Category Archives: Marriage

Submission Sucks

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Submission: Placing one’s personal mission under the mission of another; to voluntarily give up personal rights for the rights of others; to rank under another, as a soldier ranking under an officer.

Ahhh, the start of a new year. It brings new resolutions and always new challenges to those resolutions. I already find myself renegotiating one of my own goals: to be more gracious to my husband when he messes up so that I am more submissive. My husband doesn’t see this as a needed goal because typically I extend grace and submit. He thinks I do well, and I do most times because my husband is a sweetheart, constantly doting and thinking of and doing what will make my life better. So I’ve considered chucking the gracious goal. If he’s satisfied, then I’m satisfied, I reason. But I remember why I set the goal in the first place: For those times when my husband doesn’t think as fast as I think he should or plan like I think he should and I’m at war with him in my mind. I have to fight hard not to kill him in there, but I injure him many times; in my mind his ego is bruised, his feelings are hurt and he becomes senile: “Who is this woman I married?”

I don’t really want to bruise his ego, hurt his feelings or make him wonder why he married me so I have to take control of my thoughts that come from an impure heart that will eventually reach out to dishonor my husband with words and cause me not submit to his way of processing, his way of coming to a solution. Submission is important for my personal growth, my husband’s well being, our marriage’s health, the stability of the children and the growth of God’s kingdom. The growth of God’s kingdom is the key reason for submission and all the other reasons help to craft the key.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24).

After giving the wives instructions, the Apostle Paul tells husbands how they are to treat their wives, always comparing the husband to Jesus Christ. And then toward the end of the passage it says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (v. 32). So Paul tells us that the great mystery of marriage is that the union is akin to Christ’s relationship to the church. Because I am the church, I am a subject of Christ in the kingdom of God. As a wife, I am a subject of my husband in our home. So in essence, what I speak to my husband, I speak to Christ. How I speak to my husband is how I speak to Christ. What I do to my husband, I do to Christ. What I speak about my husband, I speak about Christ. What I think about my husband, I think about Christ. Oh the tangled web we wives weave when we don’t think of our Savior but only think that submission sucks. We don’t want to submit because we’d rather that our husbands submit to our ideas, submit to our plans, submit to our way of doing and thinking, submit to us. But I propose that we think of submission sucking a different way.

Submission can suck the life out of your flesh yet give breath to your spirit. Submission can suck your toxins from your husband and kiss him with peace and joy. Submission can suck laziness and disobedience from your children and energize them with a desire to work and please. Submission can suck the parasites from the pews and infuse new blood to the church. Yes, submission sucks to get out the bad and to give life the way God intends for life to be.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

10 Ways to Nurture Your Husband

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Invest in Yourself

1. Make a commitment to be a biblical wife. This commitment should be made first and foremost because God calls you to be one. To strengthen this commitment, read God’s word on the matter, study biblically-sound Christian materials, and refer to my blog, including the two previous posts in this series. Wanting to please God and understanding the impact behind obeying Him make the commitment easier to keep.
2. Examine your fruit. See what areas of the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) that you need to work on and do it. You can have a heart’s desire to do and understand God’s will, but if your fruit is rank, you will only be able to offer spoiled goods that have no nutritious value for your husband.
3. Take time for yourself. You cannot, I repeat—CANNOT— keep nurturing others and not pour into yourself. Even Jesus took time away from the crowd to be alone with God the Father. You must stop your work and pause the nurturing to get nurtured yourself. Do what you enjoy that will refresh your soul and spirit and enable you to joyfully give to others.

Invest in His Body

4. Show him affection. Initiate kissing him every time you enter each other’s presence. Make love to him even when you don’t feel like it; ask God for strength to help you nurture your husband sexually. Remember, it’s on him if he strays, but it’s up to you not to give him a “reason” to (See “Wife Addition”).
5. Make him comfortable by pampering his body. Some men don’t like manicures and pedicures or even massages, but you know what makes his body feel good. Whatever it is, do it.
6. Make his atmosphere comfortable so he feels comfortable. Create a welcoming environment in your home so he wants to be there. Keep it clean, beautiful (make sure you have some masculine touches, too) and smelling good with food and other delightful fragrances. Declare your home to be a cozy and combat-free zone.

Invest in His Spirit
7. Pray for him. Do this alone and in his presence. He doesn’t always have to pray with you, but make sure you bless him daily and on those special occasions.
8. Share with him scriptures that you have studied that remind you of his strength of character or will otherwise encourage him. Tell him why you are sharing that scripture.
9. Fast for him. Sometimes you see your husband in warfare or he is having a hard time making a tough decision. Fast for him to help his breakthrough come.

Invest in His Emotions

10. All of the above no doubt will positively impact your husband’s emotions, but make sure to also intentionally watch your mouth (Psalm 141:3). This means for us to watch the bad that comes out of our mouths, but we need to ask God to also help us watch for the good that should come out of our mouths. Plan good things to communicate to your husband not just with what you say but even with what you write to him. Dote on him with spoken and written words that you share daily. Why not be like Sara and call him lord (with a little ‘l’)? He is the master of the house; surely you can reverence him as such.

Of course there is a lot more I could say, but I think you understand where I’m coming from. Invest in yourself and make sure you know your husband so you can tailor your investment to his body, spirit and emotions. Nurturing him will surely help him to be the man God has called him to be.

Copyright 2009 by Rhonda J. Smith

Momma Wife?

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“I got four kids,” I’ve heard women with three children say, taking a stab at their husband by classifying him as the fourth child. A lot of us women feel this way when we pick up our husbands’ clothes, help them figure out logistics and do housework. We think, “What would they do without us?” or “I didn’t sign up to be his mother.” Though these tasks can be annoying, God’s idea of a wife wasn’t a built-in slave for a husband. I don’t even think it was for husbands to be dependent upon wives; I believe God’s idea of a wife being a helper to her husband was the woman’s role in an interdependent relationship, two different minds coming together to compliment the other for the glory of God’s kingdom. I believe the idea of a helper, or a nurturer, was intended for the husband’s growth, not so he can glory in his achievements but so he would be equipped to accomplish God’s will for the salvation of mankind.

Two are better than one. Ecclesiastes 4:9 tells us this for three reasons: 1) if one falls, the other is there to help her up; 2) if they lie down together, they will be warmer than if they lied down alone; and 3) one may be overpowered by an enemy, but two will be able to resist him. Each of these instances shows interdependence, both parties benefiting from the relationship. And most of us want the person on our team to be at his best. Being a nurturer helps a husband to be at his best to give you his best and to fight the enemy. When you are both at your best, you think clearly and can properly prioritize. And the number one priority for a believer is to make God known throughout the earth, and to defeat our number one enemy, Satan, is at the top of the list in order to achieve this.

I think too many so-called strong black women protest nurturing their husbands with a “what about me? What’s he going to do for me?” And those are legitimate questions, but I believe Ecclesiastes helps to answer those and so do Ephesians 5:25-33, Colossians 3:19, 1 Corinthians 7:3 and 1 Peter 3:7. You need to know what your husband’s role is too. And you shouldn’t enter a marriage if you aren’t sure that your mate can be a husband according to Scripture. But if your husband goes crazy in the marriage and forgets that he is a biblical husband, you are not absolved from being a biblical wife.

What god put together, let no man tear apart (Mark 10:9). We focus so much on this meaning the couple shouldn’t divorce and rightly so because this is the proper interpretation, but I want us to apply this to the roles that God put in place for the wife. We cannot tear away the biblical roles from the definition of wife because God defined the wife. When we decide to do so is like us deciding to be God. We are not free to redefine our roles to our level of comfort. Let us be the wives, the nurturers of our husbands, that God called us to be.

Copyright 2009 by Rhonda J. Smith

Wife Addition

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Are you an addition or a subtraction? If you are an addition, what do you add? If you are a subtraction, what do you subtract? These are questions we need to ask ourselves when we are involved with any relationship, but I want to focus first on family relationships, particularly with the husband. Single ladies, don’t stop reading; this is for you, too. You need to know whether you would be an addition or subtraction to your husband. So many wives are subtractions to their husbands—emasculating and dehumanizing them—because they didn’t know what God had called a wife to be. I’ll give you some of what Scripture says about being an addition to your spouse—a nurturer, if you will, and in following posts I will help you to understand the impact of a nurturer and help you to be one.

The Call for Addition

“The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18).

Someone who adds to something so that it grows, becomes better, is a nurturer. This is the role of a wife for her husband, a helper, doing what’s necessary to encourage him to grow. I think women have been so brainwashed into believing that encouraging a husband to grow only involves the wife cooking, cleaning, and having sex so that the husband is free to flourish at work. This is the objection I hear to being a Proverbs 31 woman. Rarely do I hear anyone focus on the emotional care that wives are called to.

“The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life” (Proverbs 31:11-12).

If you only focus on spoil, which means gain, you could believe that this scripture is only speaking about physical gain. If that was the case, the writer simply could have said, “Her husband doth safely trust in her” instead of “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.” But when a husband trusts a wife with his heart—the seat of his emotions, he trusts that she will not trample it: No name calling, illicit affairs, double-talk, withholding sex or anything else done to mess with his mind and damage his heart. When considering a husband’s heart and his having “no need of spoil,” this means he has no need to seek emotional comfort elsewhere—in his job, recreation or in the arms of another woman. You provide him good and not evil until you die because you are an addition to his life, and, because of you, he should have no need to add anything or anyone else to satisfy him.

Copyright 2009 by Rhonda J. Smith