The Politically Incorrect Wife: God's Plan for Marriage Still Works Today - Softcover

Grigsby, Connie; Cobb, Nancy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590521102 ISBN 13: 9781590521106

Publisher: PRH Christian Publishing, 2003

Synopsis

Just what is a politically incorrect wife? She is a woman who is married to her husband and not to popular American culture. The politically incorrect wife does not buy into the stifling modern-day thinking that says, "Look out for number one. Treat your husband no better than he treats you." Instead, she cultivates a joyful marriage using transformational spiritual principles. As formerly politically correct wives with miserable marriages, popular speakers and authors Nancy Cobb and Connie Grigsby lead readers confidently beyond the picket lines of the politically correct -- into a warm, rewarding marriage.

About this title

About the Author

Connie Grigsby

Connie Grigsby, a University of Oklahoma graduate, enjoys pointing others towards life's bottom line. With warmth and humor, she exhorts others to refuse to be content with ho-hum living. Grigsby is a popular teacher and speaker involved in women's and youth ministries.

Nancy Cobb

Nancy Cobb is a popular speaker at women's retreats. She led a Bible study of over 500 women for four years in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has previously worked on the team of Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham, in teaching seminars to women at the Billy Graham Training Center. She is the Leader of Women's Ministries at Christ Community Church, a congregation of over 5,000, and spends much of her time mentoring younger women. She and her husband, Ray, have four grown children and live in Omaha, Nebraska.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What Is a Politically
Incorrect Wife?

You’re probably wondering that right now, aren’t you? The
politically incorrect wife is a woman who is married to
her husband—and not married to popular American culture.
How she views her husband and how she treats him are not
determined by society’s widely accepted ideologies. In fact, she
firmly refuses to bend to mind-sets that would ultimately damage
her marriage. It’s not that she doesn’t hold herself to a set of standards;
she does. But her standards are different—higher, actually—
than standards considered politically correct because they do not
offend people who hold to commonly agreed-upon thought.

The politically incorrect wife does not buy into modern-day
thinking that says:

1. You are in control of your own life.
2. Marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition.
3. You should treat your husband like he treats you.
4. Your feelings are your guide.
5. Your husband needs to earn your respect.
6. You should make him pay for your forgiveness.
7. There’s no such thing as a happy marriage anymore.
8. Your husband’s job is to make you happy.

The politically incorrect wife does hold to these spiritual principles,
which transform from the inside out:

1. Doing things God’s way is the key to having a joyful life.
2. I am 100 percent responsible to God for my behavior as a wife.
3. I’ll love my husband unconditionally.
4. I will act the way I want to feel.
5. Respecting my husband brings glory to God.
6. Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling.
7. A Source of power is readily available to help me!
8. My joy is not determined by another human being.

When it comes to both of these approaches to being a wife, you
can be confident that we (Nancy and Connie) speak with voices of
experience. Between the two of us, we bought into modern-day
thinking regarding marriage for nearly forty years! During that very
long and arduous time, we flowed right along with emerging cultural
values and became more entrenched in the idea that our husbands
had to earn their way to our hearts. Over the years we
became stingier about how much love, affection, care, and concern
we doled out to our husbands. In our minds, it made perfect sense
for us to suspiciously measure the amount of love we thought our
husbands were giving us and then treat them accordingly.

Our modus operandi was faulty for a number of reasons. For
one thing, we were clueless to the fact that our measuring tools did
not take into account that a man’s way of showing love to a woman
oftentimes does not directly correspond to how a woman perceives
love. Because we were using the wrong measuring tools, we didn’t
realize that our husbands had been expressing their love to us all
along—but from their male perspectives (imagine that!).

And we held it against them!

Of course, looking back now, it’s easy to see just how selfish and
self-centered our idea of love really was. It’s also easy to see how our
mind-sets were molded by society’s present-day messages, which
basically say, “I only do something for you if I can get something out
of it.”

Until we discovered God’s plan for marriage and began to follow
His set of standards, our husbands felt like they couldn’t win
no matter what they did.

So they stopped trying.

And so did we!

Being politically correct kept our marriages in “stuck” position
for years—so much so that if you had taken a snapshot of our marriages
during that time, you would have found cold hearts and
unhappy husbands who were resigned to living with emotionally
distant and often angry wives.

By God’s grace, we discovered a life-changing truth: Political
correctness doesn’t work in a marriage. We were shocked to learn
this! After all, we had spent years shaping our lives around this
faulty view. Now, however, we consider that view to be utter foolishness
and thank God every day for showing us the spiritual principles
in His plan for marriage.

SHARING THE FRUIT WITH YOU

Not long after discovering God’s scriptural “job description” for
wives, I (Nancy) realized that if I wanted to have a passionate rela-
tionship with Christ, I needed to do what He said. Since that’s what
I wanted, I began being a wife God’s way—a wife empowered by
the very One who created marriage. This turned my world upside
down! Within weeks, God changed my heart of stone into a heart
of love for my husband, Ray. I now have the best of both worlds. I
love the Lord with all my heart and have never loved Ray more!

For me (Connie), becoming politically incorrect in this area
changed not only my marriage, but my life as well. I developed a
genuine love for my husband, and I no longer treated him in an inkind
manner. This liberated him to love me in a fresh way. It softened
his heart toward me beyond description. Our daughters
comment on this regularly. Most of all, becoming a politically incorrect
wife opened the door to an intimate relationship with God. I
believe my treatment of Wes stood in the way of that for years. Why
would God shower His blessings on a stony heart? He didn’t!
Before, I loved God in a casual sense. Now, I love Him with a passion.

After we (Nancy and Connie) met and got to know each other,
we discovered that each of our lives had been radically transformed
when we began to follow God’s ways in the area of marriage. We also
discovered that we have a similar passion for helping women
develop an intimate love relationship with Jesus and walk in the
freedom of having their primary ministry—their marriage—in
order.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

So how did we come up with the concept of the politically incorrect
wife? Not long ago, we were talking with a woman who was
unhappy in her marriage. She wanted to know what she could do
to get her husband to change. After all, she mused, aren’t husbands
the ones who need changing the most?

We began to share our thoughts and ideas about what fulfills a
woman in marriage. And to her amazement, it had nothing to do
with changing her husband.

She grew quiet and mulled over our words for quite some time.
Finally she announced, “You know, the trouble with what you’re
saying is that it’s so politically incorrect to act that way.”

“Certainly it is that,” we agreed. “But the real problem isn’t that
it’s politically incorrect. The problem is that political correctness
simply doesn’t work in a marriage.”

We then challenged her to consider becoming a politically
incorrect wife. She said she just didn’t know if she could do it
because her way made so much more sense to her.

“Tell us again how well your way is working,” we responded,
with a bit of amusement in our voices.

She burst into laughter! Obviously her way wasn’t working at
all, for her answer began with the words, “I’m so unhappy in my
marriage I could die.” (To say it wasn’t working was a huge understatement!)

So the woman agreed to consider changing her course. We
seriously wondered if she’d forsake the familiar for the unfamiliar.
However, she was so unhappy in her marriage that we thought she
might.

Then, two weeks later, one of us received a call from her.

“I can’t believe it,” she exclaimed. “I’m happier than I’ve been
in years. We still have a long way to go, but I feel as if a huge weight
has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel like the five-hundredpound
gorilla is no longer sitting on my back. I feel like I’m becoming
me again—I’d lost me for such a long time.”

Edition details

• Publisher: PRH Christian Publishing
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1590521102
• ISBN 13: 9781590521106
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 300