No matter what we read online, no matter how godly it sounds, no matter how much it resonates with us, we go dangerously astray when we fail to filter the advice and views we receive through the reality of the man God has given to us in the covenant of marriage. Further, if a husband is not asking his wife to do something that is clearly sinful, then she is to submit. The only issues where there clear Biblical directives for how we are to interact with our husbands are the issues of love and fidelity, sex, and respect/submission. You don’t have to take my advice on any of these (though you can find it here and here), but you do have to listen to your own husband and act accordingly.
We must also appreciate our men for who they are and not attempt to squeeze them into the mold of some blogger’s husband, a man we don’t even know. If your husband needs a half hour of down time at the end of the day when he first comes in the door, let him have it. It doesn’t matter if you read somewhere that an online Titus 2 mentor and her husband take time at the beginning of the evening to catch up on each others day. If it works for them that’s wonderful for them. It’s better for you to wait until the time that’s best for your husband. Appreciate your husband’s strengths and you will be less likely to look at him through critical eyes as a result of what you’ve read on another woman’s blog.
I realize some issues are much bigger than the one I described above, but I believe the principle still holds. I can hardly count the number of sisters I have encountered since I started blogging who have either commented or emailed me about the fact that they envy my large family. How they wish their husbands would relent and consent to having more children! I hope they can one day experience the joys of a large family as well, but I often also wonder: how many of these women were completely content to parent their 2 or 3 or 4 children before they stumbles onto the Christian mommy blogs? More than a few, I’m sure.
This is not to debate the issue of whether or not birth control is Biblical or not. If you want my opinion on the issue of children as a blessing you can read this post and leave a comment there. I implore you not to begin a debate on the issue of birth control here. That is not what we’re aiming to discuss. Rather, this is a discussion of that little phrase in Titus 2:5 that reads as follows:
“…obedient to their own husbands…”
Don’t you marvel sometimes at the wisdom and simplicity of the Scripture? God, who certainly could have given a concrete list of do’s and do not’s for every matter under the sun, chose instead to advise us to work these matters out in the context of our individual marriages. Even in those areas where you may feel your husband is off base Biblically, I would advise to pray and approach your husband with an open heart rather than a holier than thou attitude. Remember the admonition of Proverbs 21:19:
It’s better to live alone in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.
I was raised in a frugal family. My husband was, well…not. In our earlier years of marriage, I thought he was wasteful and he thought I was cheap. After many years of trial and error, we reached a comfortable balance financially. I have learned to appreciate that there are instances when you really do get what you pay for. He has learned that there are times when you have to prioritize. He’s aggressive about saving more and I’m less fearful when it comes to money.
Everything is going great. However, on several blogs one year I saw pledges of commitment to giving only handmade gifts that Christmas season. I could literally feel my heart rate increase with excitement over the prospect of a truly frugal Christmas. I could hardly wait for my husband to come home so that I could run it by him.
Just as quickly however, reality set in. This was simply NOT going to fly in my house. We’d already decided what we’ll spend and what we were going to buy the girls. A scaled back Christmas was already on the horizon as extended our new, more frugal ways into the holiday season, which is the one time of year when we were more inclined in the past to throw caution to the wind. Not racking up debt mind you, but still spending more cash. NOW I wanted to push it even farther by springing this handmade idea? Uh-uh.
Maybe with much prayer and more time to prepare, it might work in the future. But I know my husband. He doesn’t change over night unless he has concrete biblical reason to do so. Furthermore, it’s unfair of me to place some other woman’s expectations on my own husband. He has never done that to me. Probably because he doesn’t spend an hour every day clicking around on blogs about Biblical manhood!
Again, please know that I am not suggesting that we can’t introduce new ideas to our men as we become more enlightened and educated in any number of areas as a result of reading on line. If we have sound Biblical reasons for doing so, I think it’s a good idea. While I firmly believe that the best way to fulfill the Titus 2 mandate is in person, it would be foolish of me to assert that we can’t grow and learn something while reading edifying sites on the Internet. Of course we can! If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here.
We do need to keep in mind however, that God has called for our husbands to be the heads of our homes. If our husbands are following the Lord, then we have a responsibility to joyfully follow their lead. Once you have made your requests and desires known, if he doesn’t respond right away, commit the matter to prayer and trust that if it’s meant to be, it’ll be when the time is right. If your husband is not a believer, you’re still to follow his lead, but you have bigger issues to pray about than whether or not to have another baby, homeschool, or even whether or not you can quit your job next week.
I sincerely believe that people who know you and your husband personally and who are invested in the success of your marriage are in the best position to offer advice that is anything more than suggestive if it isn’t clearly articulated in Scripture.
Now watch me offer prescriptive advice next week and have a reader call me out on that.
This post is my contribution to Wifey Wednesday, hosted by Sheila at To Love, Honor, and Vacuum. Click on over there for more wifely encouragement.
Excellent post! You raise so many important issues here.
I’ve often wondered how much easier the hard choice we had to make about family size as result of my health would have been had we never attended a church with many quiverfull families and I never become involved in the Christian mommy-sphere. It would have been difficult still but probably not as hard as it’s been nor would I feel nearly as apologetic about something that was largely out of my control.
And take heart, my friend, handmade gifts are not necessarily more frugal so you aren’t missing out on any Super Special Benefits by following your husband’s lead. Trust me.
I guess I’m sort of in the same position with regards to large families. We did the vasectomy things years ago, and it seemed logical. We had already buried a baby boy. I had a horrible pregnancy with my last daughter. We’d had miscarriages. And we had two beautiful girls. So we figured we were done.
But then, when I hit 33 or 34, I started really wanting another baby. I was surrounded by women who had 6, 8, even 10 kids, and I would always look at their third and fourth born kids and think, they could have chosen to stop at 2, and then look at who the world would be missing!
But my husband only ever wanted two. I’m still disappointed, but I can see how God has taken our family in a different direction, and it’s still a good one. You just have to keep your eyes on your own family.
(But by the way, I would NEVER recommend a vasectomy to anyone. I think it’s dangerous). That is all.
I disagree with my husband on women working outside the home and I realized yesterday that I cannot hold to my position so tightly that it hurts our marriage. I just have to pray about it and let the Lord convict him.
I just noticed that my link on the issue of childen was a bad link to my old, defunct blog. I’ve fixed it. Apologies!
@Daisy and Sheila: I get where you’re coming from. We have a large family (that was the desire of my husband’s heart before it was ever mine), but I am not what you would call quiverfull. I think big families are great but I also think that husbands are the leaders of their families, not anonymous Christian mommy bloggers.
@Lori:
I realized yesterday that I cannot hold to my position so tightly that it hurts our marriage. I just have to pray about it and let the Lord convict him.
I am assuming your husband is like most in being the partner who desires the income you can provide. Believe it or not, it was my husband who initiated the move for me to come home. Opposite dynamic, same ultimate outcome. It was several years into my homemaking journey before I had peace being here. And it’s not like I had this glamorous career either. I had a crappy job, lol. I hadn’t cashed in on my education yet because I was so young when we got married.
Either way, the course of action you’ve chosen is the best course of action. I disagree vehemently with those who assert that the Bible is so clear on this issue that you should risk your marriage over it. Keep praying and keep obeying your husband. And get serious about frugality and frugal living so that he can begin to see the possibility of having a good life on one income. But be prepared to do whatever he thinks is best for as long as he feels that way. It’ll be good for your marriage. Not to mention he’ll be more receptive to your concerns when he can see that you are considerate of and concerned about his.
Thank you so much for this post! It really needs to be said. I had a tendency to fall into that trap when I first started reading blogs. Some women can be so convincing in their arguments, backing everything up with scripture. A lot of times I came away from reading a blog feeling less than adequate, and feeling my husband was sub-par. It sounds so horrible, but that is honestly how I felt.
Last year, my first born was due to start school and I was really sure we were supposed to homeschool. After all, isn’t that what the Bible (aka, mommy bloggers) said I was supposed to do? If I didn’t, my child would be facing the lions everyday. What kind of mother would I be if I let him do that? My husband and I talked about it endlessly and even went so far as to look into curriculum… I was getting the sense however that my husband was not 100% on board with it. I felt so uneasy every time I thought about it. Finally, I came to the conclusion that there is no way I could ever homeschool if I did not have the 100% support of husband. Without saying anything to him, I brought it all before the Lord and told Him how I felt about the situation and I told the Lord I would take whatever decision my husband ultimately made as His will for us. I stopped talking about homeschooling and just waited. One day, I asked my husband what it was he wanted for our family to do in regards to schooling. Although we had talked about it, believe it or not, I had never come right out and asked him what HE thought. Imagine that. He said he felt our kids should go to public school for the time being and if we ever felt we needed to pull them out for some reason, then we would reconsider. As soon as he said this to me, I felt complete peace wash over me. This is what I had prayed for, and even though it wasn’t the answer I actually hoped for, I still felt the complete peace of knowing it’s what my husband wanted, and therefore I was obeying God too.
Can I just say what a wonderful year it has been for us? God has been so gentle, showing me in so many ways that we made the right choice for our family, for now. The school year could not have been better. A wonderful school, a wonderful principal, an amazing teacher. To think that I could be forcing the issue of homeschooling… if I had forced my husband down that road, I know for a fact I would not feel the peace that I feel today. Now I know for certain, that if we ever homeschool, it has to come from my husband. And if it comes from him, I will know it’s the right choice. He has to make that choice for his family. Not that I have no say, (and my husband does listen to me very carefully and lovingly!) but ultimately I need to hand the reins over to my husband. Whether he is right or wrong, the only thing I have to do is obey him, and therefore God.
I get so tired of mommy bloggers who make everything they believe into God’s Perfect Law for every family. Thanks again for this post.
My husband is very good at reminding me that just because bloggers (or books) say it’s so, doesn’t mean it’s right for us. That is so freeing!
@Lori: I can relate because I stumbled onto the Christian mommy blogs looking for information about homeschooling. There were women who, armed with chapter and verse, had sure and concrete arguments for why public school was not only bad, but sinful. I was already getting disillusioned with public school to begin with. That’s how I found those blogs. Their arguments only fueled my fear of letting my older childen stay in the system any longer. I had to get them out of there!!! But…
My husband said he didn’t think it was a good Idea to pull them out of school when they were in 7th and 8th grades. I had a new baby and it was too much for me to handle when they were so far into their school careers. We would homeschool our new addition and any future children, but not those. We’d just have to stay engaged and even more intimately involved with their education moving forward, but they weren’t going to be withdrawn from school. Hindsight has proven that he was right, but at the time I was pretty upset about it. I dropped it and kept my feeelings to myself but it took a while for me to make peace with his decision. I did make peace though, and my kids are doing great. They are good students, modest girls, and try to be lights to the children around them. One of my girls even led a fellow student to Christ. I often think about that lovely young lady whenever I feel my disillusionment with their schooling well up.
I can’t imagine what our marriage would be like if I had browbeat my husband into doing what I wanted and embarked on it without his 100% support. I don’t even want to imagine it, lol.
@Angela: Your husband sounds like mine. He’ll say point blank: “Don’t come in here telling me about what some other person said about this or that. Her husband leads in that house. I’m the man of this house. Just ’cause it works there doesn’t mean it’ll fly here.” I learned that lesson early in my marriage.
Even in those areas where you may feel your husband is off base Biblically, I would advise to pray and approach your husband with an open heart rather than a holier than thou attitude
Amen to that. Learning to leave seemingly impossible issues in the Lord’s hands is so hard…yet so essential. Not only within one’s marriage, but with respect to life in general. There are innumberable things we cannot control. Like it or not, our choice of attitude in such circumstances is not one of them.
Good word, Terry.
Thanks, Heather. I appreciate your comment.
This is a mantra we should extend to life in general, isn’t it?
Excellent advice! I think it’s easy to forget this when the blog or info we are reading is coming from seemingly godly women. We must remember not to compare our life to theirs. Pray, seek God’s face, and obey, obey, obey!
I also wanted to mention that this message is especially important for us wives who don’t have up-front, tell-it-like-it-is husbands. I don’t. My husband is a softie and does not often voice his opinion. I am not saying this to demean him, it just is what it is. I, on the other hand, have a tendency to be forceful and opinionated and the potential for me to walk all over him is there. He would never come out and say to me what your husband said, Terry, about being the leader of his own home. Even if he was thinking it. So I think for me, and others with husbands like mine, it is very important to come right out and ask him what he thinks. Instead of barging ahead with a new-found thought or belief, sit down and run it by him first. Make a point of hearing what he has to say. My husband is soft, but he does have an opinion. I just have to dig deeper to find it. Maybe I take his softness as not caring, but that is so not true. The fact that he is less forceful than other men does not mean that he is not a valid leader of our home. He may not lay down the law, but it is up to me as his wife to find out what he truly likes and wants.
I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, I kind of feel like I’m rambling, so I’ll stop. I just wanted to kind of defend the hubbies who are more quiet.
Laura.
Thank you so much for this comment. You’ve made yourself perfectly clear. I agree wholeheartedly. Your point is one I’ve tried to make here on several occasions. The fact that a husband may not be as outspoken with his opinion as a man like mine is doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. It certainly doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an opinion. People just happen to have different personalities, and that’s okay.
For the record, it’s easy for us as wives to get frustrated with our husbands’ personalities. It took a while for me to appreciate that his upfront nature is actually good for our relationship because there is less ambiguity. I don’t have to wonder what he’s thinking. Of course, I’m one of those women who finds that character trait particularly alluring as well, so iit works for us.
But you know what? Dealing with a man like that isn’t always peaches and cream either. Just thought I toss that out there for the wives who wish for a more forward, forceful (in a good way) husband. I think the most important thing, as you said so well Laura, is to not make the mistake of thinking a man with a more reserved nature is a license to take off and do “whatever” because he “doesn’t care.” Especially since we tend to gravitate toward mates who exhibit those personality traits we lack. Meaning a “softer” man is probably married to a outpsoken force-of-nature kind of woman. My husband and I are opposites in the other direction.
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your point of view) the Bible doesn’t make a distinction about who is the head of the family based on personality traits.
Thanks again, Laura, for a great comment contribution to the conversation!
I consider blogs entertainment, even if I may pick up some good tips from them occasionally. I learned fairly early into reading “Christian mommy blogs” that it is mostly opinion with some bible verses thrown in.