Crushed Spirit – What Crushes the Spirit of a Wife in Marriage
Proverbs 18:14 (NLT) says: “The human spirit can bear a sick body, but who can bear a crushed spirit?”
Because we are wonderfully made, our bodies have the ability to recover and heal from many diseases. It is fascinating to see how a sore heals from the inside out. The pain lasts a relatively short time, but one day you wake up with no pain and no open wound.
But what happens when you have a broken spirit? How easy is that to bear? Specifically, in marriage, what do you do if your spirit is crushed?
A crushed spirit can come from emotional or mental damage. In marriage, a wife can suffer when her husband repeatedly insults her, complains about her body or what he does or doesn’t do, or compares her to another woman he believes to be a model wife.
There are two shredders that I have yet to mention. The damage to a wife’s mental and emotional well-being is sustained when she has to deal with her husband’s complaints about her sexual deficiencies. When a woman has children and as she ages, a woman’s body changes dramatically. Hormone levels can drop or even plummet over time. What once seemed like an exciting and effortless task to “get in the mood” for sexual activity can now seem like a drudgery.
In general, husbands do not fully understand these evils. Some husbands don’t care and expect their wife to turn their sex on like she’s some kind of machine with an on/off switch. This is a topic that will be explored further and separately from this article. But it needs to be mentioned, especially as it relates to the impact it has in crushing the spirit of the wife.
The second crusher of spirits in marriage is infidelity. Although there are some wives who leave their marriage and have affairs, the focus of this topic is the wife’s concern about her husband’s infidelity. Every insecurity a woman can have comes to the surface and spills over when her man directs her heart, attention and time to another woman.
Thoughts are disordered and scattered. Emotions and feelings are raw, unpredictable, and sometimes volatile. It literally hurts to hurt when a husband is unfaithful. Even for a Christian wife, her spirit can feel trampled on, damaged beyond repair, and rotten to the core. She has a crushed spirit.
It may seem that the punctures do not stop. Pretty soon, you feel like you’ve been knocked out and have no energy or willpower left to get up again and take another hit. You may even feel like your husband has sucked you all your life. You have a broken spirit.
But ladies, you have a fight in you. In many cases, there are things you can still do to heal your broken spirit and save your marriage. God sends you ransom through various ways. Prayer and meditation are extremely helpful. You should never stop praying for your husband and marriage.
In addition, it is advantageous to seek the help of a professional who has experience in working with marital problems. Concerns about intimacy and infidelity are difficult topics that many couples are not ready to face alone. Be the Christian wife looking to resurrect romance and save the marriage!