I was jogging this morning, happily heading up the other side of our block, when I saw the handsomest man I have ever seen! He was coming down the street, headed right for me, and he was also out for his morning exercise. So I did the only thing any sane woman would do. I turned around and joined him.

Given the fact that I am over forty, I don't often turn around to join other people in their morning exercise. I have my little routine, and I stick to it. We oldies but goodies are afraid of change.

But for this particular guy, I would do anything. Because he's my husband.

Now, normally my husband jogs with my daughter. He's a man and she's a teenager, so they are way beyond me, fitness-wise. They jog three times a week and go around the block three or four times. I do it twice on a good day (though I am slowly doing more and have high hopes that by the end of the year I might be able to keep up with them). They also purely do that thing called jogging. I, on the other hand, do that erratic speed walk/jog thing that women over forty often do for exercise. I also go the opposite way around the block for reasons that nobody would be able to understand, so I won't disclose.

But back to my story.

When I saw my husband, I left my exercise routine and followed him.

I've been doing that for years, come to think of it, starting from the day I walked down the aisle and said "I do."

My husband says that saying "I do" is basically saying "I die," because it means you are making a commitment to die to self for the other person. This morning I did this by dying to my exercise and living for his. And then I died some more, because his legs are about three feet longer than mine, which means I have to take two steps for every one of his. Not fair! I was also dying for breath and my muscles were whimpering and my heart was pumping so fast I thought it would explode. And I also nearly died with surprise when I actually jogged the whole way around the block with only a very small pause to speed walk once or twice. I didn't think I could do that.

But it made me think about marriage in general. How this is exactly what I, as a wife, have had to do on a meta scale.

• When he asked me to marry him, I turned around and followed him.
• When he was called to teach at a Bible college in Wisconsin, I turned around and followed him.
• When God told him to go to Cambodia for a summer, I turned around and followed him.
• When God told him to go to South Africa the next summer, I turned around and followed him.
• When God told him to leave Wisconsin and go to the Philippines, I turned around and followed him.

But sometimes the small-scale about-faces are harder to make than the large ones. Maybe it was easy for you to turn around and follow your husband when he knelt and offered you a dozen roses and a diamond ring. But maybe it's far harder when he asks you to. . .

• Start a budget.
• Trust his decisions.
• Have another child.
• Begin doing family devotions.
• Take on a new ministry.
• Move to a new job.
• Tithe.

​And there are even smaller, sometimes harder, ways to stop, turn around, and follow our husbands by dying to self. We can stop pouring our coffee in order to pour our husband his. Stop talking to a friend on the phone in order to talk to him. Stop sweeping the kitchen floor in order to iron his shirt. Stop putting away laundry in order to offer him a glass of water. Stop whatever we are doing when he gets home from work in order to meet and greet him with a kiss.

So I ask you: in what way can you turn around and follow your husband toda

​As women, on the whole, we don't tend to give the idea of submission and respect for our husbands the weight it deserves.

That's because, to us, love makes the world go 'round. Every woman knows that. Love conquers all obstacles. Love turns the drudgery of life into heart-pounding adventure where everyday thorns and dirty dishes and mountains of laundry become roses, rainbows, and butterflies. Love is magical. Love is miraculous. It's sweet. It's romantic. It's a treasure. And if you don't have money, all is still okay, as long as you have love.

Yep, that's the way we women tend to see it. And we live it without hypocrisy. Every woman knows that if she finds the man of her dreams, be he old or young, smart or not, normal or hot, billionaire or hillbilly, if she truly loves him and he truly loves her, their life will be one long procession of hugs and kisses and welcome-home-put-your-feet-ups.

The problem is, this doesn't really take men into consideration. It works just fine as a fantasy, but real relationships must at some point take men into consideration.

Don't get me wrong. Men don't mind love. They like it an awful lot, especially at certain intervals of life. But a man wants more than just love.

A man also wants respect. It might be safe to say, in fact, that a man primarily needs respect. He needs to know that, no matter how the world views him, he has his biggest fan club at home, and his wife is the residing president. When his boss shoots down his latest and greatest idea, he comes home to a wife who thinks that his ideas are brilliant and takes time to listen to them and help him hone them. When his coworkers ridicule him, he comes home to a wife and children who build him back up again, fortifying him against those destructive slurs.

In his home, he wants to be respected. Loved also, yes, and women sometimes have a really hard time doing one without the other, but if you were to ask him, he could probably live without the love as long as he had true respect.

We women, on the other hand, want love far more than we need respect.

Does this quirk make men and women incompatible?

Well, since an all-wise God created us that way, I say no.

And since an all-wise God gave us a canon of Scripture that includes Ephesians 5, again I say no.

We aren't incompatible; we are complementary.

However, we are at times ignorant of the inner workings of what it takes to maintain a thriving marriage.
Some women get this respect thing correct almost instinctively, somehow knowing how to show that respect to their unique husband, and they are richly repaid by a lifetime of love.

Other women, craving love, unwittingly withhold the one thing they can give their husband that would unlock the doors to his heart.

This is all made more challenging for us as women because, not only do we not get to take a course in Respect 101 before we hop into marriage, but men are all different, and what my husband wants and needs may be quite different from what your husband wants and needs in the area of respect. Every husband is unique, just as every wife is unique.

But the thing that is a constant is the need for each one of us as wives to hone our ability to respect our husbands and to show it to them. We aren't alone in this process: husbands have to work at loving their wife and showing it to them. Marriage takes work. But the blessings of a good marriage, filled with mutual respect and love, are glorious and well worth the effort.

​The grass is always greener where you water it.

My husband has never asked me to do anything that was sinful. But he has asked me many times to do things--or to let my children do things--that were frightening to me.

• Pick up our family, leave everything and everyone I love behind to move all the way across the world for Christ? Frightening. 
• Open my mouth to speak God's precious Word to groups of women when I feel so horribly sinful and inadequate? Frightening.
• Get in a long metal tube and fly way too high above solid ground and way too far out over vast horizons of water several times a year? Totally frightening.

There have been smaller frightening things too. 

• Let my small children ride all the way across Manila, unbuckled.
• Have large groups of people over for dinner.
• Allow our teenagers to ride around the block on their bicycles unaccompanied.
• Eat unusual food.
• Get out of my comfort zone.
• Take my children to the Grand Canyon.
• Let him make decisions. 

The list goes on and on. So many things frighten me because--like you--I relish control and those are things I have little or no control over.

When my kids were smaller, one of their favorite things to do was play "mattress" with Daddy. All four little bodies would scramble onto a twin-size mattress on the hardwood floor and then he would wrench it from side to side while they tried to keep their balance. It sounds so mild when I describe it. But--really?--four little bodies on one slip-sliding mattress? There were giggles and screams and howls and owies every time, but the screaming would always dissolve into pleas of "More, Daddy, please?"

And I couldn't handle it.

Every time I watched it, I was sure that we would lose a child. 

It got so bad that they would make me leave the room (and preferably the house) before they would start their little game. 

Okay, so now you know the dirty truth: I'm a worrier. I can't help it. My mind is flagrantly creative, imagining horrific results to a hundred different ifs in any given situation. And it doesn't like to keep to paths of light and sanity and reality. No, it likes to venture into dismal valleys of fear and meander around, gaping at the fearsome scenery.

Which is exactly why I need I Peter 3:6.

It took me years to understand why that verse was there and what it means.

I understood the submission in verse 1, the respect in verse 2, the whole concept of adorning in verses 3 and 4, and the hop back to submission in verse 5. (I may not adequately live it, but I understand it and do my best.) But then in verse 6, out of nowhere, we bump into a whole new topic that is seemingly unrelated: fear.

Which left me scratching my head in puzzlement for a long time, until one day I realized that "not be afraid with any amazement" could also be translated as "do not fear anything that is frightening."

Suddenly it clicked.

How many times was submission challenging to me, not because I didn't love my husband and respect him, but simply because I was afraid of the possible result of submission?

You know those moments when God opens your eyes and gives you a whole new perspective on life and (more particularly) your sin? That was one of those moments. Submitting to my husband when I was on board with his agenda was easy. The test of my submission was whether I would willingly submit when I feared something that was truly frightening.

And that was when I finally understood why Sarah was the posterchild of submission. Her husband asked her to do some really wild and wooly stuff. Abraham may have been a patriarch, but he was also a man and thus a sinner.

Try to imagine. . . 

• Following your husband into strange lands when you know he doesn't know where he is going. (Hebrews 11:8)
• Leaving one of the most modernized cities of your day to live in a nomad's tent. (Hebrews 11:9)
• Carting your nephew and his whole entourage around with you and putting up with all the squabbles it entailed. (Genesis 12:4)
• Pretending to be your husband's sister because you are so beautiful that he fears being killed over you. (Genesis 12:10-13) 
• Becoming the latest addition to the harem of a foreign king and knowing your husband is too afraid to bust you out. (Genesis 12:14-16)
• Grieving over your barrenness and knowing that your husband firmly believes that he will have a child. (Genesis 11:30, 15:6)
• Overhearing a heavenly messenger tell your husband that you, though barren and old, are about to become pregnant. (Genesis 18:9-15)
• Laughing to yourself behind a door and then trembling when that Heavenly Messenger looks at you with omniscience in His gaze and asks you why you laughed. (Genesis 18:15)

Many things happened to Sarah that could have frightened her.

In reading about Sarah's challenging life, I can see that many of my fears are, in comparison, shallow. (Not to mention, often far-fetched.)

But there was one other little gem of a verse that impacted me. While I tend to fret about the future, the godly woman of Proverbs 31 laughs at it (verse 25). The only fear in her heart is the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 31:30). Apparently, the fear of the Lord has the power to knock away all other fears.

When we as wives truly fear the Lord, we can live fearlessly, even when it comes to submission to our own husbands.

My goal, since I have come to understand these verses, has been to fear God and reverence my husband without fear of the results. In other words, "Fear fearlessly."

I fail often, but I live with that mission.

Does the thought of submitting to God or your husband scare you? Will you join me in trying to fear fearlessly?

Marriages flounder when spouses misunderstand their roles.  
Here are some questions for wives to ask as we read the Word of God:

• What are God's priorities for my life?
• How does God want me to treat my husband?
• How does God expect me to balance all of my responsibilities?
• What character qualities does God want my life to exhibit?
• How do I become the woman God wants me to be?

​
You and I can be wives with a mission. A mission to lavishly fulfill our role in life. A mission to complete our husband, not compete with him. A mission to love and respect our husband, to bring him good all the days of our lives, and to pray for him daily as he fulfills his own role in life.

Live with a mission!