When Your Husband and Your Desires Don’t Match
Usually I’m behind the scenes at Happier Far. I edit most posts for grammar and tell Cap he needs
catchier titles (I do what I can).
I would like to say, though, that I couldn’t be prouder of
Cap for the direction he’s taken with his blog. Not only for the literary reference
of the title (Paradise Lost for the win!),
but also for the stand he’s taken against sexuality in movies. I think it’s a message that many Christians need to hear—and that too few Christians are willing to speak.
But I must say that at the outset, I wasn’t too happy when
Cap started thinking we might need to stop seeing films that objectify women. I mean, I wanted to see Star
Trek Into Darkness! I wanted to see Catching
Fire! I teach high school; I need to stay relevant! All my students were
seeing them! All my friends were seeing them! But because actresses stripped
down in both films, Cap wouldn’t pay to support turning them into sexual
objects. Which meant I was alone in the dark, shying from spoilers like a
spooked pony and eagerly asking my students, “Was it awesome?”
Cap is not afraid to be different from other people. And
sometimes that’s uncomfortable for me.
Like the time he studied the Sabbath and decided that we needed to take a weekly day off work. None
of my friends were doing that. None of the ladies I respected so much from our
church were doing that. Certainly none of my fellow grad students were doing
that! It meant we had to miss out on some events that non-Sabbath-keepers had
planned for Sunday afternoons. It meant I was certainly bound to be 1/7 dumber
than all my fellow grad students.
Heck, I even chafed when he decided to buy a Lutheran Study Bible. Why couldn’t he just want the ESV Study Bible like all the
other godly people at church?
The ironic trap I keep falling into is this: though I fell
in love with Cap for the ways he was different from other men, when we got
married I wanted him to be just like all the other girls’ husbands.
It’s always rooted in comparison. I don’t necessarily want more than my friends at church have, but
I do want at least what they have. I
don’t want to miss out on movies they see, or the Sunday activities they do, or
Santa Claus, or Halloween, or whatever else Cap might decide isn’t best for our
family.
The reason I write about this is that I think most young
wives (and who knows, maybe some older ones too) struggle with this to some
degree. “I want a house because everyone else has one.” “We’re not having
babies as fast as my friends are having babies.” “I want TOMs because I feel
like a dork in my old Rocket Dogs.” “I want a bigger house because everyone else has one.” And if your husband
doesn’t make enough money for a house yet, or says you need to wait on
children, or decides that twenty pairs of shoes is enough and you don’t need
TOMs, then that’s BAD of him.
When you were dating, you would have said, “As long as I
have you, any of those things is fine!” And now that you’re married, you think,
in the deepest darkest recesses of your grasping little mind, “He’s holding me back from what I want.”
I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one who has that deepest
darkest recess in my mind. Maybe all of you are thinking, “Yikes, Cap married a
winner, didn’t he?” But as a young wife myself, I hear a lot of young-wife-talk
around church, and I think a lot of us struggle with this.
Here’s the thing, though. Some of the ways I’ve been most
blessed are the differences I initially protested. I would never trade my
Sabbath rest now: Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I have seen so much growth in holiness, strength in Cap’s
battle with lust, and enjoyment of our marriage now that we’re more careful with our movies. And yes, I’ve
even benefited from the notes in his clunky Lutheran Study Bible. I don’t feel
like I’m missing out anymore. I feel like others
are missing out.
I teach at our home school co-op, and my job puts me in
contact with a bunch of awesome kids. I love them all, but there’s one pattern
I’ve noticed in many of the kids who most impress me with their spiritual
maturity: they have all had something “normal” withheld from them. Maybe their
parents said “no” to Harry Potter. Maybe their parents didn’t give them Easter baskets.
It’s something different for each family, and I won’t list them all here.
My point is not that Harry Potter or Easter baskets are
wrong—hey, I like both. My point is that their parents weren’t slaves to what
was normal, to what everyone else had, when they were raising their kids. Their
kids learned from the get-go that “everyone else has one” is not a good enough
reason to get something. Would that I could now learn that as a wife!
Well, here’s a verse that I find encouraging. I’m no
super-theologian like Cap, so this might be out of context, but the Spirit has
applied this passage to this area of my life recently:
For this is how the holy women who
hoped in God used to adorn
themselves, by submitting to their own
husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. (1 Peter 3:5)
Okay, so maybe Rachel Held Evans would roll her eyes at me
for quoting the above. But look at what I’ve highlighted: it’s adorning to submit to your own husband (i.e., not to someone else’s
husband’s standard). That means that if you’re reading this post, my goal is
not to convince you that Cap’s standard is best. It is best for me. And the tenets your husband leads by
are best for you (as long as they’re
rooted in serious biblical principles).
They’re best for
you! I never would have chosen some of the paths Cap has led me down. That
means I would have missed out on the blessings I’m getting by following him. I
think I know what’s best for me, but I don’t. God does, and He’s giving me what
I need—sometimes against my protests—through my husband.