Prioritizing Kids over husband!

I just wanted to give you a taste of the weekend service at the Fusion!  Heidi and I  will be talking to Ladies about marriage! I tell you its going to be incredible!

*Prioritizing Kids over husband: so common, so acceptable, so wrong! It is easy to prioritize our children: they have to listen to you, you’re older & wiser, and there is a natural bond between mother & child.  I don’t think this happens on purpose, maybe I’m nieave, but I believe most women either had this modeled by their mother, or unconsciously decided their children were more emotionally dependable than their husband.  Unintentionally, moms can create an insecurity in their children by doing this: the kids become insecure because the natural bond between husband and wife has been replaced by the unhealthy bond between mother & child, and the child know he/she can‘t meet all of mom‘s needs.  Not the plan God had in mind.  The most secure children, according to trusted Christian counselor Dr. James Dobson, are the ones whose parents have prioritized their own marriage over the parent-child relationship.  So we ditch our true feminine identity and settle for a fraction of our potential: we trade being a “woman” for being a “mom”. We trade our beauty in for efficiency since makeup & nice clothes aren’t practical (a nice looking shirt goes in the wash just as well as a grungy one, a full face of makeup takes about 8 minutes to put on. On our Sabbath, I periodically give my face a rest from makeup, but then I end up avoiding the mirror that day, yet everyone else around sees me all day long, just something to think about), we trade working on our marriage in for going the extra mile for everyone but our husband (too busy with work in or out of the house, coddling children & not letting them grow up, always have time for kids/friends/family),  we trade lavishing attention on our husband for lavishing it on the kids, and kids aren’t giving people, they take!  It’s the nature of growing up, they need help: At first, it’s our 3-month-old with highchairs, bouncy seats, swings, bassinet, playpen, carseat, diapers, laundry and toys covering every square foot of the house, then the next day the kids request to turn the family’s living room into a fort, complete with dismantled couch cushions alienating every adult who dares to want to sit down, and then they have a slumber party that keeps the whole family up until 2am and wakes them back up at 6am, then they want to take your vehicle and leave town with other people who are just as irresponsible as they are!  Kids can be unreasonable, but it’s the joy of raising kids.  But our husbands begin to pursue us romantically at 11 at night and we think “can this man BE any more unreasonable?!?  What’s wrong with our priorities?  Which brings me to: we trade affection from a man (whom God made as our suitable counterpart spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically) for jelly kisses from children (who don‘t posses the capacity to fulfill us as a whole person).  In the end, we are left with an empty nest and our husband, who has become a stranger, uncomfortable to be around.  If we are doing this “for the children”, is this the role model we want to portray to them? Is this the marriage we want for them, because we are daily giving them a step by step guide how to duplicate this type of marriage.  It’s not selfish to prioritize your marriage over your kids, it’s the exact opposite of that! It’s modeling taking care of yourself first, putting the oxygen mask on yourself (something moms become horrible at), and teaching our children to do the same. And then there’s our husband: what about our marriage vows, when we pledged the rest of our lives to our man, just as he did to us? Now that we’re not mothering (or smothering) our kids, we can put some time and energy to keeping our vows.

-written by Heidi Elznic