Not Making Children the Foundation of Marriage

In this episode of Wifey Wednesdays, we explore the importance of keeping Christ at the center of our lives and our marriages, rather than allowing our children to become our primary focus. While children are a wonderful blessing from God, our marriages are meant to reflect Christ and the church. When we devote all our time and attention to parenting, we risk neglecting our spouses and creating distance that may become painfully apparent when our children leave home.

This week, we’re challenged to examine our priorities, guard against making our children idols, and intentionally honor our marriages in every season of parenting. When Christ is truly our priority, He shapes the way we love our husbands, raise our children, and order our lives according to His will.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Emily Hatfield

Author, Podcaster, Ladies Speaker

What is Wifey Wednesdays?

Wifey Wednesdays: A show for women that focuses on the Titus 2 principle: learning to love our husband and our children, and being the keepers at home that God intends for us to be. Wifey Wednesdays, hosted by Emily Hatfield, is released every Wednesday.

Hello and welcome to Wifey Wednesdays, a podcast for women who are seeking to be the best wives they can be. I’m your host, Emily Hatfield, and this is the show where the plan is always to do things God’s way, especially our marriages.

Today’s topic is a hard one, I think. Maybe not in understanding, but in implementation.

We live in a society that revolves around children. Or at least, that’s popular in mom culture. It’s all about keeping their schedule, doing what they want, making them the priority. Everything and every moment seems like it’s supposed to revolve around kids.

This isn’t the way, though.

There are a lot of things wrong with the order. For the purpose of this podcast, we obviously are going to dive into the order of things as far as children and spouse, but I think we need to back up even further so that we can get where we need to be.

In Luke 14:26, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

Becoming a Christian means moving every single person on planet down a peg, including yourself. When we are baptized into Christ and put on Christ, we have changed identities. It’s no longer I who lives but Christ, and as such, everything revolves around Him. And He said - if I value any earthly relationship ahead of my relationship with Him, I’m not going to actually be His disciple.

When we became a Christian, we confessed that Jesus is Lord. We have to live that way. He has to be above all and over all and more important than all and the priority above all! He is everything. My life revolves around Him.

Now, as we talk about regularly on this podcast, that fact changes everything about who I am and what I do. It changes the way I am as a spouse. It changes the way I am as a mom. It changes every part of me. But it starts there. I must give my entire life to Christ, and let Him be the priority over everything and everyone around me.

When you get married, it says that two become one flesh. And the command is that you leave father and mother and join to your spouse. You make a new family. So do we see the danger in making our children the priority and the emphasis and the total focus of our lives…when the point is that they’re supposed to separate from us one day — and our spouse isn’t. We’re joined as one with our spouse for the entire time we are on earth together. Our kids are meant to separate off and create their own family. But so many marriages fracture and break apart after children are grown up and leave the house, because the two people realize they haven’t focused on each other in a long time. They don’t know each other. They maybe don’t even like each other.

Maybe resentments have been growing for a long time. Maybe one person took on more responsibilities with the children and that left them bitter when the other had time to themselves. Maybe you’ve just been so busy and so focused on meeting the needs of your children that you forgot to meet the needs of your spouse, and now there is space AND hurt AND resentment.

It is difficult — because the love we have for our spouse and the love we have for our children is a completely different kind of love. But all of it must be put within its proper place. Jesus says - love me above all. Place me above everyone and everything. When you do, you then order your life around His commands. And He has said - marriage is a good thing. It’s meant to point other people to Christ and the church. So we honor our marriages, we honor our spouse, we serve and submit and respect and uphold and value. We work together in training our children to love the Lord with all of their heart — but we also train them to grow into Christ loving adults who are able to live a holy life apart from our watchful eye. They are going to be accountable for themselves. We must do all that we can while we have them….but we cannot say, I have limited time with my children therefore they must get every single ounce of my attention and focus and my spouse will still be around later.

Children need to see parents living out their faith. They need to see the beauty of Christ and the church displayed in the marriage that is lived out right in front of them. Perhaps there is no better apologetic for children of Christians than to see that great love between their parents as it reflects Christ and the church. There is definitely no greater deterrent than to go to church with your parents every week and then see them mistreat each other, ignore one another, speak down about the other throughout the week when they’re home.

But so often, that becomes the case because the parents are focused on the children and not their spouse…..when they’re not focused on prioritizing things in the way Christ would have them.

This is SO hard.

I remember the newborn phase very well, and there is just nothing quite so demanding. How could I make anything my focus other than my newborn? We were just surviving!

And listen, I get that there are different seasons of marriage. The newborn phase is a different season than approaching empty nest. But what can we do within each season that upholds our marriage in its proper place and keeps our children from becoming idols?

Ultimately it’s just about checking our hearts, as per usual. Only you know where your priorities lie within your family structure. Do you devote more time and attention and care and support to your children — out of necessity because they’re quite needy when they’re small, or have you detached from your spouse because it’s easier? Because you’re over them — you’re allowing resentments to grow and the space between you is welcomed? Are you actively seeking to honor your spouse or do you find yourself complaining about them to your children? When given the choice, do you typically choose time with the children or with your spouse? Do you actively try to make quality time a priority, or are you fine with giving leftovers?

I think Satan would love for all of us to become so distracted with a blessing from God that we put our guard down to his advances. I think that’s why children can become an idol. Children are a heritage from the Lord! They are a blessing! But Satan would love to use that blessing to distract you from your marriage and then sneak in and ruin it by tearing it down.

We cannot focus so much time and energy on our children that we forget to focus on our spouse.

Think about the dysfunctional relationship between Isaac and Rebekah. Each of them had a favorite child - which is dysfunctional already - but, Rebekah was willing to lie to her husband in order to allow her child to get ahead. She was purposefully deceptive toward Isaac so that Jacob would receive the blessing. That’s horrible! But while it’s an extreme situation, it isn’t that far off from how we act sometimes.

While this isn’t necessarily a marriage-related example, I think about the way David elevated his children and refused to punish some of their heinous crimes….thus leading to more and more destruction and loss of life. Why didn’t David punish Amnon for his awful treatment of Tamar? Did he favor his children more than he favored the word of the Lord? Was he more concerned with keeping them placated than pleasing God?

We have to be careful! I have known of SO many parents who have backtracked on their adherence to scripture because their child became involved in a certain sin. Many who have said for years that homosexuality is a sin (and it is)..who suddenly disagree because a child has gone that direction. Many who would argue vehemently that adultery is the only grounds for a remarriage (for the innocent party)….only to backtrack when their grown children got involved in something sinful.

We have to make Christ the priority, always. We cannot allow our children to become idols. We cannot let them make the rules or set the tone or make us alter our course. We cannot allow them to distract us from our mission — which, within marriage, is to showcase Christ and the church to the watching world, them included! We cannot use them as an excuse to not fulfill God’s commands — should bedtimes or wake up routines mean I don’t go to worship? Should the fact that it’s difficult and time consuming with children keep me from evangelism or hospitality?

When Christ is all in all — we will arrange our lives in the ways He wants. There are going to be moments and days and seasons where things have to shift around. When a child is young, or sick, or going through something hard — sometimes there has to be more time allotted. But always, we can center our hearts on what God wants. Always we can make Him the center. When we do, we won’t leave our spouse in the dust just because our child is needy.

I want to order my life in the way that Jesus wants me to. I know that He must be above all, and then His influence must infuse all of the other relationships I have. Because I am His, I will prioritize being the wife I am called to be. Because I am His, I will prioritize being the type of parent I am called to be…one that doesn’t make them an idol even though that might prove difficult.

Above all things, I want to follow Jesus. When my spouse is my main focus or when my children are more of a priority than my spouse — both of those things can equal disaster. Jesus must be my main focus. Doing marriage His way must remain my goal. Honoring my spouse and teaching my children and helping them understand the relationship with Christ and the church — that’s my goal.

I know this is a difficult thing to do. Trust me, I’m over here in the struggle of it. I homeschool my kids — I am with them what feels like every moment of every day. I have a child that I have to watch extremely closely what feels like all of the time because of life-threatening food allergies. But I know that while I must steward my role as mom to them, I cannot neglect stewarding the role of wife that I have been given.

So I hope that this week we can each do our best to prioritize Christ in our lives, and let Him dictate how we order the other relationships that we have.

Thanks so much for being with me - I hope you’ll join me again next time as we continue our final season of Wifey Wednesdays. Until then remember - love God, love your husband.