Husbands, Love Your Wives–Your Garden of Eden

     I was having trouble in my marriage.  I asked a wise man, “What do I do?”

     “Do you really love her?”

     “Yes, I do, but I don’t know how to live with her.  We are always getting into arguments, and we can’t see eye to eye on anything.”  I looked down and cradled my face in my hands. 

     “There’s no need for all this anxiety and frustration.  There is an answer, but it lies in you and the choice you will have to make.”

     “What choice?”  I look up and he is smiling at me–a smile that hides a secret of the ages, a smile that shields a life-changing truth.  I feel it coming; the problem will be solved soon.

     “The first thing that you must realize is that you are reaping a harvest of the seeds you have sown in your garden.  For, you see, your wife is your precious spiritual garden.  Whatever seeds you sow into her, whatever words you speak to her and around her, they shall come up and grow and come to harvest. 

     “I don’t get it.  She is my garden?”

     “Even in the natural sense, do you not sow your earthly seed into the garden of her womb and in nine months you both reap a lovely child.  Is it a great wonder that your words are seeds that will be harvested in her, for good or bad?

     “The Law of Harvest says that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.  You are the husbandman of your very own Garden of Eden.  With God’s help, you can make it a garden of delight with joy and peace, or you can make it a garden of misery.”

     “Why is it up to me?  She is the one who is so unreasonable.  She needs to change, doesn’t she?” 

     “Oh yes, she will change.  She already has changed, and she has become in your relationship what you have created in her.  When you express your selfish desires, she languishes and dries up inside for the lack of the water of love that you should supply.  Your sarcasm and cynicism brings forth noxious weeds of doubt in her thoughts toward you.  When you are fearful and anxious, she will be perplexed.  But if you sow selfless love into her heart, she will bear the peaceable fruit of harmony and love for you.

     “Your words to her are seeds that fall literally into your wife’s ears and settle in her heart.  And like the Master tells us, the condition of the heart dictates the thoughts that enter her mind and later proceeds out of her mouth.

     “If you want to see a wife who blooms in peaceful colors of the rainbow, whose smile draws the butterflies, whose song coos, so that songbirds thrill to hear her–then you have to take responsibility for what your garden is bearing right now and what it will bear in due season.”

     “How do I take responsibility?”

     “You can start by sincerely apologizing for an unkind word, a careless jab, a thoughtless snarl.  For it is humility that will melt her heart toward you.  Humble yourself and you will win her.  Remain prideful and strong in your own ways, and you will lose her heart, if not her body.

     “For we husbands are to love our wives, even as Christ loved all of us.  And how did He love us?  He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.  He gave Himself for us.  Had He not done this, we would all feel lost and hopeless–the way many wives feel in their marriages. 

     “I do not know how to do this,” I confessed.

     “You must seek Him now.  Humble yourself and ask Him for help.  If you cannot express humility to your Creator, you cannot walk humbly toward others on earth.  He will give you the patience to not only reap what you have already sown, but also to replant the peace-yielding seeds of agape love from above.

     “Your wife is your gift from God to help you get back to Him.  Embrace your gift and you embrace Him.” 

     And with that he went his way.  I didn’t get it all then.  But I sincerely tried to put it into practice, and it has made all the difference.         Kenneth Wayne Hancock