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 illnesses. It’s fascinating to watch a sore heal 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 may suffer when her husband repeatedly insults her, complains about her body or what he does or does not 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 decline 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 drudgery.
Husbands generally misunderstand these ills. 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 spirit breaker in marriage is infidelity. Although there are some wives who step out of their marriage and have affairs, the focus of this theme is the wife’s concern about her husband’s infidelity. Every insecurity a woman can have comes to the surface and boils 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, irreparably damaged, 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 you have no energy or willpower left to get up again and take another hit. She may even feel like her husband has sucked the life out of her. 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.
Also, 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 issues that many couples are not prepared to face alone. Be the Christian wife looking to resurrect the romance and save the marriage!
