What My Wife Told Me Before We Were Married

My wife and I have been happily married since 1971.  It’s obvious to everyone who knows us, and even to most who see us together for the first time.  Years ago, our granddaughter Veronica asked us why we were so happily married.

As we pondered her question, we realized that our answer could make a real difference in her life.  Kids today are subject to all the wrong influences, far more so than when we grew up.  Veronica paid us the compliment of asking how to avoid the road to misery so many travel today.

Roberta and I wanted to make sure we gave the very best advice we could.  We knew that as a girl becomes a woman, the way she manages her relationships with men has a profound effect on how her life turns out.

We realized that the strongest influence on a marriage is how the husband treats his wife.  The way he treats her is based on what happens before marriage, and most of that is determined by how the woman conducts herself.

Before we were married, my wife told me five vital facts about herself.  The truths she gave me became the foundation of our marriage.  We wrote them down for our granddaughter in the hope that she would position herself to be as valued, treasured, appreciated, and nourished as her grandmother.

We put them in a letter to Veronica.  We reviewed it and agonized over it and revised it a number of times.  This is what we sent.  We thought we would post it here, as others might find it helpful.

How She Knew What To Say

About a year before I found her, my wife was planning to marry a man she’d been dating for a while.  He looked really good – youth group leader, served in the church – so she asked God if she ought to marry him.  To her shock and dismay, God plainly said, “No.”

Knowing her distress, the Holy Spirit guided a missionary who knew her friend well to her college.  He confirmed that the flaw God had pointed out would make it a bad idea for her to marry him.  When she asked him about it, he huffed, “That’s the way I am.  If you don’t like it, good bye!” and broke up with her.

A year went by and her friends were marrying fast.  She prayed, “Oh God, please, either send me a husband or make me content without one.”  One day, as she opened her hymnbook, she realized she’d been noticed by a man in the pew behind her.  “Is this my husband?” she thought.  We had our first date in April and married in August.

She’d asked God to choose her husband.  Knowing that I had no idea how to nourish or cherish her, the Holy Spirit led her to tell me astounding things about her.  She was embarrassed by some of what she said and had had no such thoughts before saying them.  This guidance to me was clearly of God.

What God had her tell me became the foundation of our marriage.  Proverbs 31:1 says that Mrs. Lemuel taught her son how to deal with his future wife; mothers are generally better qualified to teach sons how to nourish wives than fathers are.  Working mothers can’t do that because they don’t have time.  It takes a lot of time for a mother to get through to her son because men aren’t inclined to listen to women.  The angel chode Manoah for not accepting what the angel told his wife (Judges 13:13) and Pilate ignored his wife’s advice:

When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.  Matthew 27:19

There is a time, however, when a man may listen.  When he’s attracted enough to try to date a woman, his agenda is very well defined and focused.  If he’s drawn strongly enough to her, he may listen as she explains the terms and conditions under which she would enjoy fulfilling his plans.  If he won’t listen, she must walk away because he’ll never pay any closer attention to what she says than when he’s pursuing her.

Every man knows that a woman can give him the joys of heaven, but he also knows that an unhappy woman can give him the torments of hell.  What she said was so reasonable and so workable that I was confident that I could make her happy.  Once I decided that she wanted to make me happy, marrying her was a no-brainer.

Our granddaughter can’t count on a man having been taught by his mother because few mothers have time.  We wanted her to have the words and concepts to tell a prospective mate what God had wanted me to know about sanctifying a wife.  We pray that it works as well for her as for her grandmother.

Dating is not a Game, it’s Serious Beyond Measure

Veronica, my best beloved, you know that the Bible teaches that you were made for your husband, he’s not made for you (I Co. 11:8-9).  That means that even though your role as wife is of critical importance to your home, your husband, as leader, has more influence than you do after you’re married.

God made you to multiply whatever your husband gives you.  Consider babies.  Your husband gives you one tiny cell.  You gather his life force unto yourself, nourish and multiply his seed within you, and bring forth a child with billions of cells.  Each of those cells has the mark of your husband’s DNA (Gen. 5:3).

Similarly, if your husband gives you joy, love, appreciation, praise, and sanctification (Song 6:9), you’ll multiply what he gives you and fill your home with love and light to the Glory of God.  If he gives you anger, criticism, or harshness, Satan will tempt you to multiply that and your house will be filled with anger and pain.

A virtuous wife “openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness (Pr. 31:26).”  A man who’s emotionally involved with you can be hurt terribly by your words even if he won’t admit it.

Real Biblical love is a choice, not an emotion.  Jesus loves in spite of being hurt (Mt. 23:37) and so can a man or woman whose love of Christ strengthens (Philip. 4:13), but why should your words make it hard for your husband to open his heart to you?  How can he trust in you as Pr. 31:11 promises if you often hurt him?

Even though the way your husband conducts himself has the major impact on your life after you’re married, your grandmother and I believe that your conversation and manner of life are of crucial importance in what goes before the wedding.  Your path where God wants you may be different from ours, but as long as you let God lead, He’ll get you where you ought to be.  The wisdom that the Holy Spirit led your grandmother to convey to me as we courted was vital to our walk with God, so I’m sharing it with you for you to share.

Wisdom Your Grandmother Channeled to Me

You’re old enough that the choices you’re making now will affect the rest of your life.  Your theology, that is, what you believe about God, is your most important choice.  What you choose to believe about God determines what you do, and what you do affects how things turn out for you.

You’ve prayed, “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food,” but do you believe it?  Your grandmother chose to believe that God was great enough to give her life and breath and great enough to give His Word to bless her.  She tried to follow the parts she understood and she asked God to protect her to keep her in His path.  She also believed that God was good enough to want her to have an abundant life (John 10:10).

She believed God knew her better than she knew herself.  She believed that if God wanted her to marry, He would give her to a man who would bless her if she let Him choose.  She spent years asking God to work in her heart to make her a Proverbs 31 woman, that’s why she was able to hear what God told her about me.

These two passages became her key to letting God choose her husband:

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.  Proverbs 4:23

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Keeping her heart was the key.  Women can get emotionally involved with very wrong men after which it’s hard to hear the Lord’s warning and pull away.  She tried to keep her heart from me until after I’d married her.  All through dating and up the aisle, she prayed, “God, if Bill isn’t the right man for me, please stop this!”

To make me right for her, God had to teach me how to learn how to nourish and cherish the woman He wanted to give me.  Men are pretty clueless about women.  God worked on me by having your grandmother say some vital, astounding things to me while we were courting and after we were married.

I’m a Treasure Looking for a Husband, not a Toy Looking for Fun

When I first asked her out, she said, “Before you spend any money on me, you should know that I’m looking for a husband.  I’m not looking for fun; I want to get married.  I’m not saying you have to agree to marry me before we go out, but I want you to agree that the purpose of being together is to decide whether you and I should get married.  God made me to be a treasure for some man.  If you aren’t that man, fine, we can part friends, but I’m not a toy.  I don’t want a man to play with me; I want a man to stay with me.”

Putting marriage on the table was part of guarding her heart.  When a woman lets herself “fall in love” with a man who won’t marry her, she’s crusin’ for a brusin’, she’s in for a world of hurt.

When she spoke of my spending money on her, she signaled that she expected me to support her.  In times past, a woman wouldn’t give herself to a man without marriage and she wouldn’t marry unless he’d grown up enough to have a job.  Many modern girls live with guys without marriage and even pay “their share” of the rent.  Your grandmother was letting me know that she wasn’t going to do that.

Every man knows in his heart that a woman can give him the joys of heaven, that’s why men pursue women so fervently.  I was attracted to her, and she tells me she plans to be God’s treasure for her husband!  Although she had no idea what being my treasure would mean, I knew exactly what it would be like to have her be God’s treasure for me.  If she meant that, marriage would be a no-brainer, so I said, “Sure.”

A wife can’t make her husband any happier than he makes her.  God knew I had no idea how to nourish and cherish her.  He had to teach me how to learn how to make her happy so that she could make me happy.  If I couldn’t make her happy, we’d both be miserable.

I want to be Pure at the Altar

On our second date, she told me to dump the other girl I was seeing; she wanted me to focus on her and on her alone.  She then said she wanted to be a virgin on her wedding night.  We agreed that the promises of Proverbs 31 are for a virtuous woman, not the other kind, and that God reserves intimacy for marriage.  She was embarrassed about having said that, but she in effect made me responsible for protecting her purity.  She’d been asking God to protect her all along, now she asked me to help God protect her.

Good thing, too.  Most of my classmates were pretty casual about men and women coming together without marriage.  This discussion gave me the strength to preserve our purity when we were tempted later.

She Called Me “Sir.”

Early in our courtship, she’d occasionally say “Yes, sir” when I addressed her.  Not every time, but as the spirit moved her.  I like that a lot, but we had no idea how important it was.

The Bible teaches you to call your husband “Lord (I Pe. 3:8)” and to reverence him (Eph. 5:33).  This is difficult if you don’t respect him.  That’s why we advise ladies to wait for a man whom they want to call “Sir.”

“Sir” meant she’d respect me in spite of my mistakes.  We’re told to confess our faults one to another (Jas. 5:16).  Men don’t like doing that and they particularly don’t like telling wives things they’re afraid will cost them respect.  Most men ignore Pr. 31:11 and refuse to open their hearts to their wives.  Calling me “Sir” helped me open my heart to her when I realized that God wanted me to belong to her; that’s why God had her do it.

Don’t Fuss At Me

Weeks later, she asked that I never fuss at her.  “I want to love you very much,” she said.  “The more I love you, the more disapproval hurts me.  I won’t be able to love you as much as I want to love you if you hurt me.”

That made sense – the Bible speaks of women as “tender and delicate.”  I didn’t want to keep her from loving me, so I watch what I say.  We didn’t know it then, but God said the same thing:

There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.  Pro 12:18

I needed this too.  A man can be hurt as badly by a woman he loves as a woman can be hurt by a man whom she loves.  We’ve tried always to be sure our tongues are health to each other.  She tries to speak so that the 10-foot area near her is the best place in all the world for me to be, that’s why I like hanging around her.

Talking is More Important than you can Imagine

Just before our wedding, she told me she was really looking forward to being married.  I was too.  I thought we were on the same page, but she went on.  “I really like talking to you.  Once we’re married, we can talk more in a day than we can talk in a week of dating.”

That’s more talking than a man can imagine, she was expecting hours per day!  I’d been talking a lot while dating because we couldn’t do anything else.  I thought once we were married, it would be a done deal and we wouldn’t have to talk about it any more.  As she got marriage on the table, as she asked me to focus my attention on her alone, as she made me responsible for protecting her purity, she told me that talking to her a lot more than I could imagine was an important part of our marriage covenant.

I had no idea how vital this was.  Suffice it to say that a woman can’t follow her husband unless she knows what he wants.  She can’t do what he wants unless he opens his heart to her so that she knows him well enough to know what he wants.  Then she can be sure he’ll be happy with her, which makes her happy.

God made women so that they think very differently from men (Pr. 19:14).  It takes hours and hours of talk before a man can understand what a woman is saying.  If I hadn’t promised to talk to her, I’d probably have been too impatient to communicate with her enough for her to feel that I valued her mind.

Opening my heart to her was scary, but Proverbs 31 says “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.”  God wanted me to know that it was OK to open myself to her.  Opening myself to her made me hers as opening herself to me made her mine.  The Song of Solomon teaches that husband and wife are supposed to belong to each other.  God led her to ask me to promise to talk to her and all that talk made me hers.

I Serve God by Serving You

24 hours after our wedding, she said, “I’ve been thinking about being married to you.”  I thought, “We’re married, what’s to talk about,” but she had told me that talking would be important, so we talked.  “The Bible says God wants me to belong to you, obey you, and submit to you,” she said.  I thought, “Neat-o!  We’re on the same page!” but she wasn’t done.  “I’ll do my best to do that,” she said, “but I’m not doing it just for you.  I’m doing it for God because He told me to.  I’m serving God by serving you because God wants me to serve you.”

Whoa.  I thought about that for a long time and I still think about it.  The next day, I told her, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.  God wants me to lead you and take care of you.  The Bible says that anyone who would be first of all must be least of all and servant of all.  If I’m to lead you as God wants me to, I’ll have to lead by serving you.  You said it well – I’ll serve God by serving you because God wants me to serve you.”

You see, oh my best beloved, marriage, like salvation, is an unmerited gift of God.  The only way to be saved is to die to your former life and be married to Christ.  Your husband won’t deserve your submission, you won’t deserve his giving his life to nourish you; those are undeserved gifts of God’s grace.  God expects married people to serve Him by serving each other and their children.

Jesus said that husband and wife are no more twain, but one flesh.  The only way 2 people can become one is for each of them to die to themselves in favor of their new family.  Each of you must give the other the same love and grace God gave in saving you (I Pe. 4:10).  As Christ chose to love you regardless of your failures, you and your husband must choose to love each other regardless of failure, ‘til death do you part.

As God sees you as perfect, you must treat each other as perfect (II Co. 5:14); you can only do this by the Grace of God.  Watching your husband love you in spite of your failures increases your love for Christ and for him, and vice-versa.  When lost people see you give God’s grace to each other, they’ll want God’s grace.

Salvation is about God giving – for God so loved that He gave….  Your grandmother so loves God that she let God give her to me, I so love God that I let God give me to her.  Our love for each other is based on our love for God.  He must be first.

Just before our wedding, I wrote her a letter, “For God so loved man that He gave him woman, for God so loved me that He gave me you.”  It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t belong to me, but I know many wives who don’t belong to their husbands.  Beg God to increase your love for Christ and for Him.  Ask that He help you become a Proverbs 31 woman whether He wants you to marry or not.  Then if God chooses for you to marry, He can give you to a man who’ll treasure you as He treasures you.

And We Lived Happily Ever After

I told you, oh my best beloved, that although your role is important after you’re married, your husband has more influence on your happiness than you do.  Having told you how God led your grandmother to prepare us both for marriage, it’s time to tell you why our marriage has worked out as well as it has.

First, your grandmother actually let God give her to me.  When we first came together on our wedding night, she was terrified because God gave her a deep, frightening desire to belong to me and to serve me.  Nobody had warned her of this, but she’d prayed for years that God would work on her heart to prepare her for marriage; this had to be from God.  She clung to her faith that God was good and prayed, “Lord, You must want me to belong to Bill.  That doesn’t make sense, but if that’s what You want, I’ll do my best to submit to him and to belong to him.”  That’s why she was able to tell me she planned to serve God by serving me.

It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t belong to me.  When I stood at the altar and vowed to God that I’d give up my right to pursue all the other women in the world and focus my masculinity on her alone, I expected her to be mine.  To show that I’m not unusual, look at “the heart of her husband…” (Pr. 31:11)  The Hebrew word is “Ba-el.”  “El” means “god” as in “el-shaddai” or “elohim.”  “Baal” appears in the Old Testament as the name of a deity.  It could be translated “Lord” or “god;” Jehovah’s Witnesses use “owner” in Pr. 31:11.

Consider the Japanese word “shu-jin” which is translated “husband.”  “Jin” is “person;” “shu” is “Lord” as in “Shu yesu kiristo;” Lord Jesus Christ.  Shujin is literally “lord person.”  A Japanese wife can’t refer to her husband without calling him “Lord;” it’s built into the language as in Eph. 5:33.  My possessiveness is normal.

Many women honor their husbands with their lips (Mt. 15:8, Mk. 7:6) without honoring them with their hearts.  If your grandmother had done that, I would have been deeply hurt and deeply disappointed.

I would also have been deeply ashamed which would have harmed my health (Pr. 12:4).  Very little shames a man worse that having his wife not be his; I know of two heart attacks where such shaming was involved.

Because your grandmother chose to let God give her to me, however, her happiness became my happiness.  Proverbs warns 5 times that an unhappy woman is a hardship (19:13, 21:9, 21:19, 25:24, 27:15), but the opposite is true, too.  When she was happy, life was good.  When she was happy with me, life was very good.  When she was happy in being mine, I got the taste of the joys of heaven that I’d expected when she told me God had made her to be a treasure.  Being a practical engineer, I started learning how to make her happy.

I had another reason to study her.  I’d heard many men complain about women, and they complained about the same things.  When I told her, she told me her friends had said, “He may love you, but he won’t like X, Y, or Z about you once you’re married” and they named the same things my dorm mates had disliked.

This disagreed with my theology.  I had always thought that God was good and had written her “For God so loved me that He gave me you.”  She had told me she was a gift from God, the Bible said that (Pr. 18:22, 19:6), and I knew that God give good and perfect gifts (Mt. 7:11, Jas. 1:17).  Therefore, and this was my crucial insight, all those men who had disliked those characteristics which were common to women were wrong.  Those traits were not defects; God had made women that way on purpose to bless men.

I told your grandmother that we’d work to explore her nature.  Anything that was true of most women was intended to bless all men; any trait unique to her was to bless me because God had chosen to give her to me.  If I couldn’t understand how or why something blessed me, it was my problem, not God’s, and we’d wrestle with it until we figured out just how it blessed me.  I treated it an engineering problem.  To build a strong bridge, I’d better understand the nature of concrete and steel; to build a strong marriage, I had to understand her nature.

With that understanding, she was happy to look into herself to explain her characteristics to me.

God commands that a husband dwell with his wife according to knowledge (I Pe. 3:7).  My learning how she blessed me not only made her happy, it helped me obey God.

I also wanted to know how she was like other women and what was unique to her.  When she’d say, “My friends feel that way,” I’d conclude most women were like that.  Sometimes it was, “I don’t know anyone like that,” for things unique to her.  At other times, she’d have to ask; her friends either agreed with her or didn’t.

This was another area where my engineering mind led me to obey God.  God commands that a husband know how to possess his wife in honor and sanctification (I Th. 4:4).  “Sanctification” means “set apart,” God expected me to know how she was the same as other women and how she was God’s special gift for me.

Read the Song of Solomon carefully.  The husband praises his wife in mind-numbing detail.  This is because he’s paid attention to what’s unique about her so that he can appreciate it.  He says that she’s “but one,” (6:9) which means he’s sanctified her by setting her apart from all other women.  She says 3 times that she belongs to him (2:16, 3:16, 7:10).  In 7:10, she says, “his desire is toward me.”  She knows how badly he wants her, and if you read 8:2-3, you’ll find that she likes belonging to him just as your grandmother liked belonging to me.

In all this talking about her emotions, skills, her feelings, and other characteristics, I ended up opening my heart to her rather often.  This was as frightening to me as her opening herself to me had frightened her, and I ended up belonging to her as she belonged to me.  God designed us so that opening his heart to a woman makes a man belong to her; opening herself to a man makes a woman belong to him.

It’s not enough for a man to have a woman belong to him.  Solomon owned 1,000 women (I Ki. 11:3 7/3).  They were his property and had to do what he told them.  There was none of this “I’m not in the mood” or “I have a headache.”  This sounds like a masculine paradise, but how did it work out for Solomon?

Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account: which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.  Ecclesiastes 7:27-28

Solomon owned a thousand women, yet his soul was empty.  Why?  They women belonged to him, he could command as he wished, but he could not make them like it.  Instead of having a woman enjoy belonging to him as his first wife had, he had 1,000 unhappy women running around the palace.  No wonder his soul was empty.

This was Solomon’s fault.  His first wife was “but one,” and she liked belonging to him.  He had time to talk to her enough to open his heart to her which made him hers.  You see, oh my best beloved, it’s nearly impossible for a woman to like belonging to her husband unless he not only belongs to her, he likes belonging to her.  Belonging to her requires that he open his heart to her.  So much talk takes so much time that a man can’t possibly belong to more than one woman.

As I said earlier, your grandmother strives to make her words health to me.  I can open my heart without fear that she’ll hurt me, which keeps me belonging to her.  I started talking to her in this way because I’d promised and as a by-product of wanting to understand how God had designed her to bless me.  It took 20 years of talk, but we can explain how the characteristics my dorm mates disliked about women actually bless them.

The bottom line, Veronica, is that you can’t make your husband any happier than he makes you.  Your happiness is greatest when he likes belonging to you.  As a side benefit, opening his heart to you will teach him all kinds of ways to make you happy if he pays attention.  The happier he makes you, the happier he will be.