My husband does not complete me.
No matter how hard he will ever try, no matter how much I want him to, or expect him to, it is not my husband’s job to complete me.
I was created to be completed by God.
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Not very long ago, I was a cranky wife. No, I’m not talking about this morning, or earlier today, or just a few minutes ago. A few years back, before I had this major revelation, I was a pretty cranky wife. If I found myself unhappy about something, I wanted my husband to fix it. If my husband did something that was displeasing, I made sure he knew about it. After all, we are married! It is his job to make me happy! It is what he signed up for! I picked him because HE made me the happiest!
At least that is what I thought before I had the most important “ah ha!” moment of our married life. I realized that it is not my husband’s job to make me happy. It is not his job to bring me peace. It is not his job to take away my fears. It is his job to point me to the One who can do all of that. My husband’s job has always been to walk with me as I walk with Christ.
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I have made no secret about my evangelical upbringing. The time that I spent growing up in Church and around men and women of God shaped my heart and my worldview. I remember being taught to pray for my future spouse at a young age. I prayed that God would guide and direct my husband’s life. I prayed that the Lord would be the God of his heart. Long before I ever met him, I prayed for the life that my husband and I would have together.
While these were wonderful things to desire, I was missing the most important part of my preparation for marriage. No one told me about the importance of becoming a whole person and remaining a whole person even after I had found my “other half.”
The only One who can perfectly complete my heart is Jesus. My wholeness must first be found in Christ before I am able to share in wholeness with my husband. My husband is not my soul mate, he is my help mate. If I look to my husband to be my source of joy, or peace, or hope, I am setting us up for failure.
Please hear me. We are to become one flesh with our spouse! Scripture says that quite plainly. I am not saying that I cannot have perfect unity with my husband. I am simply saying that two incomplete people do not make one whole person. I cannot go into marriage expecting my husband to make me feel complete. The place in my heart that was created for God cannot be filled with anyone else…. Even my spouse… Because ultimately, in some way, my husband will fail me. He will not fail me because he is bad. He will fail me because we are all flawed.
I’m sure you have known a woman who thinks that she has found her heart’s completion in the perfect guy. She is likely the same woman who finds herself unhappily married when the perfect guy stops loving her so perfectly. Men and women like this don’t know what to do, so they go on to find someone else who can love more perfectly than the last. It is misplaced expectation.
My mind keeps replaying that scene from Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise comes bursting through the door and gives his speech that ends with, “You complete me.”
It makes a great movie, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Sorry, Jerry. She will never complete you. If you put the expectation of your heart’s completion on her, you will break her. She was never designed to carry that weight. It is impossible for her. If you really love her, you will not ask her to complete you.
Realizing that it is not my husband’s job to make me happy has been one of the most freeing things to happen in our marriage. Truthfully, I already knew it. I just wasn’t acting like it. When I recognized that I had been looking to my husband to bring me joy, I quickly took that burden off of him. My husband is not the source of my joy, my peace, or my hope. He is responsible for helping me seek the Lord for them. He is the one with whom I get to share the joy and peace and hope that I find in the Lord. In this, we live out the roles that the Lord intended for us.
No, my husband does not complete me. But praise the Lord that he was never supposed to in the first place.
