Following are excerpts from the series The Meaning of Love by Elisabeth Elliot on her radio program, Gateway to Joy. This is the first of four messages to husbands and wives.

I'm quite surprised at how many letters I get from men. So very often they say: "Our marriage is falling apart. I don't quite know what's happening, and I don't know what to do about it. Elisabeth, please help me."

I don't think I can do any better than this talk given to a men's gathering in 1987, one of the most moving stories I have read. The man who spoke said, "It's easy to scorn women. And most men do. We see women as physically weak, easy to intimidate, bound to the menial tasks of motherhood, emotional, illogical, and often petty.

"Or we see them as temptresses, in desire we idolize them and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us. Male scorn for women affects every aspect of our lives—our relations with our mothers, our girlfriends, our secretaries, our wives, our children, the church, and even God Himself.

"I swaggered through marriage for many years ruling my wife Susan and my children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority. After all, Scripture explicitly commands wives to obey their husbands. Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke.

"I lived by the adage that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. My family experienced the truth of a different adage. When the tough get going, the going gets tough. I alienated Susan and the children and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be for them or me.

"…Susan would have left me if it weren't for the children. And even that tie was losing its force. Then a number of dramatic events occurred that wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological and spiritual life. My eyes were opened, and …my family has been restored.

"By 1983 we had six children and, despite our spiritual estrangement, 'Susan was four months pregnant. Our first babies had been born without any problems…. however, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1983, Susan began hemorrhaging and within two hours delivered our seventh baby—dead. What a shock! At 2:00 in the morning, in a start, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my hand my tiny, lifeless son and stared in disbelief at his death.

"What an injustice. Others should have died, not him. I should have died instead of him. I was guilty, but alive. He was innocent, but dead. In an instant, as never before, I saw that there is deeply rooted in this universe an evil that affects even the most innocent. I realized that many things are simply beyond my power. I could not raise my poor baby from the dead. I could not command my wife's love.

In that same instant I was forced to choose. Either to rage against the universe that contained this evil, to hate it for harming and killing my baby, or to acknowledge that although this evil existed, and although I was powerless to undo many of its effects or to fend off its attacks, other things remained very much within my power and under my influence, particularly my living children and my wife, whom, to that point, I had treated so poorly. I had the power to make their lives worse by raging against my baby's death and my wife's lack of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly.

"Is there a man listening to me who needs to learn to love his children and wife properly? This man says, "I had to choose. I stared at my tiny, helpless, stillborn infant cradled in my hand." In that critical instant, with God's grace, he chose the arduous, un-dramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

"I found that the only way I could learn to love and to cease being a cause of pain was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride and dozens of other vices. I began holding my tongue. I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them. I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly, for the important thing was not to be right, or to be thought well of, but to love.

"As I had made myself the center of attention too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows. I sought to know Susan's and to help her bear them. And frankly, once I started listening to Susan—once I began really hearing her and drawing her out—I was startled as to how many, and how deep, were her wounds and her sorrows. Sorrows that arise from the particular physiology of women and from their vocation as mothers, which gives them heavy duties and responsibilities while leaving them almost totally dependent on men for their material well-being and their spiritual support.

"Sorrows that arrive from loving their husbands and children intensely, but not being able to keep harm from those they love. Sorrows that arise because much of our society still considers women stupid, flighty, and superficial, and places very little value on women, and shows very little respect for them. Of course women—being more attentive, more contemplative and tenderer than we are—suffer these wounds far more often and with a greater intensity than most of us ever realize.

"And unless we ask them, women generally do not speak to us of these sorrows, perhaps because we men so often dismiss their troubles as insignificant or write off women as simply weak and whiney.

"Think of the Virgin Mary, remember what is said about her. Her heart was pierced by a sword of sorrow because of the suffering of her son. Can we men withdraw the sword of sorrow that pierces every woman's heart? I don't think so. Women rightly worry about the health and spiritual welfare of their children. Their workload in the home cannot easily be lightened. The diapers always need to be changed and the dishes washed. They're troubled by the fact of war and the horror of sin.

"There's little we can do to eliminate any of these causes of their suffering. One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife's complaints about the noise, the troubles, and the unending housework, snapped back at her in exasperation, "Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off t the office?" You understand his point. He couldn't solve her problems. What did she want him to do? I'll tell you. She wanted him to listen, to understand and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her. To let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible, he would change it for her. That's all she wanted. And yet, that's everything.

"These problems can't be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character. But we men can make them easier for women to bear. If we are to love our wives, if we are to be more than breadwinners and bed mates, if we are to become full partners in our wives' spiritual and emotional lives—then we men must put away our impatience, our swagger, our tough-guy attitudes, and let our heart too, come to know them and then be pierced by the swords of sorrow endured by our wives and by our children.

"We must help them carry the terrible burdens of their lives. We must share the sup of their pain instead of pouring more pain into their cup. We must listen, not passively while we think of other matters or read the paper, but actively. We must comfort them spiritually and physically—touching and holding them frequently, but tenderly not sexually, so that they can come to see that we are not simply present to make love. Rather, we love to be in their presence.

"In fact, if you really desire to deepen your wife's love for you and your love for her and to increase your intimacy with her (now listen to this one; this is a tough one, gentlemen) you should consider total celibacy for a brief period of time while you build spiritual trust.