Part 2,
I hope this testimony will help you.
Pregnancy, Prayer
My wife and I had a couple of little spats, against when she was probably 'hormonal', where she got just a bit snippy toward me, and once when I was sick and kept waking her from sleep from help, and a time or two when she was sick, during over two years of marriage. Otherwise, it was pretty much Honeymoon time for two years, living in Indonesia. Then she got pregnant. I was busy saving data on a computer before flash drives, onto disks and stuff, while she was packing boxes. It made her angry that I wasn't packing the boxes. I had an order in which to do things, and data was first for me. Anyway, that got her angry. Then it was like months of disrespect and irritability. Then post-partum was worse. Lot's of arguments that made no sense, getting angry and then crying over nothing. We'd had this pre-birth class at the hospital-- highly recommended-- which warned us about post-partum, momma bear instincts to protect the baby in ways that don't make sense. It played out in our marriage.
Somehow, the disrespect, irritabilty, etc. died down. She wasn't having a good time, either. That was our first child. There are certain things that stress a marriage-- having a baby, moving house, moving overseas, unemployment, living with in-laws. I remember this list from when I was young. It was in a magazine article a friend discussed with me. That first pregnancy, I brought my wife to America to live for the first time to live in her in-laws house while I was unemployed. Poor woman! I did not realize it at the time. We've gone through times of marriage stress on extended stays with my parents.
Fast forward to child number 4. I am in grad school, employed, but earning just about enough to pay rent, living on student loans. So kind of like unemployment. We live in a small apartment in a new place, not a foreign country from the US, but different. My wife gets this attitude toward me. Lots of disrespect, arguing about everything.
I was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, and she bumps me to the side, scolding me about how that wasn't the way to do it, thinking her way was the only way. I remembered thinking how disrespectful, and it occurred to me that I hadn't been praying for her about this attitude. I think God was dealing with me about being negligent in that area.
I said something really innocuous to her, not argumentative at all, and she stormed out of the room at my words. I can't remember what it was, just something that normally would not have caused a problem. I looked out the window and the van was gone! She'd never done this, but she drove to the home of an older Christian lady friend from church. The lady told her to call me. They talked at night. I said she could spend the night and be back in time to get the van home to take our oldest to school in the morning.
The Prayer
So I prayed for my while she was gone.
My wife recently told me about a lady from church. She'd gotten a word of knowledge about something specific from the woman's life, and the woman said that to her in conversation.
I remembered that. I told the Lord if he could talk to her about this other thing, He could talk to her about our marriage. I had six or seven things I prayed for. I pointed out to the Lord that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands. There were some things that went nowhere when I discussed them with my wife. I had wanted to tell my wife that I thought she was probably imitating patterns of anger that she saw her stepmom display toward her father. I'd never gotten that out in a conversation. I asked if that was the case, for the Lord to show that to her. I pointed out that Sarah submitted to Abraham, calling him Lord, and my wife did not embrace that concept in the way she treated me. She had been treating me with disrespect, not respect and submission. This was years ago. There were so many things I prayed. I wish I could remember all the details.
And then I prayed out of I John that if you pray according to His will, you know that you have them. I reminded the Lord that my wife was His daughter, and that it was not God's will for her to do certain things she had been doing, and that I knew it was His will that He obeyed these things according to Scripture. And I had this strong sense of faith, of knowing my prayer would be answered as I made this argument in prayer to the Lord.
But I was still amazed.
My wife was going to this program at church to help people out of past bondages. They listened to a speaker and then worked through a workbook with a leader at a table. So she comes home, and asks me to sit next to her on the coach. She wanted to talk.
Uh-oh, she wanted to talk. I did not feel like fighting again. But she had a pleasant demeanor. She started off saying, "You are a good husband." Wow, okay, this was different. Then she told me how she was at this meeting and the Lord spoke to her about several things. The 'table shepherd' asked them if they had an anger problem. If you have done X, you might have an anger problem. She thought, "I don't have a problem with anger." If you got angry at your husband at how he did dishes, you might have an anger problem. Then she remembered the way she acted when I did the dishes and started listening.
So then she said the Lord showed her.... and took me through about five of the specific things I'd prayed about-- points I had laid an argument before the Lord about, based on verses of scripture. She even said something about how she'd seen her step-mom treat her dad-- unprompted from me-- something I'd been wanting to talk to her about.
The thing is though, if I prayed a few sentences and had a few sentences of ideas about it, she had a page or two worth of insights of herself that she said the Lord spoke to her about. There were a couple of items, including the Sarah Abraham thing that she told me that the Lord spoke to her later, within several weeks of that first night, but those eventually were ticked off the list (metaphorically. I did not write my prayer as a list when I prayed it.) There were other things, about how she'd criticized me and the ways that it hurt me and the way I thought about myself or my relationship with God.. something along those lines. That rung true. I knew what she was talking about, but I didn't remember praying about that.
We moved. Moves are a time of stress where we might argue. She was as sweet as a sugar. Even after we moved, I'd see her occasionally standing around crying. I asked her why she was crying. She was regretting the way she treated me before. I told her I forgave her and reassured her. We would stay up talking until 2 AM, with that excitement we had when we were first dating talking on the phone. It was a really precious time in our marriage.
There have been times sense where I wished I could push a button and put her back in that mode. Maybe it can happen again when she prays with faith. She's matured and does not generally treat me with the disrespect I sensed during much of that pregnancy, but I am glad she doesn't stand around crying and feeling guilty.
My point is do not overlook the fact that God can actually fix problems like this in people. Especially in your case, as in mine, if you have a woman who spends time in prayer, who presumably at times asks God to change her character to make her more like Christ, the kind of stuff many devout Christians pray, who is open to God's working, and you are praying for some good changes for her, to make her more Christ-like. Just pray in faith.
I don't think any kind of secular marriage counseling, any kind of medical doctor in a white coat giving her or me pills could have done anything to transform our marriage like that.
I'm sure she prays for me. I can't remember that dramatic of a testimony. Of course, sometimes these types of prayers are answered in ways that might __seem__ mundane, but God still is at work.