The Curse of Control

I’ve read Genesis 3:16 more times than I can count. I’ve highlighted it in my Bible. I’ve sat with it in Bible study. I’ve heard sermons preached about it. But this morning, when I read it again, something shifted.

“Then he said to the woman, ‘I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”

And you will desire to control your husband.

I’ve been married to Josh for 18 years. Eighteen years of building a life together, raising children together, navigating ministry together, surviving things together that would have broken lesser marriages. And if I’m being completely honest with myself, a good portion of those 18 years has been spent trying to control him.

I didn’t call it control, though. I called it helping. I called it pushing him toward his potential. I called it being his partner, his support system, the one who could see what he could become even when what was right in front of me wasn’t always the greatest.

And I wasn’t wrong about seeing his potential. Josh has always had it. He probably would say the same thing about me if you asked him. We’ve both seen things in each other that weren’t fully formed yet. That’s part of what drew us together.

But somewhere along the way, my desire to help him reach his potential crossed a line into control. And I didn’t even realize it was happening.

Let me give you an example. Therapy.

Therapy has never been taboo for me. I was introduced to it at a very young age when I first came into foster care. No one saw the benefit of me staying in it back then, but the door had been opened. So by the time I was an adult, therapy wasn’t weird to me. It wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It was just a tool.

And before I really got to the point where I realized that God needs to be at the center of everything, therapy was my go-to resource for healing. For fixing things. For making our marriage work.

I could recognize that I needed healing. But I could also see where Josh needed healing too. His story wasn’t like mine. He was never involved in foster care or child welfare. But I could see the spaces and areas where he was carrying wounds. From losing his mom to breast cancer at a young age. From different things he’d been through. And I pushed therapy. Hard.

He refused it.

Even when I started going to therapy myself, he couldn’t understand why I felt like therapy was going to help more than God would help. And I escalated. I gave ultimatums. “If you don’t start therapy, we can’t continue in this marriage.”

He eventually did start therapy. But it wasn’t because of my ultimatum. It wasn’t because of my pushing. He often says that he had to get to a point where he felt like there were some things he needed to change, and he was going to try therapy. And he’s been doing it ever since. He sees the benefits of it now.

But here’s what I see looking back, I was trying to control him. I thought that if he was in therapy, it would heal him, and then he would be a better husband to me. And all would be well.

That’s control disguised as care.

And when I read Genesis 3:16 this morning, I finally saw it for what it was. A curse. A punishment.

God wasn’t giving Eve a gift when He said, “You will desire to control your husband.” He was pronouncing judgment. This was part of the consequence for eating from the tree of knowledge when they were told not to. The serpent got a curse. The woman got a curse. The man got a curse.

And part of the woman’s curse? The desire to control her husband.

That hit me differently this time. Because I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I’ve sat in therapy. I’ve talked about my control issues publicly. I was probably the queen of the control girl club. And this time when I read this verse, I saw clearly that the Lord was saying this need for control, this trying to control, is not a good thing. Nothing good comes from being punished.

This week, I was listening to a sermon by Pastor Joel Tudman titled “Green Leaves Don’t Come From Cursed Trees.” And he said something that made everything click into place for me. He said, “The curse is opposite of the blessing. The easiest way for us to look at the curse is not as hocus pocus, but as the absence of God, the absence of the hand of God.”

He went on: “If you don’t want the supernatural to work in your life, my brother, my sister, that is a curse.”

And then he brought it home with Jeremiah 17:5: “Cursed are those who put their trust in man more than they trust God. You don’t have the capacity to depend on God, and you have more strength and more dependency on your best friend, on your girl, on your grandmother. It seems normal, but baby, you ain’t normal. You’re cursed.”

When I heard that, I had to pause the sermon and sit with it. Because that’s exactly what I was doing when I tried to control Josh. I was trusting in my own ability to fix him more than I was trusting God to do what only He could do. I was relying on my own strength. My own plans. My own wisdom. And in doing so, I was operating under a curse. The absence of God’s hand in my marriage.

And when I think about it honestly, control hasn’t produced anything truly good in my marriage. Sure, it looked like things were working. Josh did things I told him to do. What I wanted to happen came to fruition sometimes. But all the energy it took? All the animosity and distance it created in our marriage that I didn’t even see happening right away? That was part of the punishment.

Control is exhausting. It drains you. It changes your tone. It shifts your responses. It creates a wedge between you and the person you love most, and you don’t even realize it’s happening until years have passed and you’re wondering why you feel so far apart.

Let me take this a step deeper. My need for control didn’t start with my husband. It started way before Josh. It’s been at the forefront of my life since I was a child, navigating foster care and adoption. When you grow up in a system where you have no control over where you sleep, who you live with, whether you get to see your siblings, you develop a deep, primal need to control whatever you can.

I carried that into adulthood. Into my marriage. Into my parenting. Into my work. Into everything.

And this morning, God showed me that it’s been a curse all along.

Now, before we go further, we need to address the second part of that verse. “But he will rule over you.”

This phrase has been weaponized for centuries to justify abuse and control from men. That’s not what this is about. In the context of the curse, this speaks to the tension that would now exist between husband and wife. Where there was once unity and partnership in the garden, now there would be a struggle for power. The woman would desire to control. The man would desire to dominate. Both are consequences of sin. Both create distance from God’s original design.

God’s design was mutual submission, partnership, two becoming one flesh. The curse introduced a power struggle that was never supposed to be there.

So when we talk about releasing control as wives, we’re not talking about becoming doormats. We’re not talking about letting our husbands do whatever they want while we shrink ourselves into nothing. We’re talking about returning to the garden. To partnership. To trust. To letting God be in control instead of trying to be God ourselves.

I know that’s hard. Especially for us as women of color.

Can I be real with you for a minute? It feels like our men are not the way men back in the day were. It feels like they’re not leading as well. They’re not stepping up to be husbands and fathers and providers and protectors the way our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were.

It’s discouraging. It feels, for a lot of us, like we are single parents even though we’re married. It may seem like they’re not putting as much energy into working or budgeting and paying bills and getting ahead. Or even leading us into church or stepping up as men in the church the way they used to. Back in the day, there used to be so many men in churches. Deacons. Men cleaning the church and fixing things in church. You don’t see that as much anymore.

So it heightens our need to feel like we need to control them. Get them back on the right path. Get them back to where they should be.

But a lot of us are also tired. Drained. We want to let go. It’s just hard for us to do it when we see what we see right in front of us. When we’re laying next to a man who is not necessarily leading the way we think he should. But we still want to be good wives and honor them the way the Bible says.

So how do we do that?

First, we have to recognize that our need to control is not helping. It’s part of the curse. And when we operate under a curse, we don’t produce blessing. We produce exhaustion, resentment, and distance.

Second, we have to ask ourselves why we feel the need to control. Is it fear? Is it past trauma? Is it because we genuinely don’t trust our husbands? Or is it because we don’t trust God?

For me, it was a mix of all of those things. But mostly, it was because I didn’t trust God. I thought I could do His job better than He could. I thought I could fix Josh. I thought I could orchestrate our lives in a way that would produce the outcome I wanted.

But that’s not my job. My job is to surrender. To trust. To let God be God.

Third, we have to understand that releasing control doesn’t mean we become passive. It means we become powerful in a different way. There is strength in softness. There is freedom in surrender.

Now, let me be clear about something. There’s a difference between being in control and trying to control things. Being in control means making wise decisions, having healthy boundaries, managing what’s actually yours to manage. That’s self-control, wisdom, stewardship. That’s you being responsible for your own responses, your own choices, your own life. That’s not the curse.

Trying to control things is different. That’s when you’re trying to control other people. Especially your husband. That’s when you’re manipulating outcomes, managing things that aren’t yours to manage, operating from fear or trauma instead of wisdom. That’s when you’re exhausting yourself trying to orchestrate everyone else’s lives. That’s the curse.

When I’m not trying to control things, when I’m not operating under that curse, I have peace. My responses change. The tone I use in talking to people is different. And I’m not drained.

But here’s what else I’ve noticed since I started releasing control, Josh’s confidence has grown. He feels more confident in his ability to lead us. He knows I trust the decisions he makes. And that trust, that belief in him, has changed the entire dynamic of our marriage.

Our conversations are different now. We talk more as partners instead of feeling like we’re on separate teams fighting against each other. We understand that we’re in this together. Whatever consequences come from the decisions we make, we’re going to work through them together. And I’m not going to put him down. I’m going to believe in him still.

That believing in him? That’s been a freedom for both of us. For him, because he’s not constantly defending himself or feeling like he has to prove himself to me. For me, because I’m not carrying the weight of trying to manage both of our lives.

And there’s something else I’ve noticed. A tenderness in the way Josh handles me and speaks to me now. There’s a gentleness that I’ve never experienced before in our marriage. It makes me feel so safe and secure. He’s handling me with such care. And I wonder if it’s because he’s not constantly in defense mode. He’s not bracing himself for the next critique or ultimatum. He can just love me. Softly. Tenderly. The way I’ve always wanted to be loved.

God is in control. And honestly? I’m happy He’s in control. Because in this world, there’s just too much going on. What it takes to control a situation is exhausting. And I’ve realized this year that when I release the need to control things, I can actually breathe.

Pastor Tudman said it this way: “The best thing you can do is come up out of your flesh and tap into the spirit. And the minute you tap into the spirit, you are going to be able to withstand the wiles of the devil.”

Because here’s the truth, our weapons of warfare are not carnal. They’re not our ultimatums. They’re not our manipulation. They’re not our ability to orchestrate and manage and push. Our weapons are mighty through God. But only when we’re tapped into the Spirit. Only when we’re trusting Him instead of trusting ourselves.

The curse does not provide you with the necessity to fight in the spirit. You need power. Not a protein shake. Not your own strength. You need the Holy Ghost working in your life.

And here’s what I’ve learned, I need to pray for Josh, not manage him. There’s a huge difference between the two. Managing him looks like ultimatums, pushing, orchestrating, trying to fix. Praying for him looks like bringing my concerns to God and trusting Him to do the work that only He can do.

When I’m praying for my husband instead of trying to manage him, I’m acknowledging that God loves Josh more than I do. God knows what Josh needs more than I do. God is more capable of changing Josh’s heart than I am. And God’s timing is perfect, even when it doesn’t match mine.

Prayer is how I tap into the Spirit instead of relying on my flesh. It’s how I release control to the One who’s actually in control. It’s how I move from the curse to the blessing.

Let me give you some practical tools for recognizing when you’re controlling:

• Are you giving ultimatums? Are you saying things like, “If you don’t do this, then I’m going to do that”? That’s control.

• Are you micromanaging? Are you telling your husband exactly how to do things instead of trusting him to figure it out? That’s control.

• Are you withholding affection, conversation, or intimacy until he does what you want? That’s control.

• Are you constantly pointing out what he’s not doing instead of affirming what he is doing? That’s control.

• Are you making decisions for him instead of with him? That’s control.

• Are you exhausted from trying to manage his life while also managing your own? That’s control.

Here’s what I want you to hear: You have permission to let go.

You don’t have to carry the weight of making your husband into who you think he should be. That’s God’s job. Your job is to love him, pray for him, respect him, and trust God with the outcome.

And I know that’s scary. Because what if he fails? What if he doesn’t step up? What if things fall apart?

But sister, things are already falling apart when you’re trying to control everything. The weight of that is crushing you. The distance it’s creating is real. The resentment is building. And the man you’re trying to fix is feeling more controlled than loved.

What if you released him to God? What if you prayed instead of pushed? What if you trusted instead of tried to manage?

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying it’s necessary.

Because the curse of control is real. It’s the absence of God’s hand in your marriage. And the freedom that comes from releasing it, from tapping into the Spirit instead of relying on your own strength, is even more real.

Now, if you’re a husband reading this, before you send this to your wife with “SEE?!”, I need you to pause and ask yourself something: Are you creating space for her to trust you and trust God? Or are you giving her reasons to want to control?

Because partnership goes both ways. If you want your wife to release control, you need to be trustworthy. You need to be leading in a way that honors God and honors her. You need to be stepping up, not stepping back. You need to be creating an environment where she can surrender because she knows you’re surrendered to God.

This isn’t about giving you ammunition to use against your wife. This is about both of you returning to God’s design for marriage. Mutual submission. Partnership. Two becoming one.

I’m grateful for 18 years with Josh. But I’m even more grateful for what God is teaching me about letting go. About trusting Him. About finding strength in softness and power in surrender.

I’m learning that I don’t have to be in control to be safe. I don’t have to manage everything to be secure. I don’t have to fix my husband to have a good marriage.

I just have to trust God. And let Him do what only He can do.

So if you’re reading this and you’re exhausted from trying to control your husband, I want to invite you into something different. Into freedom. Into peace. Into partnership the way God designed it.

Let go. Trust God. Tap into the Spirit. And watch what He does when you stop trying to be Him.

Because green leaves don’t come from cursed trees. And blessing doesn’t come from operating under a curse.

It comes from surrendering to the One who has always been in control.

A Prayer for Releasing Control:

Lord, I confess that I’ve been trying to do Your job. I’ve been trusting in my own strength, my own plans, my own ability to fix my husband more than I’ve been trusting You. I’ve been operating under a curse, and I’m tired. Today, I release control of my husband to You. I’m choosing to pray for him instead of manage him. I’m choosing to believe in him instead of trying to change him. Help me tap into Your Spirit instead of relying on my flesh. Give me the peace that comes from knowing You’re in control. Teach me what it means to be a partner in my marriage instead of a controller. And Lord, do the work in my husband’s heart that only You can do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.