No redactions are needed. The text contains no personal names, locations, numbers that could identify someone, or other personal identifiers. Divine names and biblical references are preserved as required. Outputting the original text exactly.
You have watched him set the glass down before. You have tasted the kindness of those seasons, how the man you married returns and the home breathes again. And now you are hoping, hoping with a grandbaby on the way and a long ache for peace tucked into every prayer. Hoping, perhaps, with a weariness that makes the word itself feel thin. You do not need a lecture on the evil of drink. You need to know that Someone is not letting go of your husband, and that not one of your prayers falls unheard into an empty room.
There is a word the Lord loves to use for Himself, a word He chose in the long-ago days when He led His people out of iron bondage. He called Himself a Husband. Not a cold monarch, not a distant Creator, but a Husband who, finding His beloved in slavery, would never cease until all that could be done had been done for her liberty and her happiness. That same tender, tenacious love has fixed itself upon your husband. And the Lord who set His heart on Israel, though they grieved Him and broke His covenant and spurned His kindness, did not walk away. He remained faithful, for better, for worse, and worse it was with terrible preponderance, yet He did not cast them off. This is the kind of love that is tracking your husband’s steps. Not checking in occasionally, but cleaving, pursuing, holding on.
You said you are praying for an impression on his soul. That is a wise and holy prayer, and it is exactly what the Spirit knows how to do. Grace has a way of working gently, quietly, yet potently. I have known the time when a man’s will was iron and his habit was adamant, and the Lord simply melted him down, melted the ice, broke the rock, dissolved the flint, and the man himself cried out with his whole heart, “I will!” The divine “shall” is mightier than the human “I will not.” So do not be afraid of God’s sovereignty in this. That is not a stern doctrine to make you tremble; it is the last and sweetest resource of a broken-down hope. When your husband has no strength of his own, and you have no more arguments, no more tears that seem to move anything, then fling yourself upon the Lord’s strength. He knows how to lead the will in silken bonds, stronger than fetters of iron. He can make a man willing in the day of His power.
You mentioned his health. That may feel like a shadow, but I wonder if it might be a love letter in a black-edged envelope. The Good Physician sometimes permits a bodily alarm to become a door through which healing walks into the soul. When the body trembles, the spirit often listens. Do not despise the fright that makes a man hear his own frailty. Pray it may be sanctified. Pray that the whisper of his own mortality may grow louder than the call of the bottle, and that in the quiet of a scare he may hear a Voice more tender than he has ever known. The Lord has strange ways of wooing a man back. Some are driven home by a storm; some are drawn by a still small voice that speaks in the doctor’s office, in the mirror, in the silence after a night of regret. He has cut back, you say. That is no small thing. Grace often works in slow degrees, like the dawn, not the lightning bolt. Thank God for the cutting back, and ask Him to make the cutting off a holy desire that rises from within.
And here is something I want you to see, something you may have forgotten in the exhaustion of it all. Your husband’s struggle is not between you and him. It is not even finally between him and the drink. It is between him and a faithful Husband who will not let him go. The Lord who bought His people with precious blood, who gave Egypt for their ransom, will not easily surrender one for whom He bled. He is a Husband who remains when every other helper fails, who cleaves when the beloved is at their worst, who provides a Table in the wilderness and a supply of grace that never runs dry. This Husband is praying for your husband, unseen, untiring, and His prayers rise with a fragrance no earthly intercession can match. Your prayers are being gathered into His, like a stream into the sea, and the combined force of that love is not going to waste.
In the meantime, dear soul, do not let the noise of this battle keep you from the place of drawing water. Come to the well yourself. Drink of the consolation that is yours in Christ. You are not the Savior of your husband, thank God, that burden belongs to stronger shoulders. You are the bride of Christ first, before you are the wife of this man, and your own heart needs to be kept in the health of that first and truest marriage. Perfect health for the saint is to have spirit, soul, and body aligned under the smile of the Bridegroom, and even now, in the trial, He is your health and your countenance. One day the whole of your being will be glorified, and the sorrow of this watch will be only a memory swallowed up in joy, but even here and now He does not leave you comfortless. He gives you Himself. He gives you a grandchild on the way. He gives you hope.
Hold fast to the promise that the “shall” of grace is mightier than the stubbornness of man. Christ will have His own. He will present His Church to Himself without spot or wrinkle, and every truly redeemed soul shall be there at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. I do not know how near or far that day may be, but I know your husband, if he is Christ’s, will feast at that table. And you shall sit down with him in a peace no shadow can touch. Until then, watch with hope. The darkness is not as dark as it looks when the Bridegroom is already on the road.
Let us pray together.
Almighty and most gracious God, whose name is Husband to Your people, look upon this dear wife with Your tender eyes. She has poured out her heart to You, and You have kept every tear in Your bottle. We plead the blood of Jesus over her home. We ask You, in Your sovereign pity, to lay hold of her husband, to work mightily, secretly, effectually until he desires what You desire and his will is sweetly bowed to Yours. Whatever means You choose, whether by a living word or a providence that shakes him awake, we ask that the impression on his soul be deep and lasting. Restore this marriage to the gladness of its early days, and let the coming grandchild be a sign of hope and a messenger of new mercy. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
