Posts by Rachel Schultz

READER QUESTION: CAN A WIFE MAKE AN APPEAL TO HER HUSBAND?

November 11, 2022

Dear Rachel, I am wondering your thoughts on speaking to your husband when you have concerns about something he is doing. To me it sounds as if you’re saying not to bring it up at all? I am under the impression that it wouldn’t be unbiblical to bring things up in a respectful manner if something is on your mind as long as it’s not constant or nagging, or if he ultimately has the final call and you submit to him. What are your thoughts on this?

Sincerely,
Wanting to Be Respectful

Dear Wanting to Be Respectful,

Yes, a woman can make an appeal to her husband as his helper. She must do it wisely.

First, do it on selective, important issues. Every relationship you have, whether it be a friend, your husband, a family member, or an organization you are a part of, can only relationally handle so much criticism or questioning from you. Choose the matters you need to confront on with great priority. I do not want to use any relational commodity on a parking space. You’re communicating to him he is too dumb to make a decision on a parking space on his own. Is the thing you want to confront on a mere preference? Remember, you are trying to make his dream, ideal life come true.

Next, the desire to appeal often comes in areas of the marriage that are contentious, or have history. If a woman has been characterized by trying to control her husband and not acting like he is the king she labors for, the first thing she needs to do is confess she has been out of her lane, unfeminine, and trying to make him her helper. This could be wholistically in the marriage, or she does it on the reoccurring issue. Ask for forgiveness and explain the specific behaviors you intend to stop.

After a wife has had that exchange without caveat, she can begin to rebuild his trust. If you’ve already said your piece on that matter in the past (well or poorly), you are already done for a while. He knows and he will decide. Now you PRAY about it every time you want to say something. (Over all of this is that you should not obey a command from your husband to break God’s law. I think you knew this.)

After a good while, you can learn to make a gentle appeal on occasion. Even gentle appeals have a limit. My counsel would be only to do a repeat appeal if you have significant new information. Your demeanor must be yielding and ready to accept instruction. No preaching.

Do not lose sight that you are before a king in his court. A good marriage is intimate and friendly, but he is the king of your household nonetheless.

Expect that he might not change course from what you shared. Then, you get to work on any changes you need to make or problems to solve to meet his vision.

Do this well, and you will become his most trusted confidant. He might ask for your wisdom often. ♥️

This post is part of the mail bag series. You can submit a question on femininity by dm on instagram or e-mailing [email protected].

READER QUESTION: WHAT IF MY HUSBAND HAS A DIFFERENT LEVEL OF SOCIALNESS?

November 11, 2022

Rachel Schultz

Dear Rachel, My husband is high functioning and wants to be at every event, where I am more of an “in the middle” person. If it was up to him we would be at multiple events a day dragging the whole family along and the kids wouldn’t have a routine. We have a rule now where I have three days notice before events and we consider them together. Is that unbiblical? When he does it he drags us to everything and we are all exhausted. He doesn’t see my point of view and how stressful it is for the other four people.

Here’s an example of how he lives and our schedules. He works out five days a week for an hour and a half, participates in three men’s ministries, signed our kids up for soccer three times a week, invites people over one to two times a week and works 11-12 hours days. He doesn’t schedule time for him and I, but does for everything else.

Sincerely,
Exhausted

Dear Exhausted,

Remove the rule. Do it his way. ♥️ That you feel you can make a rule or that you must decide together if you will attend an event is a reflex from living in a feminist world, letting you believe you’re just cooperative partners. Rather, marriage is a head and a helper.

It seems you’re thinking of your husband’s desires as just one of your considerations among many. His goals are the starting place! He has a vision of being very involved in your community. Build your life around his vision. Aren’t you glad wives of great men like Martin Luther did this? Do not guilt trip him into not doing hard things. Train your children well so they can go to events. Women can be very creative once they stop the self pity. The event is not about you having fun or an easy time, but with contentment and self control, I believe you will come to like them too.

Start by meeting with him to ask for forgiveness that you have been reluctant to support him on this matter. Tell him you want to cheerfully participate in his vision for the family and you are ready to figure out how to make it go well on your and the kids’ end. Help make his dreams come true.

The schedule you shared seems like a masculine man leading a fruitful life who could accomplish much for the kingdom. Get ready and do it Mrs.! He wants to run hard. There is one day to rest, a helpful regulation from God for all, both the lazy or overworked.

He is not asking you to sin by going to lots of events, he just has a different vision for how the family spends time than what sounds good to you. I would say the same thing to a woman writing me saying her husband does not want to be a part of many social events or she thinks he doesn’t work enough. He decides! You are not the head! As Voddie Baucham puts it, “Anything with two heads is a monster.” Learn how to live happily with what he provides. I think he knows what you think because you burned through a bunch of not gentle appeals. Stop any nagging! He knows your points. You can build his trust back overtime.

If a woman won’t support her husband’s vision for his family’s life until she feels he’s considerate enough, she’s not obedient to God. Or happy.

My position is not that I know your husband has not sinned in any area, including the command to live with his wife in an understanding way. But, I know what a woman is responsible to do as God’s design not contingently. (And remember to be humble that your assessments are fallible.) I am a woman speaking only to women. Finding out if your husband is sinning by not understanding you enough is not my role, or needed. Because similarly, you managing if he should be more considerate of you is not your role.

He knows your heart has not been with him. After a good while if you show your willingness to do things his way, you could learn how to make a gentle appeal. Once he trusts you he is more likely to hear it on occasion.

If all the previous poor appeals or a new respectful appeal does not change his mind and bitterness crops up, repent of it. Then, roll up the sleeves and learn to run with him.

This post is part of the reader questions series. You can submit a question on femininity by dm on instagram.

Whitehot Biblical Femininity

November 1, 2022

Rachel Schultz

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 saturated culture. It is the air we breathe. We have breathed it in. We have bad reflexes and bad instincts. Many of them learned from a bad culture, and as said above, also from within your 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. We hate feminism everywhere we see it, including our 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 certainly 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 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.) Accept 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.” You can whittle way at his ability to do that if he’s having to make up for your 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. 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. The short answer is: 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