Showing posts with label The Wife's Role. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Wife's Role. Show all posts

Finding Your Fountain Of Life: Part 2 of The Wife's Renewing of the Mind

I was once asked recently: "Would you rather give or receive?" This question was directed at a specific aspect in my married life. However, it could go for all aspects of marriage.  Would I rather be at the giving or receiving end?

 Were I to be asked that same question on the first year of my married life, my answer would have been different from what I gave that night.

 Early on in our marriage, I often fought my way to the receiving end.  I thought that being there would bring our relationship to a peak of satisfaction which I felt was lacking at that time.  Hollywood has never failed to project that kind of expectation from the woman in a state of marriage.  The husband works hard to buy his wife the most expensive jewelry.  He surprises her with his gift and the scene shows the woman all teary-eyed, screaming in glee and feeling like a princess. He wakes up earlier than her and makes coffee for her, prepares the breakfast, while the wife simply comes up from behind and wraps her arms around him, gives him a morning sweet kiss.  Or at work, the woman coming from a restroom break suddenly finds a dozen of long-stemmed roses on her desk and guess where it came from --- of course, from her devoted husband.  Seldom do we see films that portray the woman in the backstage while the spotlight is on the husband.  I'm sure there are more but on a quick recall, I can only count one --- Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington.  Though his wife was a homemaker and was seldom seen at practices, she played a great role from the backstage.  It was her hidden acts of courage and strength, of silence in a time of much pressure that kept the spotlight shining on her man.

 I have had to renew my mind about this.  I admit the way was not easy.  Sometimes, you keep giving but never receiving from your spouse.  How do you give when you yourself are found drained and empty and simply unable to give more? I wish I believed the secret early on, but I did not.  Eventually, I gave it a try.  You see, my friend, we've been lied to. Our husband is not our fountain of life.  He is as needy as we are.  He may not display his needs the way we do, may not express it the way we do.  Nevertheless, the reality of his dire need for LIFE is as real as ours is.  How then can we expect someone so needy to fill our own needs?  That would look like me so hungry and expecting the street kid who's begging for food to feed my hunger.

 When I was single, I saw God as my Husband. I got that from Isaiah 54:5, "For the Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name..."  I remember back in college, when I had to go out on Sundays alone, enjoying my Burger King or Kenny Rogers dinner alone, while at the other booths, couples or families would be laughing around enjoying their meal together.  I remember feeling a slight of pity for myself being alone, and then reminding myself of this verse.  I sought much comfort from this truth.  I found my satisfaction in that promise.  After dinner, I would stand in line for a jeepney ride going back to the campus and stand alone while everyone beside me were in the arms of their lover.  I would rehearse the verse over and over in my mind, sang it in a low voice when I found an empty space in the front seat of the jeep. It kept the tears at bay. It kept my aching heart from drowning in self-pity. I would feel like crying and laughing at the same time because the more I rehearsed this truth in my heart, the more I felt His tangible presence.  I felt His arms wrapped around me in my loneliness and then I just knew...I was not alone at all.

 Then I got married, and I thought I'd drop the verse.  After all, now I got a real husband.  Sadly, I too made him to be like God.  I began to see my husband as my maker --- the maker of my happiness, the maker of my satisfaction, the maker of fun times, the maker of romance --- all of which he can never be.  There is only ONE MAKER in our life and His name is The Lord of Hosts.  That is what Isaiah proclaimed.  It did not occur to me that I was falling into idolatry.  I began to put my husband on a position that was solely reserved for God in my life.  Of course, I was always bound for disappointment.  Disappointment created more frustrations.  Frustrations bred more discontentment, and discontentment fueled my endless nagging.
Young women, you do not cease to make Jesus your Fountain of Life even when you said your I do's to a man.  Ultimately, God has to remain our primary husband, our Maker, our source of life.  And when we do, we will find ourselves able to give more to our spouses.  When our wells run dry, we do not demand from our husband to fill it with water, we go to our Fountain that flows with Living Water.  What is beautiful with Living Water is that those who drink of it will never thirst again.  What is even more splendid about this water is that as we give it out from the well of our hearts, we too get filled even more!  Call it magical, it may be, because this world's "life" has no capacity to increase itself as it is given out.  When it comes out from you, it leaves you drained. You make people happy with worldly measures and it will leave you empty and dried-up.  You give people this Living Water, and you will find yourself filled with more of it!

 Time and time again this secret has proven itself true.  It is simply divine and remains to be a mystery to me.  Not many partake of it because the only way to dip into the fountain of life is by bending yourself into a low position. Pride can produce counterfeit life, but humility opens up the wells of living waters in your heart.

 Ladies, look to Jesus, your Maker, your Husband.  Only then will you be able to remain standing on the giving end all the time.  And guess what.  The longer you stand on the giving end, the more you find yourself on the receiving end. 

"Give and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you." Luke 6:38



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The Renewing of the Wife's Mind Part 1

Wives, what is your idea of beauty?  What is your idea of love and marriage?  These are questions that we ought not to ignore in the first years of our married life.  I would advise the newlywed woman, or the single-almost-getting-married lady to take a real time off for herself and sit by a coffee table perhaps, write down these questions, and seriously attempt to answer them from the heart.  Your answers to these questions will, after all, most likely determine how you will carry on your relationship with your husband.

 I grew up as a teenager with two major vices --- a public and a private one.  The former was romance novels, and the latter was pornography.  What a combination.  One fed the other well alright.  I went on with these vices for years and needless to say they were my addictions.  Of course, my mind began to be filled with all these false and perverted notions about love, romance and beauty.  Without me knowing it, my perception of marriage was so distorted that it was way too far from its authentic attributes authored by its Creator. 

 Although I had stopped reading the romance novels by the time I got engaged, and had already been delivered from pornography a couple of years before that, my mind had not yet been renewed.  Because of these ungodly ideas embedded so deeply in my psyche, a lot of disappointments, dissatisfaction, and false expectations built up within me in the first three years of married life.  Of course, it did not help that I too had to go through major inner healing from issues of rejection.

 Thank God for His Word, and thank God for mothers who speak with so much wisdom!
Ladies, romance novels are just that --- novels.  They are works of fiction, and seldom do stories as such make their way into the biography or autobiography section.  I say seldom because there are a few exceptions.  The problem with us women who get so caught up with these novels is that we begin to fancy our own real-life marriages to make their way to Hollywood or at least to the publishers' press!  There is nothing wrong with simple wishing it were so.  It becomes a totally different thing, however, to expect our marriage to be so!

 Without belaboring the point, allow me to share below some genuine biblical wake-up calls to our minds that may have been taken captive by the world's deceptive ways and philosophies.  I will have to divide this blog into parts as I don't want to make it too long.

 1. Wives (including us Christian wives) tend to keep a "rebellious streak" thinking that it adds to our spunk.  What do I mean with that?  I have heard some wives talk about their husbands in such a rebellious manner and celebrate such a dishonoring attitude as "strength, independence, and being in charge".  I remember as a newlywed thinking it a boring thing to be a submissive wife.  My mom cut that rebellious streak in me down, and the Lord used her to cause my eyes to see the beauty of a marriage founded on God's order.

 2. Women want to believe they are the center of the marriage.  This is one of the main themes of all romance novels --- how the man makes her feel like the whole world revolves around them, how the men change for the sake of the women, how the men adjust to the women's preferences, and on and on.  The first portrayal of this distortion of truth was in the Garden of Eden.  Adam let Eve decide, and everything else is history.  We need to demolish these strongholds.  God made the man first, and then the woman.  The feminist in us cries out in rebellion, but we who are daughters of God ought to know better ---that God's ways always lead to peace and righteousness.  Ladies, we adjust to the men.  This was one of the sayings my own mother used to hammer on me in my first months of married life.  My independent, strong-willed me would automatically respond by saying, "But what about me? Should he not also consider me???" And my prudent mom would reply in words that would go like this: 

 "There is no me in marriage.  It's we.  And if there's anyone who has to die to their preferences first, it's us women, because the instruction given to us is to SUBMIT."

Only when I chose to embrace truth over personal opinion did I see the wisdom of it all.  Marriage was created by God to depict the kind of covenant relationship He wants to have with us.  In the New Testament, we are called the Bride of Christ and Christ as the Bridegroom of the Church.  The goal is perfect union, when the heart, will and mind of the Bride becomes one with Christ.  Guess who has to submit? The Bride. I am sure some of us smarter women would quickly point out to Christ dying first on the Cross for us.  I am not stripping the husband's need to fulfill his own responsibilities of honoring us and loving us. It would also not be love if all the dying has to take place from our side.  Both has to be willing to concede, and it ought to be us wives who does so first.  SUBMIT.  In the epistle to the Ephesian church, Paul states it clearly "submit in all things". The Apostle Peter even points out the wife's submission as that which we ought to give to the Lord! Wow, what a tough mandate to us wives! And yet, God never calls us to do that which He will not enable or empower us to do ---IF WE ARE BUT WILLING TO YIELD to His will.

 I have had to change so many times in my married life.  I have had to renew my mind the way I manage my time because when you get married, you no longer live for yourself.  You live to serve your spouse.  The world tries to portray a submissive and serving wife as a "goody-two-shoes woman".  But let's ask the independent wives if their marriage is deep, meaningful, solid and peaceful as well as fulfilling, shall we?

 I have had to change some of my favorite pastimes in order to be one with my husband.  I have had to make an effort to be interested in his own pastimes and interests. We did not have household help in our first year of marriage so I have had to wake up early to prepare breakfast for him. I had to get over my "cum laude" status and serve as a full time housewife for a time.  I have had to change the way I see "date nights". I had to shift from thinking like an independent college dormer to a married woman who doesn't own her life anymore.  

 Do I get a "me time"? Of course, I still do! And believe me, when you surrender to your husband's ways, he will delight in pampering you.  He'll give you a break of course, every now and then.  But when your husband is tired and you're all hyperactive from the exciting events of your life, take a pause and SERVE your husband's needs.

 Him first before me.  Just like in our relationship with Jesus. 

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Who Do You Dress For?

If truth be told, there are many factors that affect a woman's choice of her dressing.  Most women oftentimes dress up for other women, and then there is also quite a large group who would not be quick to admit they dress up for the men.  Of course, there is a small percentage of the female species who simply dress up for their own comfort, not caring so much about how they look on the outward.

As a wife, I have had to reevaluate my fashion tastes and my personal motives for dressing up.  In my college years, I have had journeyed from being part of that small percentage who just don't care, to the group that dresses up to impress other women, to dressing up for the men.  When I got married, all that had to change.  I had to make that choice.  I still do --- consciously, every day, before I leave the house.

When I face the mirror to assess how I look, I deliberately ask myself this question: Who am I dressing up for?

1Peter 3:3-5 commands the wives with these instructions:
"Do not let your adornment be merely outward --- arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel --- rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.  For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands."
Wives, when we said our I do to our husband, we proclaimed exclusivity by choice.  That means to say, you have made yourself exclusively your husband's woman.  His to behold, to hold, to have, to cherish, to enjoy, to love on, to delight on, to take pleasure with --- body and soul.  You have declared that you have given ownership of your body to your husband, and the ownership rights are exclusively his alone.  This should therefore affect everything we do with our bodies and with our emotions.

Of course, ultimately, we belong to God.  Our body, soul and spirit are God's.  I am not negating that truth.  However, in holy matrimony, this giving of our being to our husband parallels our relationship with God.  On our earthly marriage, our oblation is to our husband, as it is to God in all matters.  That is why Paul exhorts the wives to submit to your husbands in all things as unto the Lord.

Hence, even in the way we dress, we do so for God first, then for our husbands.  I do not hold the final say to what I wear --- I have relinquished that right to my husband the day I said "I do".  When he tells me it's too short, I change.  When he tells me it's too loud, I change.  When he tells me it's too revealing, I add something to address that.  I don't do it because I am terrorized by my husband.  I do it because I honor him as I do the Lord.  My submission does not come out of coercion, but out of love and honor.

CrossCards.com
When Peter commanded the wives to narrow down your adornment to the incorruptible beauty within, he was not disqualifying the outward adornment.  In fact, he says "Do not let your adornment be merely outward..." So adorning yourselves on the outward is not bad at all.  But he goes beyond the outward, to the inward.  What he tells us is that your inward beauty is what puts and adds value to your outward adornment.  This is so true, ladies.  You can dress up in classy and simple ensembles and yet radiate with beauty; while you too can dress yourselves up with all the branded, expensive, trendy clothes, and yet, still look gloomy and insecure.

When you, as a wife, have made it a priority to dress up for your husband, you lose the need to compete with other women.  You are not running for the title of Miss Fashionista, you are simply dressing up for your husband's eyes only.  And when you have his approval, you can walk into the room understanding that you are walking in honor of your husband.  Submission to your husbands is beautiful in the sight of God and even in the sight of other people, though they may not easily admit it.  

I understand there are husbands who want their wives to dress sexy and in revealing fashion.  I dare say these are insecure husbands who simply want their egos pumped, displaying their wives as trophies rather than as precious daughters of God.  Women who come to me and tell me I look sexy will be guaranteed a correction from yours truly.  Sexy means sexually stimulating, and as a wife, you have no business trying to walk around in public places trying to stimulate other men sexually towards you.  Sexy dressing should only be made exclusive to your husband's pleasure, in the confines of private intimacy.

Lastly, a gentle and quiet spirit does not necessarily speak of a quiet personality.  It's spirit not a personality.  You can be an extrovert and still hold a gentle and quiet spirit.  How?  By trusting in the Lord at all times.  A woman full of fear will sound like a raging river, overflowing with all complaints, whines, and grumblings.  A woman who trusts in the Lord holds her peace in the Lord, in quietness of her spirit, she can submit even in times of confusion.  This is how the Lord describes true beauty for us women.  This is God's beauty prescription for us ladies --- trusting in the Lord without any fear.

I have been so blessed to be married to a man who holds this opinion:  "I have seen girls who can really dress up and look gorgeously stunning ---- until they open their mouths. Men should wait to see what these girls got when they start talking."  To him, what comes out of a girl's mouth reveals much of who she is.  And that, my friends, holds a lot of truth.  "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."
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Let Your Man Wear the Pants

Recently I had a very funny vision of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden when they decided to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree.  Of course, I cannot guarantee you that this came from God.  Most likely, it was another product of my ridiculous imaginative mind. But here is the picture:


         Eve listens to the sly serpent market the fruit.  The serpent sounds like the perfect sales man, 
      able to make you feel like you really need to have it.  Fast forward, Eve takes a bite from the 
      fruit and voila, her eyes are suddenly charged with a vicious kind of light, no longer that of holy
      innocence, but a sinister form of intelligent 'spark'.  It suddenly converts the formerly submissive
     wife into a hyperactive, nagging woman, filled with so-called "smart ideas" (she just took the first
     bite from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil after all), and now, she is the ultimate endorser
     of Eden's First Forbidden Fruit.  Her market? Adam.

     Adam was going to say something.  He tried. Hard, actually.  Here is my imagined dialogue in script
     form...

Adam: Eve, I don't think---
          Eve:  Oh  Adam, it is the most super duper uber delicious fruit in the whooooole of Eden, I swear!  You really should try it! Look, I am still alive! Look at me! Are you listening? Don't you care what I think about this fruit, Adam?  Adam! I thought you love me! I thought you care for me! If you really do, you should at least consider my tastes! Come on, Adam, try it! Please, please, pretty please....

         Adam:  No, Eve, the Father said...

         Eve:  Look, I'm going to take another bite. (Bites) See, I'm still alive! Come on, Adam.  Just give it a try.  Don't you care about what I feel?  You always think about yourself, about what God thinks of you, about what God says here and there.  You're always thinking about what's good for everyone.  What's good for Eden, what's good for the world, what's good, what's good...  What about me, Adam?  Why can't I have this fruit when it feels and tastes so good?!  What is wrong with you? Don't you want me to be fulfilled and happy and satisfied?!


And the words go on and on like an incessant raging river of whines and cries and nags.  Adam decides that in order for Eve to just stop talking, he will have to just take one tiny bite ----
 just so Eve would STOP TALKING.


And the rest is human history.

Of course, this scene is not in the Bible.  But reality makes it easy to imagine.  Especially our culture's reality.  

Here is the man, the one God has mandated to lead the marriage and his family --- your husband, mind you.  He is doing his best to make the right decision.  He is processing to see what is the best thing he can do in a particular predicament his family is in.  His processor might still be Pentium 4 while yours is a dual core running at minimum of 2 GHz.  In technological matters, yours is sure to lead.  In relational matters, speed does not determine leadership position.  It is by divine assignment.  And in this case, Pentium 4 has been appointed to lead the Dual Core.

Ladies, our husbands process better without extra noises.  His mind considers many things we women don't.  They take longer time to make a decision because they are aware of their responsibility once the decision is finalized and realized.  They may be quiet while processing because that's how they think things through best.  They are not like us, who enjoy thinking out loud even if it sometimes makes no sense.

Our role as wives is to assist in their decision-making process, NOT to make the decision.  Believe me, there is a great schism between those two roles.  In assisting, we only present viable options, possible consequences, and alternative methods.  Presenting is different from insisting.  Must I elaborate that the former verb is not imposing, not demanding, and leaves a huge open room for a voluntary choice whether the presented idea is acceptable or not?

Let us wear our skirts well, and let the men wear their pants up.  Let your husbands lead without you interfering all the time.  Wait for your husband to ask for your "most priceless" opinions rather than brag about them.  Stop comparing your processor to his and perhaps he might end up wanting to upgrade in the near future --- by asking the Lord, or his own comrades, and not you to upgrade him (hihihihi).

Wives, it does not make you any less sharp or smart if your husbands are the ones calling the shots in your homes.  It does not make you any less important or useful in the marriage if you let your husband lead while you assist alongside.  

Fulfillment is found in knowing that you are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.  And when we wives function as a helpmeet, not as the leader of the house, we will find true contentment in knowing that we are at our right place doing the right thing at the right time.
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