by Trish Ryan
“This is so hard!” I cried to Pascha one night after our group. “I want to do this Jesus thing, I want to obey God, but I’m so afraid I’ll screw it up!”
Pascha hugged me tighter and whispered the most reassuring prayer I’d ever heard: “Trish, in Jesus’ name, I bless you not to screw it up.”
A FEW WEEKS later, Dave’s wife, Grace, gave a sermon on motherhood. She told us about a snippet of scripture she kept taped to her closet door, words she prayed for herself each day: “Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’”
At home that afternoon, I cut that passage out of the program and taped it to the front page of my Bible. I want that, I told God. I looked up the full verse—the very last Proverb, dedicated to “the Wife of Noble Character,” and appropriated it as my own. I can’t make this true about myself, I told God. On my own I’m none of these things. But you can make this true about me. I prayed this Proverb, substituting “I” wherever the Bible said “she,” believing God could make it true. I wasn’t even sure what some of it meant, like the imagery of churning butter and sewing clothing. I had no idea how to import food or plant a vineyard (unless selecting a nice Australian cabernet to go with dinner counted). But it wasn’t up to me, I realized. God knew what it meant, and He could make it true.
The next morning, as I opened my Bible and wandered into celibate Paul’s teachings on marriage, I understood why I’d need all that intimate prayer and great sex Gwen had told me about.
“Wives, submit to your husband, as to the Lord,” Paul began, in one of his most controversial passages. “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
You must be kidding, I thought. There it was—the misogynistic, women-squishing mandate everyone warned me about. I must have seen this passage before, I thought—why didn’t it register? I scanned the surrounding paragraphs for softening language, something to reassure me that this passage was taken out of context to support the belief that husbands are in charge in marriage; that couldn’t possibly be what God intended. But there was no comfort to be found. If the Bible was true, then God’s plan for marriage was for my future husband to have final say in all of our decisions, with the ability to rule over me like a tyrant if he wanted to. I flashed back to a Promise Keepers rally I’d seen on the news a few years back, where thousands of men marched on Washington, then vowed to return home to “take back our rightful place as head of the household.” I didn’t like that idea at all.
I went back to the woods to rant at Jesus.
“What,” I demanded, “is the deal with Paul? He isn’t even married. Yet he’s the guy you use to tell us all how wives are supposed to behave? What about all that ‘I have come to give you abundant life’ stuff you wooed me with earlier? What about ‘exceedingly, abundantly, above all I could ask or imagine’?” I shouted at Jesus as I stomped through the foliage; there’s a chance I even shook my fist in the air. I was furious, convinced I’d been sold yet another bill of goods that looked like one thing at the beginning, and then turned out to be something altogether different once I got it home.
I didn’t hear anything from Jesus that day; he let me rant. I went home and took a long, angry nap. The next night Will and I met to plan that week’s small group. We’d already agreed about what we were going to do, but suddenly Will changed his mind, veering off in a different direction. I was furious. I have more experience with this, I fumed. I’ve led seminars and conferences and meetings of all sizes. He should listen to me! I realized that if we were going to have this battle every week, this partnership would quickly become a nightmare. I prayed for guidance about what to do, how to change Will’s mind.
Don’t do anything, God said. Do it Will’s way.
“But Will is wrong!” I protested.
Pray for him, God said. Tell Me, don’t tell him. See if I don’t take care of you. My personal lesson in Submission 101.
From that point on, I tried not to disagree, taking my frustrations to God in heated prayer. To my astonishment, almost every time I prayed, Will changed his mind, or we reached some miraculous compromise neither of us would have thought of on our own. I was blown away by how effective it was to take my concerns to God, to nag Him when I was frustrated, rather than nagging Will. Would this work in a real relationship? I wondered. I returned to Paul’s teachings newly humbled, and told Jesus that if he had something new to tell me, I was ready to hear him out.
Read on, he suggested.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. . . . For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. . . . Each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
Under this system, I realized, wives got off rather easy. I recognized that my fear about these passages—about submitting to a man and letting him call the shots—was based on the assumption that the man I married would be a jerk, that he’d make bad decisions that I’d be stuck with. Paul’s command suggested a new standard, though: that respect was a means by which to evaluate a potential husband. Paul suggested the fantastic possibility that the man I marry wouldn’t be a jerk.
This was my eureka! moment—I saw how I’d approached this backward for most of my dating life: I dated men I loved but didn’t respect, men who respected me but didn’t love me. That was why it never worked. Men don’t naturally love women, I realized; it’s a rare response, a sign of something special. In the same way, women don’t naturally respect men—a man has to earn our respect, that’s how God designed us to work together. God puts the onus in relationships on the men—to pursue us, to earn our respect, to love us faithfully once we’re won. Suddenly, Paul’s alleged misogyny seemed like one heck of a great deal. “If I don’t respect him,” I repeated with glee, “he’s not my husband!”
I read a Christian book about dating that explored this theme, called The Unspoken Rules of Love: What Women Don’t Know and Men Don’t Tell You. It was an eye-opener, declaring in no uncertain terms that if I wanted Jesus to bring my husband, I needed to raise my opinion of myself and the man who would one day marry me. The authors offered a tangible way of evaluating “respect” (which was helpful, as my previous definition was something like “He showed up and asked me out”). They asked, “If you fell into a coma, and the man you’re dating was put in charge of your life—your bills, your house, your kids, your dog—for six months, what would happen? What would you find when you came to? Would things be in better shape than if you’d been awake or would everything around you be in shambles?”
That paragraph stopped me cold. It had been years since I’d dated a man I’d trust with the details of my life. There were only a few I’d trusted with my dog. And yet I’d been willing to attach myself to each of them—to any man willing to marry me, really—to escape the stigma of being single. Like Esau in the book of Genesis, who sold his birthright to his younger brother for a single bowl of gruel, I’d been making long-term choices that gave short-term results.
“God,” I prayed, “if You’ll help me, I’ll wait for Your best for me: a man I respect, who loves me as Jesus loves his followers. Someone I can, without resentment or worry, submit to.” Suddenly, I thought of the vows I’d made that fall day two years ago in Connecticut—when I said I’d never marry again, never let anyone control me, never trust, never have children. “I don’t mean that anymore!” I cried. “I take it all back!” I couldn’t believe I’d ever said all that; it felt like I’d cursed myself. “I’m so sorry for saying those things, for believing they were the only way to stay safe and not end up in another dangerous situation,” I prayed. I remembered a recommendation I’d heard Dave mention in a sermon, about “coming in the opposite
spirit.” I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but it occurred to me that if my negative words had power, perhaps my positive words might be helpful in canceling them out. “God, with Your help, I will get married again.” I said. “I will trust the wonderful husband You send, because You will make him trustworthy. And we will have children together, and build a life and a legacy. Thank you God,” I concluded, feeling oddly buoyant and hopeful. “In Jesus’ name, I pray.”
The next day, still excited by this revelation, I boldly said to God, “Okay—we’re clear now, right? Is there anything else I need to do so You can bring my husband?” Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt a bizarre compulsion to read the Ten Commandments. I was certain I hadn’t murdered anyone, or even coveted their livestock; I assumed this was God’s way of reassuring me of how well I was doing.
I flipped back and forth through the Old Testament, unable to remember where in the narrative Moses came down from the mountain. Finally, I found the passage and ran through the laws like a checklist. You shall have no other Gods before me: Check. You shall not worship idols: Check. You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain: Check (my expletives were typically of the unblasphemous variety). Observe the Sabbath: Check. Honor your father and mother: Oh. The truth was, I realized sheepishly, I’d been kind of crappy to my parents; to my entire family, for that matter. The map of our relationship over the course of my adulthood was an awkward series of zigs and zags: I’d storm off into some ill-fated adventure, determined to do things my way, then stumble back home to receive their comfort when my way failed. Time after time, they’d patch me up and encourage me (and not infrequently foot the bill for my mistakes), then off I’d head again, still certain I knew better than they did what would make me happy. I’d missed birthdays and funerals and even my nephew’s birth, all because I was far away, figuring out my life. My parents and sister and brothers had been wonderful to me—fanning out like a safety net, catching me each time I tumbled down from whatever hill I’d tried to climb. And yet I’d never really listened any time they’d tried to help me.
They love you, God reminded me. Let them. I thought about how lucky I was—how much I actually liked the members of my family, how honoring them wasn’t a burden, but merely something I’d been too selfish to pay attention to. I didn’t want to elope again without them there, I didn’t want another marriage without them in it.
“Help me do better,” I asked God.
A WEEK OR so later, as we visited my parents in Maine as part of my new endeavor, Amy and I made a side trip to Wal-Mart. We took our usual detour through the book section, and the title, The Power of a Praying Wife, caught my eye. I felt that familiar longing welling up inside me as I imagined how amazing it would be to qualify for that book. “I want that,” I told God for the nineteen hundredth time that day. “If you give me a husband, I’ll pray for him, I promise.”
Buy it now, God replied. I was horrified. I had no husband, not even an engagement ring, and it wasn’t as if I was there alone and could pretend to be buying it for a friend.
Amy saw me staring at the book. When I told her what God said, she responded, “I’ll tell you what—if God told me to buy a book like that, I sure wouldn’t leave here without it!” That was all the push I needed. I bought the book, hiding it on the checkout counter between a six-pack of Vanilla Coke and some kitchen towels I didn’t need. I wandered out of Wal-Mart that night feeling like I’d purchased my first bra—excited, but not sure what I’d do with this new grown-up thing once I got it home.
I read the book every night after that. If God told me to buy it, I figured, He must want me to pray the prayers for my future husband. So I did. I prayed for his faith and his health and his life purpose. I asked God to protect him from temptation, to surround him with awesome friends, and to build his relationship with Jesus so he would be the man God designed him to be. I prayed for him to find me, and for God to make me into the woman he was praying for. Gradually, I saw myself in a new way: as someone’s intended, chosen wife. I wasn’t just another single girl waiting to be taken off the shelf, I wasn’t a puppy trying to win someone’s affection and love. I was this man’s future. This changed something in me, causing a subtle shift in how I thought of my life. I loved the idea that God was working in our relationship already, even if I couldn’t see what He was doing from where I was. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” the Bible reminded me.
At the same time, though, a fresh crop of fear sprouted up to counter my new perspective: What if this man meets me, I wondered, and doesn’t want a wife who was married before? What if he thinks I’m damaged goods? What if he won’t have me? I was haunted by Jesus’ words in Matthew, where he said, “Anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” I hated this passage, with its condemning, hopeless tone. I didn’t know what to do with it. Yes, I was divorced. But God had told me—specifically, unequivocally—that he had a husband for me if I took Jesus seriously. I was terrified to talk about this with anyone, certain they’d fall back on the hackneyed suggestion that perhaps Jesus was my new husband, and wasn’t that exciting? No, I’m sorry—it wasn’t. That’s not what I agreed to, and God knew it. Unfortunately, I’d been around long enough to recognize that you’re not allowed to say, “But I want a real husband” in most Christian circles, and that the whole “Jesus isn’t enough for me” idea didn’t sell in a culture oddly convinced that if knowing Jesus didn’t fill you with perfect bliss (or at least the ability to fake it) 24-7, you had yourself a problem.
But I’d read the Bible, and it seemed to me that Jesus offered us tangible good things in life—the desires of our heart, as the Psalms so eloquently put it—not just some vague semi-satisfied state where we’d learn that we really could do without. When faced with a hungry crowd and only a few loaves and fishes, Jesus didn’t tell the people to fill up on his words and presence, he fed them. Actual food. When he attended a wedding where the host ran out of wine, he didn’t bless them with a sudden urge for temperance; he made more. Jesus didn’t make people satisfied with their disappointing lives when he walked by; he changed things in a way that erased the past and opened up a new future. And that’s what I wanted him to do for me: to work miraculously, through tangible means.
I found a bit of solace repeating the promise from Chicken Wire Jesus: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.” That’s what I was banking on: that Jesus had washed the slate clean of my mistakes—including my first marriage and divorce—and that the husband he had for me would cherish me as his bride, perfect, shiny, and new.
I forgot the key plot structure of any good romantic story: the hero doesn’t ever show up until something really bad has happened, something that convinces you that all hope for a happy ending is lost.
Chapter Twenty
Allegiance Encounters
My friend Kevin and I were at a restaurant, enjoying a beer outside by the water. He was teasing me about my sudden rise to superstar status at the Vineyard, joking about how I was leading the masses to abundant life in Jesus while my own life languished in squalor. “Isn’t there something in the Bible about fruit?” he asked laughingly. “Some insinuation that if you’re on track with God, life should look somewhat better than yours does?” I laughed along with him, wincing at how his words stung. Despite my months of prayer, fasting, and diligent Bible study, even after getting baptized and purging my bookshelves of blasphemy and idols, I had nothing at all to show for it. No man, no career, no life. Even I couldn’t figure out why I was allowed to lead other people—I had no proof that the things I talked about each week worked. But everyone told me what a fabulous job I was doing, so I kept on keeping on. I was devastated, but I didn’t know what else to do.
We finished our beers, paid the check, and headed out. As we passed the bar I saw a guy I’d known in grade school, standing with his brother. Adam and I had grown up together in the same small t
own, and even dated for a few days in sixth grade after he penciled our names together in a heart on the top of his desk. True love forever, it said. (In his defense, three days is a lifetime when you’re struggling to learn decimals and sentence structure as a tsunami of hormones wrecks your inner world.) I hadn’t seen Adam for years—I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d become a tennis pro, and that he’d married at some point and then divorced a few years later. And now here he was having a round of Bud Lights, catching my eye as I gave Kevin directions back to the highway.
“Hey there!” he said, touching my arm. “Haven’t seen you in a while—how are you?” He enfolded me in a friendly hug as we exchanged surprised pleasantries, and his brother Joe made some nice comment about how the water must be good wherever I lived because I looked great. At their invitation I pulled up a stool; Adam bought me a beer, and we exchanged a decade of life information in tasteful snippets that made both of us look good. This tennis pro thing is kind of sexy, I noticed as Adam told me about winters in Florida and summers at various resorts across New England. Three hours later, he asked me out on my first official date in months.
We met for drinks the next night, and he invited me to a barbecue at Joe’s the following day. His friends teased him about his past marriages (as it turned out, there had been not one, but two) and described how they were planning a new line of reusable wedding accessories with a fill-in-the-blank format saying, “I married Adam (insert date here).” I laughed, ignoring the implications about his relationship history. It didn’t occur to me that none of the princes in fairy tales (or the Bible, for that matter) had a group of friends warning women to beware of him because he’d already ditched a few damsels in his quest to become king.
