Thank you so much! I am extremely thankful to God every day.

He is amazing. I am extremely blessed.

Wow, thank you for sharing. That is awesome!

You're welcome!

Wow! Thanks so much! I pray they will both be a huge blessing to you. Those are the spiritual treasures that God showed me that totally changed my life.

You are most welcome.

Thanks so much! 😊

Mary, I'm so glad that it was a blessing. Thanks for letting me know!

@@AprilCassidy 💗

How I praise God for what He is doing in your life! That is wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing with me. Blessings to you!

Thank you. Blessings to you, as well.

Yes!!!! Sometimes, I am just completely overwhelmed with how good Greg and God are to me. I know I can never repay either of them for all they have done for me.

carolynxoxo - I spent a lot of time reading everything I could get my hands on in the Bible. But especially John, Romans, the epistles, Psalms, Isaiah, Proverbs (esp. 31), and Jeremiah. And passages about humility, pride, marriage, being a wife, idolatry, self-righteousness, complaining, bitterness, forgiveness, control, God's sovereignty, God's character, God's promises, and things relating to my core beliefs about God, self, and others. Oh! And my identity in Christ!

I realized in October of 2008 that the wall between us was greater than I had previously thought. For the first time in our marriage, I began to ask God to show me if there was anything I was doing to contribute to the problems and to him being so shut down. About 6 weeks or so later, Greg and I were in our church bookstore and I picked up a book called Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. Right there in that bookstore, God opened my eyes to how disrespectful I had been and that I had contributed greatly to the issues in our marriage. I was mortified and completely shocked. I had no idea that I had any part in our problems. Yes, I believe that if Greg had told me, even the first summer that we were married, that my attitude, words, and actions were hurting him, I would have wanted to try to make things right. I thought if I ever hurt or upset him that he would tell me the way I told him when I felt hurt. Which was often. But he didn't say a word those whole first 14 years of marriage. He just shut down. I sure wish he had told me and given me a chance to change.

I shared this on my Peaceful Wife Blog FB page this week: Why didn't I realize I was hurting my husband deeply those first 14 years of our marriage? Here are the 10 biggest reasons: 1. I didn't have any teaching, books, or classes about what respect meant. I understood some things about it. I was avoiding the extremely disrespectful things (violence, cussing, name-calling, threatening divorce, etc...), so I thought I was being respectful. 2. No one addressed my wrong attitude. I assumed if I were doing something hurtful that someone would tell me about it in my family, at church, among my friends, or somewhere. I especially assumed that Greg, my husband, would tell me if I hurt him because I told him the second he hurt me. He never did. I wish he had! 3. I wasn't as bad as a lot of the women around me. And I wasn't anywhere near as disrespectful as some women on TV. 4. I didn't have a godly mentoring wife in my life to give me feedback or teach me the stuff I missed about how to be a godly wife. 5. My pride went unchallenged for decades. Pride is very blinding. It makes it difficult to see my own sin. 6. Greg didn't look or act hurt by me. He seemed stoic. I eventually thought he really didn't have feelings and that nothing I could say or do could hurt him. 7. I point blank asked Greg many times what he needed and what I could do better over the years. He always responded with silence. 8. I had been marinating in a radical feminist culture all my life and had inadvertently absorbed a lot of terrible messages about men and women like: - Men are idiots. - If there is a problem in the relationship, it's automatically the guy's fault. - Men and women should be exactly the same. - Women are practically perfect and nearly goddesses. - Men's faults are much worse than women's faults are. - Men are like children. - Women have so much more wisdom than men do. I would never have said these things out loud. But I had received these messages loud and clear, never really stopping to think where they came from or if they were true. 9. I had no idea how differently men see the world from women and how different their masculine perspective is. I also had no clue how different their needs can be in marriage. I didn't know that for most men, feeling respected and admired can be more important to them than feeling loved, for example. I assumed he needed and wanted exactly what I needed and wanted. Love, lots of attention, long emails, hours of sharing feelings/words, face-to-face time, emotional bonding, affection, etc... But those things weren't what he needed and wanted most. I didn't know that most men bond through shoulder-to-shoulder activities without words. And that he tried to show me love through acts of service, many times, that I didn't even recognize as his way of loving me in those earlier years. 10. I didn't understand my husband's introverted personality and unique strengths/weaknesses. I assumed he would think and process things exactly like I did and when he didn't, I couldn't understand why he was doing what he was doing. So I made a lot of wrong assumptions. For example, I made decisions very quickly. He didn't. And when he couldn't come up with an answer immediately, I thought he was purposely keeping his thoughts from me. I didn't know he needed a lot more time to think and process before he could answer.

Thank you so much for sharing❤

He uses a LOT more words with me now than he did when he was totally shut down. He did write me a love letter that he actually shared on line once a few years ago. Which was super sweet and unexpected. He would NEVER have done that before. But he doesn't generally send me mushy emails, love letters, poems, or give many compliments. Occasionally, he will surprise me with something. And when/if he does, I appreciate it greatly. But honestly, now that I understand his love language, I don't feel deprived even if he doesn't give me words. I SEE his love. I experience it. I can put my hands on it in so many tangible ways. Now that I know his heart and understand his love for me, I don't try to change him. And now I receive TONS and TONS of love from him on a daily basis. Not a lot of verbal stuff. But at times, I feel overwhelmed almost to the point of tears because he blesses me and sacrifices for me and does so many sweet things for me. Thanks for asking!