The Gift of Marriage

I feel like this could be titled: What I wish for every Man... but if I titled it that I would surely need a subtitle, something to the effect of: "In light of the inexhaustible blessing I have received from One..." so that I wouldn't seem presumptuous or forward.

For so long I have struggled with the idea of marriage roles because I feel what so many people are seeking (namely men, sorry) is the thought of a comfortable, submissive, ever-doting playmate. And while those things are not wrong and have settled into some of my personal ideals of "wife," I am always brought back to the purpose of marriage - it's reflection of the relationship between Christ and His Bride.

I discovered an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves" that so perfectly settled the dispute in my mind that I needed to share it. Lewis describes the very thing that I want for every marriage, though I'm sure (often whether it's participants are willing to submit to it or not, it seems men are quick to find the same weakened condition throughout all women once they are married) He in his pleasure makes it happen. Seeking manipulation more than submission and cut through with sinful addictions, I'm not sure I was in a marriageable state when my husband pursued me. I know he took an incredible chance on me - pure obedience and fear of God was (perhaps?) the strongest ingredient of his proposal of marriage. I hope this doesn't present JD in a negative light - if it does, it all the more validates my need Lewis' quote.

I feel like I have been the benefactor of the most incredible blessing. God has provided me with a husband who relentlessly desires to refine me and tirelessly forgives me. And, being a person who came to the arrangement spiritually bankrupt and emotionally debted, marriage has given me such a higher taste of holiness that it often gets mixed up in my mind with my regeneration. And, I think it should - marriage's greatest gift is it's fierce potency.

Oh, quick disclaimer to say that my marriage is far from an unhappy one, I can't think of a union happier than ours. It's more to say that my happiness, in a large part, comes from knowing this truth (below) and bearing it's fruit - in all it's varied colors and emotions.

"The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church -read on - and give his life for her. This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth the Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed not other sort) never despairs. He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.
To say this is not to say that there is any virtue or wisdom in making a marriage that involves such misery. There is not wisdom or virtue in seeking unnecessary martyrdom or deliberately courting persecution; yet it is, none the less, the persecuted or martyred Christian in whom the pattern of the Master is most unambiguously realised. So, in these terrible marriages, once they have come about, the "headship" of the husband, if only he can sustain it, is most Christ-like.
The sternest feminist need not grudge my sex the crown offered to it either in the Pagan or in the Christian mystery. For the one is of paper and the other of thorns. The real danger is not that the husband may grasp the latter too eagerly; but that they will allow or compel their wives to usurp it."