...as Christ loved the Church

Upon reflection of my first post, I feel the need to express my responsibility as a husband.  Not that being a father isn't of the utmost importance, however I became a husband first and this is my premier responsibility.  I and my wife are one (Genesis 2:24b).  I am not one with my daughter.  They are two different types of relationships.

With regards to the purpose of marriage, John Piper put it succinctly when he said, "I have tried to show from scripture that the main meaning of marriage is to display the covenant-keeping love between Christ and His church.  In other words, marriage was designed by God most deeply, most importantly, to be a parable or a drama of the way Christ loves His church and the way the church loves and follows to Christ.  This is the most important thing for all husbands and wives to know about the meaning of their marriage" (http://desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/marriage-is-meant-for-making-childrendisciples-of-jesus-part-1, emphasis added).

I see today that many people put the love and care of their children above the love and care of their spouse.  That simply should not be so.  The family is first and foremost strong in the parents' mutual relationship with God. From there, a firm foundation is setup for the household to provide a Godly, Christ-filled environment by which the children can learn from the acts (more-so than mere words) of the parents, and even from the (future in our case) older siblings.  If the bond between the mother and father (and yes, I do say mother and father not father and father, or the opposite, for a reason) is weak, the children suffer.

So we spend time every day together in prayer, going through a Bible study, memorizing scripture, and just getting closer.  In order to do our best as parents, we must do our best as husband and wife, yet we must first do our best in our relationship with our Savior and God.

Now, does this mean that every day when I get home from work I should first greet my wife with a kiss before I greet my daughter? Does this mean in the morning I should be more joyful to see my wife's face than my daughter's face?  Well, I don't know.  I do know that I'm human, and therefore I get most things wrong...so maybe that which I do not do is that which I should do! : )  I'm sure that is the case often-times. But really, this needs to be a heart issue.  Of course, when I get home I want to see my baby first, because she is so new to me.  I want to see if she has changed (as she does daily!), I want to see if she reacts differently to me (big smiles, baby talk, etc).  This does not mean I put her before my wife.  I do love my wife more than my child. But how that plays out in active, daily life is not a textbook answer.  I need to make sure my heart is in the right place day to day and pray that I can be the husband and father God calls me to be.