One of the many complaints I get from women is that their husbands are not the "spiritual leaders" that these women think their husbands should be. Shelah wrote this beautiful comment about her marriage concerning this topic after reading Owning Our Past Mistakes and I asked her if I could make a post about it since I think it will be very relevant to many women.
My husband and I had a good marriage, but I realized that it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted the GREAT and God-designed marriage He would have all His children be blessed with. I first started by trying to change my husband. {Isn't it amazingly sad how easy it is for us wives to find fault with the man whom we loved so much that we became one with?} The more I tried, the more discontent I grew.
Sadly to say, I even felt pressure from church family over the years to persevere with my "cause." You see, the main thing I thought he was lacking in was in the area of being a true spiritual leader in our home. We were preached at to be in each and every service, give more, do more, and wasn't it my place as the wife to "put the pressure on???" {PTL! I now know better!}
Oh, my husband has always loved me and our children deeply. We've always worked together and played together as a family. When he wasn't at work, he was with the children and me. He is a strong principled Christian man. He also holds to the teaching of providing for one's family. With four boys and a wife, he worked long hours. I dragged the children off to evening services by myself. {I am so ashamed now as I sit here and write about it!} He wanted to come home at night to his wife and children. He didn't want to come home to a dark and empty house, so he worked even longer hours on Wednesday evenings. I was so blinded that I didn't see that I wasn't bringing glory to God by leaving my man all alone to fend for himself. Wasn't the fact that I was sitting in a church pew more important than making sure my husband came home to a welcoming family and a nutritious home cooked meal??? {If felt wrong deep in my heart but I listened to others.}
Then it happened. One day, the children were all grown, and it was just my husband and me. It wasn't until I was recently introduced to Debi Pearl's writing and God brought me to some of the blogs of Titus 2 women like yourself, that my blinded eyes were opened. "As practice enables the pianist to find the right keys without effort or thought, so a woman who practices discontentment will, without thought, hit the notes of bitterness and discontentment. She has practiced her bitterness until it comes naturally, and she does not even recognize it." Debi's few words flew off that page as I read them and pierced my heart.
"The emphasis is not on women submitting to men, but rather on women showing, here on earth, the heavenly pattern of the Son submitting to the Father." My husband IS the head of our home, but he couldn't fulfill his God-ordained role by me nagging, pushing, pulling, or guilt tripping him along and I had done it for so long that I didn't even recognize I was doing it! AND where was my submission???!!! I was so ashamed of the dishonor I had shown him over the years, yet he still loved me! How humbling yet freeing it was to go to my husband and ask for his forgiveness! He gave it freely! You know what? I've been finding as I submit to him and fulfill my God-ordained role as his help meet, he's there, right where he belongs and has always been; loving me, protecting me, giving himself for me. But most importantly? He's LEADING me.
For wives who believe their husbands are supposed to read the Bible daily and pray with the family and refuse to do this with their children, remember this verse and the fact that Timothy learned about faith from his mother and grandmother; "For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well."
I Timothy 1:51
