Lead Me.

Have you heard this song yet? If not, take a minute to listen and then come back and read.

This is such a great song. It's such a testamony to how God can change the heart of a man and help him to truly lead his family in a great and Godly way.

For those of you that know Shane and me personally, you will know that we have a very unique realationship. Our main love language is sarcasm and teasing. We enjoy laughing, teasing, and even taking jabs at each other. We know when we have taken things too far, but usually nothing is off limits for us.

You will also know that I struggle deeply with control issues. I always have to be the one in charge- if things don't go my way, I get upset. This is something I have been working on God has forced me to work on over the past 6 years of our marriage. It is something that I want so desperately to give up, yet, cling to with every fiber of my being. If I can just control every situation, every decision, every part of life, then things will be ok.

One thing that I really struggled with was our financial situation. When we were first married, I did all of the bills and managed our finances. It was something I HATED doing, and left me feeling stressed, frustrated, and even angry with Shane. I was not good with our finances, nor did I want to be.

I begged Shane repeatedly to take them over, and he really had no desire to do so. That was when I slowly started to change my way of thinking. Part of me so badly wanted him to take over the financial aspect of our lives, but at the same time, if he didn't do them the same exact way that I did, I didn't want him doing them. My way was the right way, and any other way of doing them was WRONG! But, I decided that I was going to pray that God give him the strength to step up and me the strength to step down. Slowly our roles started to change.

I finally reached a point of deciding that I was just going to trust him. I handed over the reigns- although I will admit that my controling nature just HAD to show him the right way of doing it, so I gave him a tutorial of how to do it all (yeah, it was that bad). He finally took over and we had a very rocky transition at first. I don't think it was anything that he was doing wrong, rather he was fixing everything that I had done wrong over the first 2 or 3 years of our marriage.

Once he took over the finances fully, and he began to prove to me that he was fully capable of handling things, my control issues slowly started to diminish. Now, don't get me wrong, I still have some very controlling tendencies, I'm still a work in progress and have a looooooooooooong way to go.

As my control issues with the finances started to dwindle, my respect and trust in my husband started to grow. I was amazed at how he could make a dollar stretch, and how he could figure out our budget 3 months in advance. Once God took that control from my heart and gave Shane the confidence to lead our family, our entire relationship changed- the fights stopped, the hurt and frustration ended, and God was glorified in Shane's leading and my submission.

To this day, I'm not sure how he does it. He sat down yesterday to figure out how we are going to survive the next few months. He told me he worked on the budget and I looked at him with disbelief and asked him "We aren't going to survive are we?" His simple response was "It's going to be tight, but we ARE going to survive. Don't worry about it, I have it under control. We will be fine." That was all I needed to hear. (please don't read this post and think I'm whining about our finances, this post is about the transformation of  our relationship)

It's amazing how God has transformed that aspect of our lives. He has brought about a confident Shane that I have never seen before. He has brought out a freeing comfort within myself that doesn't even feel the need to drill Shane with the details. He has even helped me to find freedom in not knowing how much money we have at any given time, and that if I ask Shane if I can spend any amount and he says "No" I'm ok with that- and if he says yes, I'm ok with that too. (the old Jill would become defiant if he told me no and do what I wanted anyway.) He has brought about a trust in our relationship that is so comforting and natural. This is how God intended for relationship to be- Shane leading and me following.

This trust and respect has overflowed into other areas of our lives too. Shane has stepped up and been strong when I could no longer be. He has taken control of our children, our home, and our family. We are still a work in progress, and still have a lot to learn about leading and following, but we are on the right track. It's been a long hard journey and will probably continue to be, but ultimately God is transforming our lives and our hearts, and it's a beautiful thing to just let Shane Lead Me.