“A woman’s helping hand smooths out all the snags and wrinkles, adds the sprinkle of sugar and spreads the butter, kisses the wound, cools the fever, nurses the hunger, and finds the missing. And somehow she manages to do all of it all at once with a baby around her legs, dishes washing, dinner cooking, laundry spinning, hair flying! “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.”
He clings to me, he is no longer alone, and I am his footstool. If we wives cannot humble our hearts to be the resting place of our husbands, we will never find ourselves bent and broken before our Lord the Christ. When God has found a place to rest his feet it is there that he is pleased to dwell and rule.” From a commenter, MML
In the monologue by Katharina from “Taming of the Shrew” she says, in the closing lines:
“And place your hands below your husband’s foot: In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready; may it do him ease.”
It may be the most nagging opposition to biblical marriage: the idea that “woman was created to help the man”, (1 Corinthians 11:9, Genesis 2:18) and perhaps the most misunderstood one. But when we do understand it, it radically changes us and brings a powerful transformation to our marriage.
It is a thrill, not an offense, that God delighted to create me for the express purpose of completing my husband. Wives are a powerful instrument in the advancement of God’s Kingdom when they comply!
It bothers us because I think we are not “other-worldly-minded” enough. We should be about seeking first the Kingdom of God, not the kingdom of ME. And if we are about our Father’s business, our only concern is the instruction He has given us best suited to fulfill His plan, not whining about how we think our roles should be redefined to sound more politically correct.
The Bible uses the language of “one flesh and “joined together.” The image is not of a family where two autonomous people live side by side. It’s more intimate than that; it’s one mission, one force, one vision and two people completing each other to accomplish that mission.
“Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” The command to mankind remains. There is so much more there than a population hint! It is man, oriented to the world (garden), and his wife, oriented toward him, helping him “subdue”–cultivate–their part of the earth, pursuing a life of fruitfulness in all areas–literally and figuratively speaking,
“The log is not greater than the fire; the fire burns because the log enables it.”
What does that look like practically? It’s different for each marriage. But wherever God has placed our husbands, he has given him a “subduing command” and that is where we are to assist him with our own unique gifts and abilities.
I am his helper. There are a million ways I can help him, from making sure he has clean underwear, to editing his State of the Union address. We are a team and he needs me. He may need me to make phone calls, handle details of the day to free him up somewhere else, pack his lunch, save his money, call his mom, send a thank-you card, or other details.
Going beyond that, he needs me to run a household, help in training our children, prepare our home for encouraging others through hospitality, extending our family’s purpose day to day, building a godly legacy.
The part of us that balks at “promoting another’s vision” is not properly understanding our role. When we grasp that we are “one flesh”, then promoting my husband is beneficial to me! (Think Christ and His bride.) The log is not greater than the fire; the fire burns because the log enables it. (Sorry, I’m sitting in front of my wood stove as I write this.)
Ask your husband how you can best help him. Just the asking lets him know that you desire to unite with him in a purpose. This may be the first time such a thing has crossed your mind! But once he knows you want to help him by making life easier and assisting him as an heir in the grace of that life, the united front strengthens and you begin to build a more powerful legacy than either of you could ever build alone.
The most important reminder I think I received from the recent marriage seminar was:
“Your husband isn’t out to get you; he just can’t read your mind”.
Women have an uncanny way of assuming the worst and even villainizing their husbands for not being able to read minds.
Can I just be honest and give you a real-life example? (I can’t believe I’m telling this.) Though the reason absolutely eludes me, I have often found some sick pleasure in setting my husband up for failure so that I could claim “hurt feelings”. What is that??!!
So Aaron and I go out for dinner. (Let me preface this by saying we live in the country. So if you forget something in town when you go, you just go without.) I crave ice like a Meth-fiend craves his next fix and I happen to love Sonic’s crushed ice. But of course, if my husband loves me, he’ll remember this and spontaneously stop to get me a cup, just to demonstrate said love. If he doesn’t stop, I wait—calculating the time so he can’t whip back around. Then I say in some sad tone, “You didn’t stop and get me ice”.
Can you believe I’ve done that? I should know better having read Dr. Laura tell wives over and over, “Tell the man if you want something–he’s not a mind-reader, for crying out loud!”
Ladies, let’s just assume the best! He loves us. He doesn’t want to make us upset. “Lord, grow me up.”
“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” Proverbs 10:12
“You were such a wanted child.”
Gathered around by a few, soft lights with some of our closest friends, we wished little Cooper a happy 8th birthday by speaking a short blessing over his upcoming year. It was a sweet time, and I left with his mother’s words echoing in my heart….
“You were such a wanted child.”
Cooper is the third born, and the first child Robin and Scott had after their vasectomy reversal.
A wanted child.
The words keep ringing. Have I spoken this to all my children? Do they know they are wanted? Do I live with them like they are wanted? Do those who spend any time with our family see that my children are wanted?
In an age where birth control makes it so simple, no, mandatory that we “control” the children born to us, is it any wonder why it’s so easy to arrive unwanted? In a controlled environment, any variable that changes unexpectedly is deemed “unwanted”. It’s a mistake, a plan gone awry.
We don’t even know we do this to our own children. How many times I’ve heard a child described as “an accident”. An immortal soul–a living miracle of God–an accident?
We should shudder at our evolved thinking toward life. We should read the Bible again as little children…
“It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” Psalm 100:3
And now, I look at my children…“you are such wanted children”. Let me say it with my life.
A few snuggles before we go….
Zig Ziglar, the coveted motivational speaker and top salesman was speaking about marriage yesterday on a radio program.
“Me and the Red-head (as he affectionately calls his wife) court each other every day.” He said. “The other day we were having a cup of coffee in the bedroom, and the Redhead said to me, ‘Honey, I wish I was younger’. ‘What on earth for?’ I asked her. ‘So I could be married to you even longer’, she said.”
He explained that their marriage was such a sweet one because they worked on it DAILY. He said,
“It’s not the big things, not the big gifts, not the major moments in life that make a great marriage…it’s the little acts of kindness, the small things every day that knit the hearts together.”
Marriage becomes an increasingly interesting phenomenon to me. I see so many falling apart around me and I’m constantly studying to try to uncover the reasons.
Yes, they’re often very complicated. But what if most cases involve a slow erosion of feelings, affection and motivation? (I remember the song “Slow Fade”…”Families never crumble in a day”.)
Zig left the simple advice with us: “Ask yourself each day how you can benefit your mate.”
And God gave us the same advice a long time ago….“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
I don’t mean to oversimplify things, but how many marriages would be healed by believing God’s Word as it applies to our treatment of one another, and actually living it out? Do I really treat my spouse “as myself?” (How many of us hold a grudge very long against ourselves? Or refuse to forgive ourselves?)
“How many times shall my brother offend and I forgive him? Seven times?” “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.” And remember the consequences if we don’t? “But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
I’ve seen it happen in my own marriage…a careless word or thoughtless gesture can enshroud the entire day with an air of coldness and indifference. But similarly, a careful word, a small attention to show gratitude and appreciation can turn the day into a sweet place of friendship.
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
–Simone Signore
“Without attempting to make light of serious problems within a marriage, my limited observations through life indicate that the lack of courtesy in a home have huge implications for marital distress.
But maybe courtesy isn’t so light; is not courtesy simply the outworking of the greatest commandment?
“Love the Lord with all that your are..and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“As myself”. Convicting.
How ’bout this one…
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.”
If the Bible only consisted of these two verses, and we actually obeyed them and sought this kind of love for one another, alas, what a different place it would be!
When I was a little girl, we would visit some relatives (whose identity I will leave veiled for their honor). They fought more than any two people I have ever seen or heard of (both confessing Christians). If you talked to her, she was the victim of an abusive, cold-hearted, angry man. If you talked to him, he was the victim of an abusive, cold-hearted, angry woman.
And I’m sure it was more complicated than I knew. But they had formed such a habit of rudeness and hostility, that literally, one could say “I’m going to the store” (always with a sneer) and the other would retort sarcastically, “You would.”
I always wondered what it would be like if one of them gave in, softened, and began to demonstrate unselfish love to the other. Even just a smile. Love that expects nothing in return. Surely that kind of love couldn’t be left unreciprocated!
Courtesy. Warmth. Kindness. You know, the attitude we have toward the complete stranger in front of us at the grocery store, where, we even try to hide any irritation we’re feeling.
Courtesy is no little thing. Smiling and speaking kindly can change–does change the entire atmosphere of the home, and dare I say the marriage itself.
From what I’ve observed, often once the bitterness between a husband and wife has set in, both feel equally justified for their snide remarks or cold responses. “When he treats me like___I might be nice.”
A little dying on our part–both our parts–would go a long way toward bringing life and vitality to our marriages.
Lest you think I’m speaking to someone beyond myself, think again. I battle with a sarcastic tongue and a critical spirit. I’m just being honest. It is one of the things that brings me begging, with tears, to the Lord more than anything else. Dying to self is not my forte, and I hate that about me. My husband, however, is a marvel at it.
I can’t change anyone but me. Let’s start there.
“I felt the need to do some unpacking with our previous discussion of hurting marriages. It needs to be said, apparently, that I’m not addressing marriages with true abuse taking place, or serious mental illness. (Although as a side note, I spoke just yesterday with a friend whose husband suffers from a mental illness, and because of her commitment to her marriage, the Lord has so graciously not only given them the grace to deal with it, but has used his illness to draw them closer to Christ than perhaps anything else could…weakness of the flesh can be turned for God’s glory.)
That Christian marriages are failing left and right is no secret. But I don’t believe the majority of them are suffering some irreparable condition. I believe they are under massive attack. I believe by and large the church is not teaching truth concerning marriage and is not equipping individuals to be men and women of God, committed to a life-long relationship. And I don’t believe proper consequences are being felt for the spouse that leaves without biblical grounds or is living in sin against his or her spouse.
Furthermore, the destructive cycle is being repeated as children suffer the consequences of broken parents and then are left even more ill-equipped to handle their own marriages.
Sometimes the issue is deep and complicated and no, I don’t believe there is a 1-2-3 step program that fits every marriage.
And sometimes, I think it is not so complicated, just hard.
I believe Scripture provides principles that when applied, would fortify most marriages. We are foolish to disregard that fact. But they must be applied to all of life. From the very onset of childhood we need to be bathing our children in the wisdom of the Lord, preparing their hearts even then, for the picture that God has reserved to reveal His glory–the picture of eternal covenant between a husband and wife.
I am presuming, first, that a husband and wife are both believers. For the Bible says, “Do no be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” If a spouse is not a believer though, there are specific principles given to that circumstance. We will assume the former for this post/series.
Understanding marriage as a “one-flesh” covenant:
“Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,and the two will become one flesh.’So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:1-12
The terms and duration of a marital covenant are set by God: 1. one man, one woman, becoming one flesh and 2. for life
It’s our starting point. It has to be. God said it. When and if we desire to obey God more than we desire to fulfill our own desires, this one definition would radically what our marriages look like.
Test your thoughts…
- Do I view my marriage as a bond that cannot be broken? One that GOD has joined, not a minister?
- One flesh can only be made two by a tearing apart and resulting death. Do I view my marriage covenant that seriously?
- Do I understand that the marriage covenant is meant to be a picture of Christ’s covenant with His bride?
A friend said, “I just can’t forgive him again.” (The sin was not adultery.) And I asked her, “would you forgive the offense again if your child committed it? Your mother? Your sister?” “Yes” was the answer. This woman was not viewing her marriage the way God does. She was not “one flesh” with her husband.
Someone said, “we should view our marriages like a house where once entered, the door is bricked up and any conflicts just have to be worked out”. Sound harsh? Well, it’s in essence what Jesus was saying exactly.
Are there exceptions? Yes. But I dare say they should be treated with grave caution and careful discernment and counseling. This is not an exhortation to women (or men) to live in abusive situations (properly defined). Marriages can be messy and biblical counsel may sometimes warrant a divorce after separation and every other means available have been offered to restore the relationship and preserve the marriage.
But let’s think rightly, and start rightly. And let’s help others around us do the same. Starting with our children and extending into relationships where we have opportunity, let’s take this matter seriously and help restore marriage to its place of intended glory.
I’ve got several more marriage problems on my mind…will share.
“The lady in the next line exclaimed, clearly shocked, ‘You’re PREGNANT? Was it planned?’ I didn’t say anything, too busy getting my jaw off the floor. But the little girl thinks and says, ‘God plans everybody’.” -Mary
“And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.” Genesis 4:1
That verse struck me when I read it out loud. You don’t hear that much from a woman who has just given birth.
The thing is, we are unable, in the familiarity of technology and the ability to control almost everything, to step back, and with child-like eyes, the eyes Eve had, consider the subject of reproduction in its simplicity, and just be willing to see it for what it is.
Could I kindly steer you away from the “buts” and “what ifs”…I don’t think it matters at all about whether it’s wrong or right to use birth control, what methods are acceptable, etc. I think what matters about children and God’s gift of bearing them is that we start at the right place, longing to know and share God’s heart about His creation and embracing the revelation of that as it is written both in His Word and in our bodies.
“I have gotten a man from the Lord”.
Adam and Eve knew one another…the beautiful, holy, unaltered marriage bed where conception is only seen as a “gift from the Lord”, not something to fear or avoid.
Is that how I view my own reproduction?
Do I have child-like eyes of faith?
When once I get that the Lord gives children, my heart is changed. I am now grateful with an unspeakable awe that He would grant such a gift. Perhaps the barren woman has a better understanding of the miracle of an open or closed womb. Does that require a rigid set of rules concerning my fertility? No. When my heart says with Eve’s…”the Lord gives life“, it is enough.
“He lies stretched out in the dark and I lay long beside him, listen to him breathe, only sound there is. This is our love story, the one we’ve written with years and skin and the rings.
In his sleep, he finds my hand.
It’s the only one I’ve known….
My grandmother lived that kind of courage. The kind that made a vow and had the bravery to let it age. Wrinkled faithfulness of monogamy…
The exultation of monotony crowns the brave hearts, eyes that perpetually, perennially, look long to make the familiar new. She washed his underwear for fifty six years, and it was always enough and good.
Warm it falls on nape of my neck, his sleep breath, close. I press closer. The drama’s in the long faithfulness, and aged love is the heroic. God knows the passion of a covenant.”
Brave Affairs from Holy Experience
(Though you must follow the link out to read the rest, I would love to hear your thoughts on this marvelously probing post…oh how much, in our day of “Hollywood love” where wife wakes up with pretty breath and hair, have we lost this kind of deep, real marital fidelity.)
“After all,” said Clare, “they had a right to happiness.” We were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood. Mr. A., had deserted Mrs. A. and got his divorce in order to marry Mrs. B., who had likewise got her divorce in order to marry Mr. A. And there was certainly no doubt that Mr. A. and Mrs. B were very much in love with one another. If they continued to be in love, and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income, they might reasonably expect to be very happy. It was equally clear that they were not happy with their old partners.…
C.S. Lewis
The quote by Thoreau actually sums up the great Christian paradox of which Jesus so often spoke: “If any man would save his life he must lose it.” And then again He says that when we stop chasing the object and begin chasing the object-Giver, we find it. “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”
These are some general thoughts to a fantastic essay I read by C.S. Lewis on the tragic, societal blunder of thinking we deserve happiness at any cost, specifically in marriage. Please read his excerpts below–it’s not really as long as it looks. It’s so full of “right-thinking”! How often do we we shuffle along behind the accepted thought of our day, giving little regard to its consequences, never stopping to check our position for accuracy and truth? I had a couple of slapping-forehead-moments myself.
“But I deserve to be happy” is the most common reason given for leaving a spouse, even if it’s never verbalized. It’s almost a universally accepted proclamation….one that brings destruction to individuals and ultimately to a whole civilization. (Morality is not an individual matter; society comprises individuals.)
“I went away thinking about the concept of a “right to happiness.”
At first this sounds to me as odd as a right to good luck. For I believe–whatever one school of moralists may say—that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside all human control. A right to happiness doesn’t, for me, make much more sense than a right to be six feet tall, or to have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic….
The real situation is skillfully concealed by saying that the question of Mr. A.’s “right” to desert his wife is one of “sexual morality.” Robbing an orchard is not an offense against some special morality called “fruit morality.” It is an offense against honesty. Mr. A.’s action is an offense against good faith (to solemn promises), against gratitude (toward one to whom he was deeply indebted) and against common humanity. (Emphasis mine.)
Our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege. The sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which, if it had any other end in view, would be condemned as merciless, treacherous and unjust….
When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, “Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.” I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you’re a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is “four bare legs in a bed.”
It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong—unless you steal nectarines.
And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of “sex” and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful….. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.
If we establish a “right to (sexual) happiness” which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what our passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. Hence, while the bad behavior is real and works miseries and degradations, the happiness which was the object of the behavior turns out again and again to be illusory. Everyone (except Mr. A. and Mrs. B.) knows that Mr. A. in a year or so may have the same reason for deserting his new wife as for deserting his old. He will feel again that all is at stake. He will see himself again as the great lover, and his pity for himself will exclude all pity for the woman.
Two further points remain.
One is this. A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. Women, whatever a few male songs and satires my say to the contrary, are more naturally monogamous than men; it is a biological necessity. Where promiscuity prevails they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them than to us. And the quality by which they most easily hold a man, their beauty, decreases every year after they have come to maturity, but this does not happen to those qualities of personality—women don’t really care twopence about our looks—by which we hold women. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose. I have no sympathy with moralists who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness. These signs of desperate competition fill me with pity.
Secondly, though the “right to happiness” is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse, it seems to me impossible that the matter should stay there. The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add “unfortunately”—be swept away.
C.S. Lewis