I was rolling my eyes as my daughter and I set the table preparing for my husband to come home from work to enjoy some family time and a nice warm meal. Under my breath I may have even mumbled, “This is ridiculous. A woman who works full time, has two kids, and is overcommitted to activities does not have time to make a special event out of suppertime.” Who does that? Who has time to cook, clean, set the table with candles and nice dishes in hopes that you will create an atmosphere worthy of remembering and enjoying?
Well isn’t that the epitome of a Godly, submissive, joyful wife and mother? Please tell me it is not just me.
A dear friend of mine gave me a life-changing book by Elizabeth George called A Woman After God’s Own Heart. This book encourages women to seek after God with all of our hearts and to be influential in every area of our life, starting with our husbands, children, and then our homes. The author suggests that one of our responsibilities as a wife and mother is to create a nurturing home environment and one of the practical ways she suggests accomplishing this is to create a meaningful dinner experience that is filled with special touches and memorable events. She suggests adding candles, special dishes, and special places to your meal time routine.
I immediately began to get prickly and defend myself at the thought because I am a huge fan of paper plates, sandwiches, and the quicker the better mentality.
BUT I prayed that through this book God would show me how to impact others in a practical way in the trenches of the often exhausting, mundane daily grind. He showed me that I am the most influential person in my home and to the people who live there.
So why was I so resistant every time this sweet lady suggested doing something that I thought was a way of the past? I had in my mind that she, and God, did not understand our world today-the busyness, the lack of time, the feeling of being constantly needed and accessible. And doesn’t my husband need to be the one setting the table with candles to create a romantic experience for me? He doesn’t understand or appreciate how much I already do-why should I be expected to go beyond taking care of my family’s basic needs? (That sounds terrible when you say it out loud.)
Nonetheless, I whispered to God for an open mind and heart.
Ok…I hear You…I’m going to do it. Regardless of what I think.
So there I was…setting the table with candles, paper plates, and a warm meal straight from the crockpot. That’s all I did was add candles.
My five year old daughter, Caroline, moseyed into the kitchen to greet her Daddy at the door as he arrived home. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the glow on the table. She was SO EXCITED. My husband’s face was also illuminated with a smile from ear to ear that just screamed, “You did this for me?” Although this was a small effort, he acted as if I had just told him that he won the lottery. Caroline insisted that we turn the lights off to see the candles better–we enjoyed our meal as a family, barely able to see our food, but smiling, laughing, loving, and feeling joy.
Although I saw the smiles on my family’s face, I was not quite sold yet. There is no way I can do this on a regular basis. Does it really make that big of a difference?
The next evening my sweet Caroline could not wait for supper. She took it upon herself to help me set up our dinner-she wanted to help me cook, decorate the house, and place everything on the table in the most perfect way. She was bouncing around with uncontainable joy and excitement at the thought of creating an exceptional dinner for her Daddy and the rest of our family. She placed a tablecloth on the table, gathered a large number of candles, retrieved her vases filled with pink flowers from her room, placed pictures of her, her sister, and us on the table, and carefully placed the dishes where she felt they sat best. She also requested background music to be played to create the perfect setting.
Everything in me thought, “No. This is creating such a mess! I don’t want to clean all of this up! I am just trying to make it to the couch-just trying to make it through supper, baths, and story time so I can fall out on that couch taunting from 10 feet away. Oh…the couch!”
But how could I say no to the joy and excitement she was expressing?
She kept saying with a huge grin on her face, “Mama, I just want it to be perfect. It has to be perfect for Daddy.”
And then she said something that stopped me in my tracks causing my eyes to fill up with tears-As giddy and girly as you can imagine, she said, “Mama, I just want Daddy to feel like a king!”
As I stood in the kitchen, eyes full, I was reminded that my purpose here is to love God with all of my heart and to glorify Him in everything that I do. My attitude did not display that.
I was also reminded that my assignment here is to be a wife, mother, daughter, and friend who loves as Jesus loves us-to lift each other up, to submit to one another, to live a life of love, to create a home that nurtures and leads my family to Him.
As I confessed my negative attitude, I prayed for a new perspective on my assignment here, and He whispered several things to me there in that beautiful, but humbling moment in my kitchen. My eyes were opened. My heart was opened.
I began to investigate deeper into my soul why I was so resistant to this idea of being a submissive wife and Mrs. Suzy Homemaker. I do not believe a woman’s “place” is in the home; however, I do believe God has given women an incredible opportunity to build our homes.
I referenced the passage in scripture that I was most familiar with regarding husbands and wives-Ephesians 5:22-28 to see if there was anything there that may speak to me in a different way than the many times in my life I had read it before.
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
Ephesians 5:22-24
There it was again…that difficulty accepting what God had assigned to me. That word submit-it is difficult for many women today, myself included, to understand and accept. As a youth and newlywed, this passage was easy to process and store in my heart to later pull from the filing cabinet to be used when it was more applicable, but as my responsibilities grew, and busyness and exhaustion ensued, it began to be more difficult to accept. So-I being the language nerd that I am, decided to research the meanings of the word submit and noticed some interesting things.
Submit and obey are subtly different in definition and many times confused in our culture. According to bibletools.org, obey means to follow a command, to conform, or to comply with an order. The Greek word for obedience is hupakoe, which means to listen to or to harken to. Hupotasso is the Greek word used in this passage, which means to get under and lift. Well isn’t that a beautiful image of my calling-to get under my husband and lift him up. Submit means to yield or defer out of respect, affection, superior authority, persuasion, or compulsion. It is to place oneself at a disposition of another. Simply put, I am being called to put my husband before myself because of my respect and affection for him. The military uses the word submit as an equal sharing of tasks, supporting, and fulfilling one’s part of the assignment.
Although these verses are a cultural reflection of the gender roles of the time, I do not believe Paul is writing for wives to be obedient, passive, silent partners in a marriage, but he is calling wives to be uplifting, supportive participants who put their husbands before themselves. He is not only calling me to be submissive to my husband but to others. I am called to put others before myself out of respect and affection for them-to live a life of love. (Ephesians 5:2, 21)
I can’t help but wonder if Paul was writing these things to men and women because of our tendencies to not fulfill what he was encouraging wives and husbands to do. I am often the one who thinks that I know best and that I am underappreciated for all of my responsibilities in and out of the home. This attitude is the opposite of putting someone before myself. It encourages me to drown in my own self-pity that I have it worse and should be loved and appreciated more. This attitude is about me and what I am not getting from my family. These feelings are there often, but I desire to change my perspective daily in order to see the joy in creating a home and life where I love, serve, and encourage my family.
Oh how I long to be a wife who loves her husband well, respects him, supports him, and lifts him up. Oh how I long to be a mother who cares for her children with love, teaches them and models to them who God is, and provide a home filled with joy and memories that shape who they will become.
God has entrusted me as a woman to be the single, most influential person in my home. I am the one who gets to set the mood in my home. I am the one who gets to organize my home. I am the one who gets to create memories in my home for my children and husband to cherish. I am the one who gets to model what it looks like to love and serve as Jesus did. I am the one who gets to take advantage of every opportunity and make wise decisions about our time as a family. I am the one who gets to deeply love my family.
Many times this opportunity or responsibility can be felt more like a heavy burden that is too difficult to hold because my exhausted soul is trembling under the weight, about to give out, with nothing left. I have those days often, but I truly believe that when I pray for strength, rest, and restoration, God gives me just that. I cannot do it without Him. Ultimately, I must submit to Him first, and then I can submit to others. When I sit at His feet and know Him more, I can be an imitator of Him and live a love-filled life.
I have a little extra time this evening thanks to a friend tag-teaming making a casserole with me so I think I will set up dinner on the front porch with candles and paper plates and enjoy putting my husband and children first, serving them, making the most of the opportunity I have been given today, and creating a home that I hope one day my husband and children look back on with fond memories of someone who may have failed much of the time, but desired to live a life of love.
Shared with love,
Lindsay
Scripture Referenced:
22Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Ephesians 5:22-24
21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Ephesians 5:21
1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:1-2
15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Ephesians 5:15-17
Want to dig a little deeper?
Explore Ephesians 5, Proverbs, Titus 2, and Elizabeth George’s book A Woman After God’s Own Heart
Meet Me on the Front Porch 