Miracle at Cana by Valerian Ruppert
Let’s Talk Submission: Part 1
Let’s Talk Submission Part 2: Some Practical Suggestions
I’d like to go back to some women’s concerns about their husband’s inability or unwillingness to lead, and ways to help with that.
Try writing out a family mission statement. That way both you and hubby can focus on the goal, and as long as there’s progress no matter how incremental, you can learn to find peace in that and not be so control-freaky. Growth is a lifelong process after all.
One way to grow a spiritual leader is to buy him books. My husband and I regularly send each other articles that would be helpful to the other. If my husband needs help with a specific concern, I find books that contain the information he needs, i.e., apologetics books so he’s better prepared when they have friendly office debates.
My husband and I don’t regularly hang out with lots of people, but we do enjoy occasionally spending time with families like ours. Getting our husbands around godly men, who are also working hard on their holiness and their vocation, is another sure-fire way to expose them to positive examples of manhood and fatherhood.
As women we are nurturers. We are daughters of Mary, and our strength isn’t in lording it over the men in our lives. God gave us dignity and beauty, and when we use these to cultivate kindness, modesty, obedience, and order, then we are using our gifts to the full.
We are not trying to CHANGE our husbands. The raw material is already there to begin with. We’re here to cultivate our husband’s gifts as well. I often ask my husband questions on how to deal with this and that person or this and that behavior from the kids. It’s not because I don’t have any idea how, but because I would benefit from my husband’s perspective on things.
God is also a God of order, and the ability to listen and follow at the right time is part of that. Obedience manifests itself in the way we live our lives, in our schedules, and in our possessions. What we allow into our homes and our lives needs consideration (again, speaking to myself here). We could very easily fill our lives with clutter that doesn’t enrich us. We build the atmosphere in our homes such that our children grow up knowing their rightful place as men and women of God. Notice that so much of today’s “programming” (there must be a reason it’s called that) continues to promote the idea that men are idiots. If that’s the kind of propaganda our children are exposed to on a daily basis, they will bring that notion with them into their teens and adulthood, and into their marriages. This means we control and monitor input — books, movies, TV shows, and music. While we cannot shield our children from all the garbage, we can teach them to sift and be discerning about what messages they receive and keep in their heads. Our behavior reinforces those lessons.
One last thought about obedience. When I got married, I did not have this down and I’m very much still a work in progress. But there’s an incident that always reminds me of why it pays to submit:
When our first child was 3 years old, my husband wanted me to meet his family in the Philippines for the first time, by myself, with our child. I threw a fit and didn’t want to go, but he wouldn’t budge. So I obeyed, resenting him the whole time. The year after we went home and met his family, his dad died. If I had not listened, I would be beating myself up for that decision for the rest of my life.
Our marriage isn’t perfect, but those times when I swallowed my pride, said yes, and left everything up to God, I’ve never had reason to regret.
Some helpful reads:
The Authentic Catholic Woman
Simplifying Your Domestic Church
The Privilege of Being a Woman
Mulieris Dignitatem
True Consecration to Mary
JPII’s Theology of the Body Audiences
And on my list to read this year, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)’s Let’s Talk Submission: Part 1
Let’s Talk Submission Part 2: Some Practical Suggestions
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