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I completely understand and appreciate your admintion to compassion. I have spent some time with God last night asking him to give me just that. I have been compassionate in the past but sometimes I do grow "weary in well doing" as the Bible exhorts us too.
Everything you stated above about stress, sleep deprevation and other health issues can definitely lead to a low libido - I agree with you 100%. We as husbands and wives do need to be patient, compassionate and forgiving of our spouses - I agree 100% again.
But understand also our philosphy will affect our behavior - if we as as spouse have the philosphy that we don't have to try and meet our spouses needs if we don't feel up to or feel like - that is exactly what we are going to do. But is that what God says we ought to do? That is the question I believe we have to ask ourselves.
So it works from both sides - the husband should show compassion on his wife when she is occasionally not feeling up to having relations, but in turn the wife out to be able to look past her circumstances - especially if she has chronic health or anxiety issues, and look to work past those issues to take care of her husbands needs.
Often times we are called to do things we don't feel like doing - in fact this is something we teach our children. We don't always feel like doing the right thing, but it is still the right thing to do. Believe me you - and this came up in our counseling, there are more reasons to not have regular relations as husband and wife then to have them - from the world's perspective.
Everything you listed depression, anxiety, stress at work, stress at home and health issues are reasons people may not feel like having relations with their partner. Or perhaps even both partners don't feel like having relations because of one or more of these issues.
But God commands through the Apostle Paul - that we are not to deny or defraud one another, he does not list exceptions for if you are tired, depresseed or stressed then you don't have too.
But I have really been strengthen this conversation though...God is giving me a new burst of compassion to stick with my marriage and wait on his time - I cannot change my wife's perspective, only he can and I am going to continue to have faith that he will.
I thought long and hard about this last night, and while I defintely don't believe things are where they need to be in our love life, I can look back over our marriage (about 2 1/2 years now) and see we both have come a long ways...we both just need to grow more.
I grew up in home where we went to church my whole life - my mom and dad while they had there share of difficult times in their marriage, modeled the Biblical roles of husband and wife. So obviously I came into my marriage expecting that my wife would understand that, and I knew when we were dating that there were some rough parts between us, but you know what they say - love is blind but marriage is real eye-opener..LOL.
A lot of our issues come from the fact that while my wife is a believer(she was just saved in 2005 at age of 33) she still has a lot the world's philosphies in her because she was raised in home that taught veiled feminist beliefs. Those will definitely come into conflict with God's view of marriage and the role of men and woman in marriage.
She knows what the Bible says now about men and women's roles(as our Pastor and his wife have tried to teach her) but while she knows it intellilectually, its a very very slow process for it sink into her heart.
I believe what God is trying to teach me is patience and waiting on him to work in her heart. I do not believe my needs are unreasonable or selfish, but God is just asking me to patient. He is also trying to get me to continue showing unconditional love - I was doing that for sometime, giving expecting nothing in return, but then the fleshly side of me takes over sometimes and I get upset when I see time and time again my needs not being met.
I think just being able to talk about these things anonymously with other Christians is very theraputic experiance...if we look in the Psalms we can see David in many many lows where is sometimes seems to be doubting God and wondering why he is in the situation he is in, why would we think we are any different than than him in that we sometimes will grow weary in well doing?
