Dear Husband, Nail Yourself to the Tree and Die
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 the sin, he took it all.
There I’d sit at church and atop Golgotha. I’d watch him become my sin, and then the confession emptied out of me like the water from his side. I’d pull Chris close and whisper, “Can we pray?”
She’d approve and grab my hand. I’d pray and thank Christ for her and the girls. In her ear, I’d ask God to forgive my words and my unkindness. She’d hear me ask for his strength as I struggle to follow his way.
We didn’t always need to confess during Communion — we did have good weeks. We even had great weeks. But the hard weeks, the weeks in which my words crashed into Chris and the kids, I could not wait to 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. 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.”
{Originally posted on Love and Respect Now}