SUBMISSION IS NOT A FOUR LETTER WORD

I copied this from MckMama's site http://www.mycharmingkids.net/ and have found it to be eye opening. I can relate so much to what she is saying and hope I can use it as a step to follow God's plan of perfecting MY marriage, which is currently far from perfect. Please read on!
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Prince Charming and I don't have a perfect marriage. But the thing is, until rather recently, we had a much less than perfect marriage. (C'mon. I can get really vulnerable and real with you guys, right? I feel safe enough and bold enough to do it tonight, so, before I change my mind, I'll plow ahead. Plus, in a way similar to Not Me! Mondays, I think great good can come from being willing to be open and honest with others about what life is really like on the inside.) And our marriage was definitely less than perfect.But that, my friends, was then. Now, we have a perfecting marriage. Get it? It's a verb. We are being made perfect. By God, of course. And, while we will never see this perfecting come to complete fruition on this side of eternity (In normal people speak: We are human and are never going to be perfect until we die and go to Heaven.), we are reaping grand rewards here on earth for making choices to view our marriage relationship through the lens we believe God intended us to use.It's been a long road so far and it's mind blowing to think that, in the grand scheme of things, we are still just in the beginning legs of our marriage journey.Oh, but back to God. He is performing a miracle in our marriage. It is not about us; we could never have willed for this to happen. It's all God.This summer, when we learned that Stellan, as yet unborn, was gravely ill and I was hospitalized for nearly 3 weeks while we alternated between waiting for Stellan to die and waiting for God to reach down and do the impossible, our marital relationship was stretched to say the least.I was used to being in control. Scratch that. I was used to the false sense of being in control that I formerly clung to. But that sense of control I used to need was ripped from me when I could do nothing to alter Stellan's situation. It was drastically difficult for me. Prince Charming was probably experiencing something similar. Not that I would have known. We were both pushing each other away at that time. Men like to be able to fix things (Their broken three-wheelers, their sick baby, their wounded marriage...). And I liked to think I could control things (My organized kitchen cupboards, our children's eating habits, my husband's behavior...) by keeping such a tight grip on them that there was no way to go but my way.It wasn't until the precious unborn son inside my body and my relationship with the precious husband I made vows to five years earlier nearly slipped between my grasp that I finally listened to God:It isn't my grip on things that keeps our little life chugging along so nicely. In fact, it was at my own hands that the life was being drained from my own marriage. It is God's grip on us, whether we choose to believe in Him or not, that is the only true grip. My grip was just an illusion.There was nothing on earth I could do to fix Stellan, to make sure he didn't die inside of me. Likewise, there was and is nothing I can do to guarantee a fulfilling marriage with my husband.Nothing, that is, apart from choosing to follow God's will for my marriage.And, as I almost learned the very hard way, God's will for my marriage is not for me to try to manufacture some false sense of equal partnership with my husband, in that he must meet my needs and honor me and make me happy before I will feel willing to reciprocate the same for him.I am beginning to strive to speak nicely to my husband even when he is not doing the same. I seek to respect him even if he is not acting respectable. After all, I enjoy being loved even when I am unlovable! And Prince Charming very often gifts me with just that kind of love.And God always loves us even when we are unlovable.What if marriage were meant to make us holy and not (simply) happy? I wish I could say I came up with that insightful question, but I didn't. My husband and I have been reading a chapter a night together from a wonderful, life-changing book called Sacred Marriage by author Gary Thomas. Because of that book, our eyes have been opened to some amazing, God-breathed truths about marriage. What if by striving to honor Prince Charming even when he hasn't earned that from me, I then am able to be more like Jesus? Wouldn't that be an awesome outcome of marriage!? We get so much from God that we do not earn. By learning to give that way to my husband, I thereby honor God. I glorify my Savior when I submit to my husband.Submit is not a word that is in my everyday vocabulary and I know it can rub some folks the wrong way. For goodness sake, it has rubbed me the wrong way for much of my marriage! But I cannot deny that the Bible freely uses the word submit when referring to marriage. Ephesians 5:22 says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord."I have neither the time nor the desire to tackle a discussion of all of the misconceptions that abound about the word "submit" in our enlightened (Tongue firmly placed in cheek.) culture. What I do feel a tugging to speak on is how submission (Or honoring, respecting, and putting Prince Charming first in our marriage...) plays out in my relationship with my husband.Oh, but before Biblical submission began to play out in our marriage, first I tried to stamp it to death by demanding my way. Of course, I demanded in oh-so-sweet MckMama fashion as to attempt to get my way without Prince Charming realizing I was overstepping my bounds.Um, that did not work. Our marriage derailed and landed in the ditch, due in large part to the havoc I'd wreaked.Instead, as my husband and I are allowing God to now rebuild our marriage brick by brick, God has gone from whispering in my ear and tapping me on my shoulder to gently shaking me with both hands and speaking directly in my face: "Don't try to demand your way, my daughter! Stop fabricating rules that your husband must follow before you'll let yourself be happy. Quit seeking happiness in your marriage by trying to find meaning and emotion in every single cotton pickin' thing your husband does or doesn't do. Just relax. Just be. Just serve me with your marriage. Prince Charming can never make you ultimately happy, anyway. Being happy isn't the goal I even created marriage to help my children attain! Find a true joy, my daughter, a sustainable peace in your marriage from letting go of your need to control your husband and meet him in the middle in all decisions, big and small. Give him leeway to lead you, for I have put your Prince Charming in that role for you."Okay, God. If You say so.And, to be honest, at first, when God struck me with these principles (I was struck with them through reading the Bible, reading books on marriage, talking things through with my sister and mother, seeing a marriage counselor and developing beautiful relationships with a small handful of more mature mentor wives who have befriended me), I was a bit dethroned. I was willing, but I dragged my heels. "Okay, okay," it was as if I told God. "I will stop requiring my husband to make me happy, stop sulking when he doesn't use exactly the right tone I wanted him to use, stop reminding him of all the big and small ways he is not succeeding in making me happy. I will. But then, that will really stink. I'll just be unhappy all the time, while I honor You. I mean, honoring You is great, but what about me!? I'll be like a doormat, letting my husband do and say whatever he wants, while I have to overlook it just to obey you."And I was prepared to do just that, because God was asking me to follow Him without any promises of how I would feel or what I would get in return.But lo and behold, friends, when I gave up my claim to require Prince Charming to serve me before I would love him back...when I gave up my so-called right to be made happy by my husband in all things...then I began to find something ever so much better than fleeting happiness. I have begun to find an unspeakable peace, an enduring joy and a lasting satisfaction within my marriage.In surrendering my need to be fulfilled by another human being, I thought I'd be left with a bit of a hollow feeling. But the opposite has been true! In fact, I was just telling Prince Charming yesterday that I feel a weightless freedom that I have never known before. To not require him to meet my happiness needs doesn't leave me feeling unhappy; I feel happier and freer than ever! I simply choose to stay in my marriage now. I am choosing to not force Prince Charming to try to fulfill me or meet my happiness needs. I have been finding so much lasting joy in loving Prince Charming because I decide to, and not always waiting for my feelings to lead me to love him. The feelings come, though, my friends. Oh, boy, do the feelings come.Forsake myself and my desires, follow God by putting Prince Charming first, choose to seek to make him happy instead of myself, and it all flows back down. His desires are becoming mine and we are enjoying life as a team now. My husband can hardly wait to meet my needs, now that I am not demanding that he do so! He sees my side of things ever so much more than he ever has. I respect him, he loves me, God is honored all around, and truly, everyone wins! And man alive am I as hot for my charming husband as I have ever been since the day we married each other.Did I really just write that!?Life is still most certainly not perfect. I am not always happy. But I am coming to learn that that is okay. And putting my husband first will never be a bad choice for me.Please, my friends, feel absolutely free to agree or disagree that this is how marriage ought to work. There have got to be endless scenarios in which the answer to marriage problems is not as simple as this. Women cannot singlehandedly heal marriages by putting their husbands first. There are acts of God involved as well as details too eternal for my finite mind to comprehend. I mean only to share a bit of our journey of love with you. Because for Prince Charming and me, the proof is in the pudding. And neither one of us plan to have our fill of this pudding anytime soon.