I greatly admire women who are inherently meek by nature. They speak softly, have an air of perpetual peace about them wherever they go, no matter what is going on. It is rare to see them angry, and they generally seem unperturbed by what others say or do that might cause any other woman to feel irritable. In order to avoid making my admiration for meek women an idol in my heart, I have had to take an honest look at myself and seek God’s heart on this by praying and reading His Word.
Meekness is often mistaken for weakness. Many of us wives have been brought up without having examples of women in our lives who were meek. Many of us were brought up in single-parent homes where we watched our mothers struggle to make ends meet. I know was, and I witnessed my mother endure domestic violence for many many years from a boyfriend she had after she and my father separated. We lived in housing projects for those years, and it was during my teenage years that I’d made up my mind that I would never be a doormat for any man. I decided, then, that no man would ever rule over me, and in all of my witnessing of my mother being verbally cut down while she was soft-spoken to her abusive boyfriend, I cultivated loudness, brashness, and a goal to always have the last word. I developed an art to cutting others down with the words I spoke to them. I determined that I would always be in control.
As you can figure, I carried these attitudes and habits into my adult years, and when I became a wife, they surely did not bode well for my marriage! No man wants to have to struggle for leadership of his household. My husband and I–even in our dating years–wrestled with that. I didn’t know that I was doing anything wrong. I was doing what I’d taught myself those years ago. I was using survival instincts because I was afraid that if I submitted and was meek, my husband might abuse his authority to try and hurt me. I equated meekness with weakness that leads to pain. I PRAISE GOD for He delivers us from all of our troubles, and He surely saw that I needed deliverance from my troubled ways of thinking and conducting myself!!! He began to bring women into my life who are meek and yet are not abused by their husbands. That was new to me. I began to see that their meekness wasn’t weakness. Their strength is God’s strength! Their meekness is demonstrating strength under control of God without undue harshness. Their peace and self control comes from the Lord.
I began to desire meekness for myself. I knew my husband was yearning for peace that he could not find in me because I was lacking meekness. I was lacking peace. I was pretty hard on myself privately but I learned that sometimes deliverance is a process. I’ve accepted that I am a wife whose quiet, gentle nature was not left unscathed by my past. I realize that I allowed what I witnessed in my past to harden me. I knew somewhere deep down inside there was still a beautiful spirit that God prizes as in 1 Peter 3:4 “but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.”
I believe that God allows it to be a thorn in my side just as Paul describes in the Bible, so that I have to turn to Him and understand I am not in control.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 ” Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I cannot be a meek woman in my own power! I had to be strong for so many years in my childhood, but I can let all that go now because God wants to be my strength!! I don’t need to be strong in those ways that I’d taught myself to be. There was a season and purpose for that strength but it doesn’t serve my husband or my walk with God!! And so I submit and lean on the Lord to help me be the wife with a beautiful spirit that He cherishes and my husband loves. I see that what served as strength in my past has no purpose in this season and is now a weakness. Therefore, I choose to let God be my strength. I am happy to say that I am too counted as one of the meek women. I rely on God to be my strength because when I am not meek, I am weak to the conditionings of my flesh. I need His help daily to stay in His peace so that I can be a source of peace for my husband and children.
Please feel free to pray this for yourself if you need help being a meek wife. ❤
♡ Prayer ♡
Lord, I commend to you myself, all of my attitudes, my habits, my thoughts, my heart, all of me. Lord, if there is any way in me that hinders me from being a meek, submitted wife, please show me and deliver me from it. I want to be a source of peace for my husband not a battlefield he must exert himself against to be the head as you have purposed him to be. I thank You in advance for being my strength and where there seems to be no gentleness, You help me draw it out. Thank You Lord and may I exemplify meekness so my daughters and other wives may taste and sed that following Your will is good and not to hurt us. Your grace is sufficient! Thank You for blessing me with my husband and children. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Cassandra Salamone ♡
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