The Peaceful Wife {a book review}

My early married years were far from peaceful.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my disrespect for my husband was the cause.

I often thought that if only my husband would change A or stop doing B, our marriage would be just fine. I rarely looked deep within myself for the reason for the chaos.

 

My respect or disrespect comes out of my heart and my soul. It is about my character and has almost nothing to do with what my husband does or does not do.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

Have you ever thought that if only your husband would do things your way, the way that makes sense to you, everything would be great?

 

Like many young married women, I had a vision of how things ought to be, how my dear husband should respond and was bitterly disappointed when none of it would fit into my pre-determined proper place.

 

I didn’t realize there was any other way to think than my way. I left no room or grace for him to be masculine and to think, feel, and process like a man, or to be himself with his own unique personality.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

I didn’t understand the correlation, in those early fretful years, between respecting my husband’s leadership role and trusting God.

But this is true: until we can trust God that His ways are right, honoring our husband’s leadership without fear is next to impossible.

 

A wife’s willingness to submit to her husband may be one of the biggest tests of her faith in Christ.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

As a new wife, I didn’t consciously choose to disrespect my husband. But with my subtle resistance and outright complaints, that is, indeed, what I did.

I was more concerned with preserving myself and less about trusting God, and submitting was a scary proposition. I was essentially holding back a little part of myself from God and my husband.

I didn’t know it then, but I was making myself and my fear of submission an idol. I was making that more powerful in my life than God.

 

I was tearing down my house with my own hands (Proverbs 14:1).

 

 

We don’t lose power and influence when we obey God’s word . . . the only power we lose is our sinful power to destroy, tear down, and harm.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

Respecting our husband’s God-given authority is crucial to a happy home and a peaceful heart.

But many of us were not raised to recognize what respect to husbands should look like. We were taught by the media, our peers, and sometimes even our own mothers, to disrespect men.

We later used sulky pouting, overt shouting, and other forms of manipulation to deal with our fear, anxiety, and worry as wives.

 

But if our husbands are going to become more loving, selfless, and godly, our path to get to that place is for us to begin to obey God first.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

When respect becomes our first response to our husbands, the foundation for peace and harmony in our marriage is set.

 

When we willingly submit to our husbands, what we are doing first and foremost is submitting to God.

 

This yielding to God and His truth is the key to becoming a peaceful wife.

 

The Peaceful Wife by April Cassidy is a book for any wife searching for that missing key. Her book’s main focus is in the tagline of her book: Living in Submission to Christ as Lord. 

Because when we purposefully seek to find our contentment in Christ alone,

 

. . . there is so much freedom, joy, and peace. We can choose to accept our husbands as they are and release them and ourselves from the prison of all our assumptions and expectations.

—The Peaceful Wife

 

With chapter headings like Finding the Missing Piece of the Puzzle, God’s Beautiful Design, My Husband Shares His Heart (where April interviews her own husband), and Learning the Language of Respect, April not only shares her testimony but showcases the stories of several other wives as they embark on their journey of change.

The Peaceful Wife is peppered with checklists and questions to challenge us in how we think about our husbands, ourselves, and our marriage while covering the gamut of what biblical submission is and is not.

April is clear to point out that the quest for peace in our marriage will be unique and cannot be achieved by following a set of cookie-cutter rules. Every husband is different, therefore, how we show respect will look different within each and every marriage.

 

The Peaceful Wife

One of the things I found interesting in April’s book is found on page 54. As she began her peace-seeking journey, she wrote down all the beliefs she held about God, marriage, her husband, and herself—the wrong self-talk and ungodly “fixed beliefs”—things she believed for so long she believed them to be true. She then studied the Bible carefully, comparing her beliefs with what the Bible actually said.

Discovering the truths of Scripture were the keys to transforming her faulty fixed beliefs to align with God’s life-giving, peace-giving truths.

I first “met” April in early 2013 at The Peaceful Wife while searching for godly marriage sites. Although at this point in my marriage her teachings were not new, her words resonated with me nonetheless and I devoured every post she had written.

It was refreshing to find a place that built up marriage, explained godly submission, and focused on the “how” of becoming a peaceful wife. Her humble admissions of past failures, and how she turned that around, gave me and her readers a hands-on approach to dealing with our female proclivities of fear, control, and disrespect.

 

 

 

The Peaceful Wife: Living in Submission to Christ as Lord will teach the peace-seeking wife that becoming a godly wife is a life-long journey of laying aside her sinful nature, learning to abide in Christ, and allowing Him to have full reign over her heart.

 

I have been married for over thirty years.

There is no other way for peace than to hold on tight to your husband’s hand while keeping your face toward the light and Lordship of Christ.

 

For we are members of his [Christ’s] body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. (Ephesians 5:30–31)

 

(I did not receive this book in exchange for a review, but willingly sought out this book to share it with all of you.)

 

Abiding in the Vine,

~ Gleniece

The post “The Peaceful Wife {a book review}” was first published on Desert Rain.

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