Yuku free message boards

I had an interesting encounter with God this morning. I was listening to Family Life and they were talking about the death of Dennis Rainey's granddaughter Molly and they are sharing a lot of what happened that week. I started thinking about how things would have been if it had been my family and I got back to forgiveness.
I was angry at my father for a very long time. My childhood was unpleasant. My father worked a lot and when he was home he was always unhappy or mad. As I grew into a man I started to resent what he did and I was holding a lot of anger towards him. I stopped talking to him for a few years and when I reached my mid 20's I just changed how I looked at him. I stopped looking at him as my "father" and all that I thought that meant and I started look at him as just a man who is my father. When I did that I was able to just let most of it go. A few years ago I wrote him an email kind of dumping what was left into the email and after that it was just gone. I don't have a problem with my father anymore, and I think our relationship is pretty good.
As I thought about forgiveness this morning as I was praying God led me to that. I thought, okay I changed how I view my dad and once I was able to do that I was able to let it go. Then I thought, how do I view my wife? That was an interesting question. When we were dating she was still hung up on her ex, and she was constantly comparing him to me. When we were dating I viewed her as someone to take care of. We broke up several times because of him....well actually she broke up with me for no more than a couple of hours at a time. I finally put my foot down one day and said it was either him or me. She chose me, or so I thought. He was never brought up again. A year later I proposed and she said yes. Then two days after our wedding she told me that she was still thinking about him and that I shouldn't touch her anymore because when I did she felt dirty. I begged her not to do what she was doing because I knew that if she did I would get caught up in my own life again and that when she was ready to be married to me, if that ever came, I would be locked into new habits. She told me to do what I had to do for myself because that is what she was going to do. 6 months later she found herself in a womens prayer group and then she was ready to be married to me. I, of course, true to my word was not. She seemed content to let me work through what had happened but here we are 4 years later and I still have not been able....or willing as I found out this morning, to let it go.
As I was praying God asked me how did I view her, and the only answer I could come up with was as a rival. I do not trust her with my feelings. In fact the thought scares me to death. God brought it back to Jesus again and I started thinking about what Paul said "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church." Then I started meditating on how Christ loved the church. Which brought me back to he saw the church as someone he had to take care of and it started to make some more sense to me. Christ did the things he did because he loved the church. The happy times, the sad times, and the angry times. The story of Lazurus just popped into my head where Jesus waited to come and help till after he was dead. He wept with Mary and Martha even though he knew he was going to bring him back from the dead. That still amazes me, that Jesus loved those two enough to weep with them.
So I have to find a way to change how I view my wife from a rival back to someone I want to take care of........and I don't know how to do that yet.