Go south. It’s warmer. This is true if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. But for someone living in Patagonia, at the tip of South America, south leads to Antarctica, the coldest place on earth.
The right set of directions always depends on your starting point.
In conservative circles, we hear a lot of directions. And for everyone who starts in the same place, the same directions make a lot of sense. But if people who start out very far from the main crowd follow the directions that work for everyone else, they can wind up further from the goal rather than closer to it. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this as it relates to submission.
Submission is one of those things that we hear A LOT of instructions and advice about. The Bible commands it (“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” –Colossians 3:18), but it’s difficult to give up your own way, foreign to a lot of women. And yet, it’s crucial that someone be willing to bend when there’s an impasse or nothing will ever get done. Hence the advice: let your husband lead, submit–it’ll make your marriage warmer, more unified, more peaceful. Honor your husband’s wishes–he’ll love it, he’ll love you for it, and you’ll love the security it all brings. These are good directions for women who grew up in homes where Mama Bird ruled the roost and her word was law to her hen-pecked husband or for women with natural leadership skills and no problem speaking their minds.
But what about the women who were raised in homes where Daddy was firmly in charge, where Daddy’s every wish was instantly met, the women for whom submission is the normal, knee-jerk reaction, and who would hardly know how to fight for their own way even if they had permission to? Or what about the women with natural “follower” personalities, the people-pleasers, the conflict-avoiders, the nurturing, supportive types, or the duty-bound stoics with martyr tendencies? I know these women exist. I am one of them.
Women like us don’t necessarily need a lot of directions about how to submit. We already are submitting. I spent the first ten years of my marriage trying to be a better wife by following all the directions on submitting and wound up inventing “submission” all over the place where it wasn’t even called for.
Take the other week, for example. We were having two other families over for dinner. My husband was helping me set out our blue-flowered china, and I hurriedly told him where I had thought everyone should sit. He said, “Interesting . . . what are you thinking?” And I instantly thought that he didn’t like my seating arrangement and that now it was time for me to submit to his different idea.
“Whatever you want to do is fine,” I replied as I hurried more silverware to the table.
But after ten years of living with Wifey, the Submit-O-Matic, my husband pressed, “But what were you thinking?”
“Oh,” I said, “I thought we’d keep the smaller children next to their parents.”
And my husband said knowingly, “You were about to bail on me, weren’t you.”
Bail on him?
I had thought I was submitting, you know, obeying God, making my husband so glad he’d married me. He felt like I was abandoning him.
Submission is crucial at an impasse, but “submitting” to a hunch about a preference and squelching ideas that might point a different way is failing to obey another command, the command to “guide the house” (1 Timothy 5:14). It’s not time for submission until a decision has been made. If my husband has not yet laid down the law, then I need to be his adviser and give him as much information as possible so he can make a wise decision. As the guide of the house, I need to share all my wisdom and understanding of our family and how it works best. If I “submit” before it’s time, then as a married unit, we are only functioning with half our brain.
I don’t think we hear much about guiding the house because most women are so good at it. It’s pretty sparsely populated, here at the tip of South America, but for me and women like me (all 102 of us), guiding the house is about as foreign as submission is to the teeming hordes in the populace north. Women who are teaching others how to be good wives need to be careful to address both groups.
The goal is a warm marriage, where husband and wife can function as a team, where they can share ideas, make decisions, and move ahead as one. Submission will help women get there if they are starting from a tendency to run ahead, make the rules, and get their own way. Learning to guide the house will help them get there if they are starting from a tendency to follow from ten steps behind, embrace someone else’s rules, and give up their own way before they’ve even shared what it is. It’s time directions for wives took into account the starting point.
I love your writing style! Very nice.
Awesome Andrea!!! This is a GREAT example of Godly, Biblical submission at it’s finest! Love this and I’ll probably be sharing!
What do you do about submission when your husband is not a Godly man? I try to conduct my life in a way to influence him without nagging.
Well said! To some, submission is often portrayed as the selfish husband domineering over the timid wife who has no preferences of her own. Thank you for pointing out that in ideal submission the husband and wife are partners in decision making.
Debbie J,
That’s a really excellent question! Thank you for bringing it up. I’d like to give it more attention than a quick answer in a comment thread. Lord willing, I’ll write a separate post for you about that. With my busy household, posts can often take a week or more to get from idea to Internet, but I’ll plan to send you an e-mail when it’s up.
Well put!! I am not one of the 102 women of this group, but I probably fail them more often than not. Good for you for figuring this out and applying the Scripture in a such a way that suits you (specifically). Those of us who tend to be leadership types are the more vocal also, so that may be why the other side of the coin gets represented more often. This is a good word! I think there are more of you that 102, and your ministry is so precious to them and me!
Great post! Very insightful and enjoyable to read. Interesting that I would never have dreamed that you would describe yourself as a “Submit-o-Matic”. You express yourself so well in your blog and seem so confident in your opinions. I guess the context really does make a tremendous difference – as well it should.
Very interesting and thought provoking.
So true. Thank you for this post. I am trying to get out of Submit-o-Matic mode myself. Super, duper hard.
I’ve been reading your blog for a while but I don’t know if I’ve even commented… I don’t feel convicted about many of the same things, but enjoy learning about other viewpoints as to how people apply the Bible to their life and your obvious commitment to living according to the word of God is very refreshing and has given me much to think about, pray about and study on my own.
I just have to say, that as one of those “102″ this post really hit home for me. For whatever reason, my personality is just that of a people pleaser, conflict avoider… so it’s hard for me to relate to a lot of discussions about biblical submission, because it seems to come naturally for me. I don’t understand it from the other side. I’ve never thought of the concept of guiding the house and not submitting too early. Definitely has given me a lot to think about, so thank you for sharing your thoughts in this post. It’s given me a better way to relate to the submission topic.
Very good. I was raised to do what I was told without question. My dad was quite the Mr. Command. And I married a man who wants more than anything for me to take initiative in managing our household and finding creative ways to enhance our lives and serve the Lord–to be that Proverbs 31 woman whom he can trust in. This has been such a hard thing for me to do. I wasn’t trained to run a household–or manage finances. I was trained to function off of a list that someone else made up for me.
Submission can look different in different homes. I’m thankful to have a man who gives me so much freedom–and the challenge to figure out how to function with so much freedom!!!! The parallels to my life in Christ have been incredible as well….
Anyway, thanks for another great post.
Mrs Parunak, I’d like to hear your response to Debbie J too! I get that question a lot from my friends. So, please include me in the email. Thanks!
I’m definitely one of the women in your third (I think?) paragraph….I came from a mother-dominated home and don’t have any problem being bossy. And, God has been gracious to teach me how even those “strong personality” tendencies can be used to serve my husband/family, and for the Glory of God, UNDER submission to my husband. It has been very freeing thing.
That said, I think you’ve touched brilliantly on an important angle that sometimes gets short shrift when the ‘submission’ topic comes up. It occurs to me, reading your post, that a lot of time, energy, and ink is spent in the secular or professional cultures stressing that individuals–especially women!–constantly evaluate and measure how their personality is playing into their “corporate culture”. I’m not attempting a total analogy here…but as women who are striving to honor God’s call to serve/complete our husbands and families WHILE exemplifying the Christian virtue of submission, it couldn’t hurt to do some of that kind of evaluation regularly! When I had a “career”-type job, I was constantly evaluating how my personality worked or conflicted with those I worked under, with, or supervised. I don’t want to give my mothering or wifely responsibilities any less diligence. And, it’s SOooooo much more rewarding doing this kind of evaluation for people I love/care about!