In the middle of my grade 9 year, during my school holidays, I received an sms from my dad saying he wanted to speak to me. I wasn’t really stressed becuase that’s generally how my dad did things. I’d always get an sms or an email, because we didn’t have a very open enough relationship to actually just talk unless something needed to be addressed.

So I met him that evening and there was a huge misunderstanding that ended up in my dad saying it was either I move out of his house or his wife leaves with my little siblings. But it was pretty obvious for him that he preferred I move out. So I did.

My dad and I didn’t speak for an entire year.

I think for the longest time, it seemed normal to me. My oldest sister didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad so it wasn’t much of a shock to me when my relationship with my dad crumbled even further.

Until I started dating Emmanuel.

“And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband..” – Ephesians 5:21‭-‬29 NLT

At first, verses 22-24 used to irritate me. “Submit to the authority that God gave a husband because you have to.” But all this homie needs to do is love me. I’m out here submitting and he must just have lovely feelings towards me. Geez. I hated hearing people preach from this passage. And as Emmanuel and I have been talking about celebrating our third year of being together soon, these verses have been on my spirit quite greatly.

Throughout my life, it’s been relatively easier to submit to God and literally allow Him to move in my life, the more I’ve understood His sacrificial love for me. The more I’ve come to know a God that is faithful, is true to His word and loves me enough to send His Son to take my place on the cross, the easier it’s become to be led by Him. I did nothing to earn it. But He would have still done it, even if I didn’t choose Him.

The submission isn’t forced. And what a challenge it has been to understand that because I just couldn’t fathom submitting to someone, often even God, with the love I had seen and come to believe was the standard while growing up. I’d never known submission as something I wanted to do. It always looked like something I had to do.

I believe there’s a reason those few verses are mostly used to address the way the husband should lead more than He does the way a woman should submit. The mandate to love is incredibly weighty. And as I wrestle with God, the more I understand the importance of being led by someone who understands the weight of what “love your wife” means. Because then they also understand the weight of what it means to be submitted to.

So much time has been spent on discussing submission that I believe we may miss the importance of what God is really saying. Yes, there is a call for wives to submit to their husbands. And it’s not one to be taken lightly or even blindly. But there is an even greater call for husbands to love. A love that echoes the way Christ pursues and loves His Church.

Becuae maybe what we might be overlooking that loving your wife is where it begins. And that maybe submission becomes a natural response to the leadership that is rooted in love that God describes in this verse. Which also means that the choice to be with someone who leads from a place of knowing God and His word is no small thing.

I remember having a conversation with my older sister about the phrase ‘your love for them will grow’. And she said “I don’t believe that’s true. Because God is love. And so if we say ‘love grows’, it means it has the capacity to shrink. Which isn’t true on both spectrums because God is constant. But maybe once you understand someone, you start to understand how to love them better.”

And I think Emmanuel has been a physical outworking of that exact thought. His love has been consistent, but has always adapted itself in ways to love me better. Even in the 6 years before we started dating. He’s been patient. Kind. Rebuking. Humble. Unconditional. And what’s probably been most reassuring about it, is that it’s not just me he loves in that way. I’ve seen it with so many other people that I believe he’s not trying to “impress me” whenever he expresses his love for me. I believe it’s an overflow of the times spent in the unseen spaces with God.

Man! Emmanuel and I have definitely had to really do some work when it came to my receiving of love and my willingness to return it. Because on one extreme, I would overcompensate to prove to him I deserved his love. And on the other, I would struggle to lean back into the truth that he loved me. I often struggled to believe his “I love you.” I still do sometimes.

My mother moved to England when I was so young, that I don’t even have memories of ever living with her. So my father, who built a home between those two extremes, was the only person I learned the dynamic of “love” from.

It has been a challenging privelage to continuously unlearn what I’ve known and allow God to use Emmanuel’s leadership and His word to redefine what He meant when He was calling husbands to love.

And what it meant for a wife and the generations to come when He held men to that standard in marriage.