I want to write this post as a bit of a home base to reference in order to understand the things that are assumed in my other posts and where this blog is written from. This blog is about homemaking, and how God designed women. After you read this, my writing posts like making a nice breakfast for your husband everyday make sense! The alternate title for this post is: Women Are Helpers. For every woman, even the most veteran wife, being good at helping can be hard. And we will always have sin tapping at the door to not want to be the helper. There are multiple ways we can not want to be a helper.
Some are the high handed view that men and women’s roles have no difference. Others are wanting to be served rather than to serve, or for the family to revolve around you. This is often in things like everybody kind of has to rally all of the time to absorb or deal with mom’s emotional fragility.
The previous paragraph was the way being a helper is hard because of sin in our own heart. Being a helper is hard also because of sin in the world. Feminism, which for the purpose of this article I will define as not wanting to accept male and female were created for different roles, has become nearly ubiquitous in our culture. It is the air we breathe. I have breathed it in. I have bad reflexes and bad instincts. Many of them learned from a bad culture, and as said above, also from within my own heart.
Even a conservative, reformed, christian, homeschooling, counter cultural (whatever other et ceteras) woman has to be actively keeping her behaviors and thoughts truly feminine as described by the Bible. And it shouldn’t be a surprise to us because in Genesis 3 it says, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” The term feminism is just a shorthand term for that verse. I hate feminism everywhere I see it, including my own heart.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WOMEN SHOULD BE HELPERS THOUGH
The backdrop for what we should do in day to day life to be a helper to our husbands comes from how God designed the world. One commentator puts it this way:
God did not create Adam and Eve at the same time and then tell them to work out some compromise on how they would each achieve their personal goals in a cooperative endeavor. He created Adam, gave him an occupation, appointed him as ruler of the planet, endowed him with a spiritual outlook, gave him commands, and specified his occupational duties. Adam commenced his rule of the planet before God created Eve to help him in his life goals. Adam did not need to get Eve’s consent. God gave her to Adam to be HIS helper, not his partner. She was designed to serve, not to be served, to assist, not to veto his decisions.
Halfway through that list of things God did with Adam at creation in the second sentence of that quote, it may wash over you, I still am not even there yet and this list keeps going. So with this account being the first three chapters of the sacred text of our religion, it is (obviously) highly foundational.
Perhaps the most baseline start for the definition of what it means to be feminine is, you guessed it, helper.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS
Then, even when we want to be a helper to our husband as defined by the Bible (temptation from the heart and outside world reigned in), I think women can still feel confused on how. How in daily life do I act like a helper, oriented around the main character of our family, my husband?
There are different leadership styles of husbands, and a defining characteristic of a good wife is thankfulness. Some husbands are very commanding; they unilaterally know exactly what they want from their wife and they tell her, maybe quickly. Other husbands prefer a more collaborative leadership style. He may move very slowly. A woman can sinfully observe strengths in someone else’s husband and not think about the type of work required to be wife to such a man. Be content. Every profile of man or style of leadership has things that are hard to be the helper to about them.
Challenge your merely self-imposed visions of leadership and double down on – how can I be useful to this actual man and what does he find helpful? And, not annoyed if what he finds helpful or needs is not how you imagined helping. We are not needing to be born lemmings, married to perfect men. Be exceedingly helpful to your specific, flawed, head of household.
DAILY LIFE
Now some ideas for what this means, or imperatives. Enthusiastically do the things your husband would like you to do, said and unsaid. Observe and study him. Honor and obey his every word. (Not any commands to sin, but I think you knew that.) (Also these are aspirational and I have failed many times at all of these things, but I think you knew that too.) Accept that he is the main character of the family as demonstrated by the founding events of Genesis 1-3 and re-upped by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. Orient your life around him. Reverence him. Act like he is a king, because he is the king of your house.
We don’t have to overcomplicate it. What is helpful? Handling clothing, food, the household cleaning, doing a highly proactive job training his children during the day, and things he gives indications he likes are starting places. While he is out doing the very weighty provisional and spiritual leadership responsibilities God has given him, we should relish the opportunity to have daily grind of life things taken care of and operating smoothly to free his mind. It takes mental space for him to have thoughts like, “I need to have a conversation with this child about this or that,” or, “here is this new thing I want to start.” I can whittle way at his ability to do that if he’s having to make up for my slack in the household. It is hard to be creative in a rushed amount of time.
A lot of women would say one of the difficulties they have with their husband is they feel he is not being proactive on fill in the blank. There could be many things going into that, including his own sin, but a question I would have for the wife is, are you hindering his ability to do this because he is having to do some of the keeper at home things that are your job? Free him up. And don’t try to manage him, or get bitter about what he seems he is doing in his free time.
Do not domineeringly fill a void you see in his leadership. Maintain a posture that he is the leader and you respectfully are ready and always awaiting his direction. Ask genuine, not passive aggressive questions when needed. If he gives direction on something, ANYTHING, no matter how small or not that important of a thing, eagerly do it.
Verbalize your thankfulness to him everyday. Take nothing your husband does for you as granted, even things that are minimal, of-course-a-christian-husband-would-do-that kind of things. Be fun, open to suggestion, and his playmate. Smile a lot at him. Make his home a place of comfort and peace.
The status of being absolutely CHERISHED by your husband because you have done well is indescribable. I love being the jewel of my husband’s crown and when I know I have encouraged him deeply. Work hard, learn self control, and when you fail embrace forgiveness from Christ and keep going, trying again. You and your husband’s life together can be a true, daily joy. Yes, that is even if he is terrible in significant ways. God has a recourse for you in that exact scenario, maybe more on that later but it is in 1 Peter 3 if you want to find it. Short answer, do your role even if he is not. Reverencing a man changes him.
“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones.” Proverbs 12
“For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.” 1 Corinthians 11
“Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.” Proverbs 31
