conflict(s). But, of course, the reason your marriage has fractured is exactly because, at bottom, God isn't in control of you both. Until that changes, your marriage can never be the wonderful, excellent, life-transforming thing God made marriage to be. Only as your wife meets Christ in you each day and you meet Christ in her are the deep joys and rich intimacy for which God made marriage possible.
Romans 8:29
2 Corinthians 4:7-11
Ephesians 5:28
Colossians 3:19
God's path to a healthy marriage is actually quite simple - but it isn't easy. It goes through Him, you see, and requires that you get on your knees in humility, repentance, submission and confession and stay there, allowing God to use you as His hands and heart to your wife. God's way to a good marriage takes you down the road of self-sacrifice, of loving your spouse even when she hurts you terribly, when she has no idea the wounds you've taken at her hands but you seek her best regardless. This is how Christ has loved you.
Very often, God uses my wife to show me the truth about myself. Not always, but often. I've been...dismayed to see myself in the "mirror" of wife. It has been very painful to acknowledge the selfishness in me that has been revealed. Only by God's enabling power could I look at the truth about myself and humble myself, both before God and my wife, and confess my faults. My first instinct was to blame my wife, to prescribe changes she needed to make (the very changes I needed to make), to point the finger. I see now that when I'm tempted to do so, it is many times (though, not always) that I want her to change before I do. But this isn't how God intends a married man to carry on. The husband is to
lead his wife spiritually which, in part, means to do the hard thing first and demonstrate that it can be done, and how. If I want to see my wife deeply enjoying God every day, walking in submission, love and holiness with Him, I ought to be doing so myself. If I want my wife to be gentle, peaceable, and forgiving, I'd better be such a man first.
My wife can't fulfill me. No human being can. My marriage, then, isn't about putting her in a place where she must meet all my emotional, relational and sexual needs. Instead, our marriage moves me constantly to God in whom (and
only in whom) real fulfillment can be found. As I'm fulfilled by Him, by His Spirit changed and empowered to be a godly, Christ-like man, I become the very best husband I can be. I also discover that my "job" as a husband is to lead my wife to God so that she, too, might be properly fulfilled in Him.
