A Marriage In Crisis: A Prayer for My Husband

I want to give you a little background about how this challenge came to be. People look at me and my husband and think that we are the perfect couple walking out God's will for our lives. I want to tell you that this is far from the case. It took us YEARS to get where we are now. We have been married twenty years as of November 2023.

Pride Comes Before A Fall

After spending the amount of time I did wrapped up in Word of Faith, my husband was understandably angry with me. It had been 11 years, and he had to see me walk it out. People do not normally just wake up one day and tell their spouse they have been changed and see that their ways were not right. What he did not know was it was something I had been wrestling with for a while. I just did not share with him due to my own pride. The Word of God does say pride comes before a fall, and I was at the cusp of a large one. I did not want to admit he had been right. In his eyes, this was an overnight change (my daughter's too, to be fair.) I knew there was some damage to repair in my marriage. I also knew I could not repair those damages. It had to be the Lord doing it.

One of the last things I had said to my husband before the Lord completely opened my eyes was, "You do realize you are in the minority in what you believe." We were arguing about the gifts of the Spirit...again. The argument you see on social media all the time of deliverance/Word of Faith (WOF)/New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) vs. biblical Christianity, that argument was in our home everyday. I was WOF and my husband stood on the authority of God's Word. At that point (I found this out later), my husband gave up on me. I had cut him to the core, and he had been patiently pouring into me and praying for me 11 years. That was when God intervened with me, in 2019.

Counting The Cost

I knew in 2020 when I walked away from everything, any restoration would have to be of God. So, I took it to the Lord in prayer, day in and day out. Around the time I walked away from everything, I met a dear sister in Christ, Megan, who I began doing Bible study with daily and discipling. After about a year, we transferred locations due to my husband's job. Obviously, this put a kink in our studies and time together with our sisterhood that had developed. During this time, my husband has also gotten involved with helping her learn the Bible. I enjoyed this because he still would not do Bible study with me by myself.

What I did not know were the factors that were about to come into play. My husband is sick, and we did not know it at the time. My daughter and I moved to the new location two months after my husband transferred due to his job. I had stayed behind to finish selling our home and pack up. By the time we joined him, my husband was a different man. His behavior had changed dramatically, and he had even changed the way he did things (odd for someone who does things the same with everything every day for 18+ years.) My daughter and I both noticed it. Megan noticed it and one of our old youth kids noticed it (who was living with us before we moved.) At first, I thought it might have been spiritual oppression. My mother-in-law and I tossed around mid-life crisis. We did not understand what was going on with him.

A Prayer For My Husband (And Hers!)

Then, something major happened that let me know there was something much bigger going on. My husband forgot an hour-long conversation. Not only was my marriage in crisis, I knew something was majorly wrong with my husband's health. When I thought he was gaslighting me, he was not. He had forgotten full-length conversations. The fight for my marriage became more intense, and the only person I could truly talk to about all of the details was God. At that time, Megan was having some marital issues as well.

What do you do when you have nothing left to give and do not know what else to do? This was a question Megan and I talked each other through because the only answer was pray.

That's when we began adopting the phrase, "The BEST thing to do is pray."

I remember crying hysterically in prayer with her on and off the phone. If Jesus Christ found it necessary to go off regularly and pray, so should we.

What do you do when you are so angry at your husband you want nothing to do with him? You pray for him. Why? We are told to pray for our enemies. How much more should we pray for our husband?

What do you do when your husband has hurt you deeply? You pray for him because this acknowledges that only God can truly repair the damage. Approach the throne of grace boldly in prayer ladies because God is the ONE who can change your marriage. Remember, the enemy wants to destroy your marriage.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:16

As for my own marriage, the Lord restored everything that had been destroyed in our relationship (and then some.) Megan's marriage also has improved dramatically, with my husband baptizing him and one of her children along the way. Now, when women come to either of us, asking how to handle their marriage when it is in shambles and they have been hurt or are angry, we tell them, "The BEST thing to do is pray." (I do want to put a disclaimer here. I'm not endorsing abuse. If your husband is abusive, this does NOT apply to you!)

It is important to understand one more thing. As wives, we cannot pray for change in our husbands without evaluating ourselves as well. I had a Christian counselor put it to me this way: If you want lasting change in your marriage, start with you. Ask God to show you what YOU need to change. This is biblically sound advice. So, each day, you will receive a prayer and some instructions or a challenge with a Scripture to meditate and/or pray on.

A Prayer For My Husband And Yours!! (30 Days!)

Megan has helped me put together thirty days of prayer for our husbands, beginning Monday, March 4, 2024. If this is something that interests you, please subscribe below if you haven't already for updates to the ministry! Make sure you follow me on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. I will be posting there!

Prayer Challenge: 30 Days of Prayer for Your Husband

Now, I am praying for my husband a different reason. I am praying for his healing. He has a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Our lives have been turned upside down and the prognosis we have been given is not good. As my husband says, we serve the Great Physician. God has the final say, whatever that looks like. That is another post for another day.