Helping Him See the Back of His Head Part 3

I mentioned in my last post that I would talk about a woman looking at her situation with honesty. If you want to catch up with what I’ve said before in this thread, you can read here, here, here, and here. Here we go.

Let’s begin with who Suzy isn’t. If you identify as the Suzy in my posts and you think of yourself as a “victim or as a survivor” in the modern cultural sense (see this post to see a description of what I’m talking about), then you are not Suzy. If the counsel you are getting to divorce your husband is coming from a “friend” who is part of the “metoo” movement, you are not Suzy. You can know that this is the case if the person you are talking to calls herself an advocate, or if she is talking about how much of a victim you are. She might use the word “abuser” a lot and will tell you that you need to build boundaries and be healed. If this is who your counselors are, you are not the Suzy of my posts.

The main problem with all of these “counselors” is that they have their own agenda for you. They are lying to you and if you enjoy being lied to, you are lying to you as well. The advocates want to free you from the abuser you live with, you are automatically a victim, and, in my experience, they are really justifying their own failed relationships by coming alongside you. In other words, them “helping” you is not about you. It is about them. One way to check this would be to ask for a list of folks they have helped. Ask each person on their list how their marriages are today, as a result of having had an advocate. My guess is that most of them are not married today and those who are, are not in marriages where their husband is the head of their home. And because the women are the heads of their homes, they are not more godly as a result, and their marriages are not characterized by joy.

If you are paying your counselor and especially if she has never talked with your husband, you are not Suzy. If your counselor is a psychologist (even a Christian psychologist) and you have never opened your Bible and used it as the authority, you are not Suzy in my posts.

Counselors that you pay, work for you. They are interested in helping you based on what you say you want them to do for you. They aren’t necessarily into helping your marriage, they are interested in helping you with what you tell them. So, if you spend all your time complaining about how horrible your husband is, they will help you live with (or not) a horrible husband. They work for you. Because they want your business (I don’t think it is always this predatorial), they will keep telling you what you want to hear.

The thing these kinds of counselors have in common is that believe the lie that everything is about you. You need to care for yourself. You are all it’s about. You need to be comforted, but not held accountable. You need to create boundaries so you can be all that you are supposed to be. You need to see yourself as X (whatever). You need to express yourself, don’t be pressed down, don’t be abused, break free, remove your restraints, on and on. I this is what people are telling you and what you are believing, you are not Suzy. Sorry.

Another category that might show that you are not a Suzy is, if after bringing your story to Biblical and godly pastors, counselors and friends and every one of them told you the same thing but you blew them off because “they couldn’t be right, he’s the problem, not me,” you are not a Suzy. It is a possibility that you are the wife in Proverbs 21:9, “Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman” and/or Proverbs 19:13, “…And the contentions of a wife are a continual dripping.”

If you have never stopped and considered what a family would look like if you were a contentious wife or a constant dripping and then confessed it and repented, you are not a Suzy.

As an aside, here’s how the home of a contentious wife who is a constant dripping might look. The husband of such a wife only has three options: he can spend all his time on the corner of his roof (or at the bars, in the basement, out with the boys, just gone), he can yell at or even hit his wife, or he can turn into a soft hen-pecked smarmy husband. Those are pretty much all the options he has. The men in my posts have responded with anger. But if your husband is wimpy and not a leader or spends a lot of time gone, you might assume that you are this woman.

Another result would be that the kids have all gone off the reservation. None or most of them are not walking with God and they don’t spend a lot of time communicating with you (except out of guilt or shame). Now, of course if Johnny is as bad as he’s been this would be the same result, but if the counselors tell you that you are a bitter woman and your husband, while not perfect, isn’t the problem…. If you really want to know, which is what Suzy would want, you should ask the kids. When you do, you should be very careful to let them know that you won’t jump down their throats if they give you an answer they think you won’t want to hear.

Here’s the thing, you need to be a Suzy. Even if your husband loves your socks off, you still need to be a godly woman yourself. The whole thing is about walking with God, pleasing God, imitating Jesus, being filled with joy and peace and blessing. You don’t get to sin. Your life is given to you to be a life of blessing to the folks God has given you. This means that everything in your life is given to you as a ministry or an opportunity for ministry. If you have the kind of husband that I’ve been writing about, this doesn’t change. If your Johnny is a nasty man, your ministry will be more difficult than someone who has a husband like the Apostle. But God is good, and he has given you a ministry of reconciliation. Embrace it. Rejoice in it. Attack it. Do it as a blessing for everyone one around you, especially your difficult husband.

I hope this helps.