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krystab
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| Posted: Feb 10 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged
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First, I want to thank everyone for all the wonderful help I received in my recent post on putting the kids in school. Due to your prayers and suggestions things are much improved. Many resources to help have just "fallen" in my lap and I sincerely feel I can continue in my call to homeschool.
So, part of the big struggle at my house is that Dad is here all day long. We have constant squabbles about rules for the kids. On my to do list is coming to an agreement with him on rules and consequences for the kids. We really need to be in agreement on this, even more so since he is here all day. There is no way I am going to get him to step back and let me run the show during the day.
Things like lunchtime, wake up time, when to do chores, when to do school, and what has to be accomplished before play time all have to be worked out. Based on discussions in the past and even just today, we have very different views on what these rules should be.
So, does being submissive to my husband mean that whatever he thinks the rules and daily plan should be I should do? Especially since his views are not going to cause any harm, they are just different from the way I naturally do things or believe is right. If you know of any references that may help me determine exactly what this submissiveness is to mean that would be a great help. Where is the line between being an obedient wife and being the mother you envision?
I have just started reading "A Mothers Rule of Life" by Holly Pierlot. One of the amazon reviews of the book points out that Holly does not seem to agree with being submissive to her husband, and believes compromise can always be reached rather than deferring to husband as authority. She cites a letter of John-Paul II and the catechism to prove her ideas. But the reviewer stated, "Wives are to be submissive to their husbands, whose role is to be the head of the family, while the wives' role is to be the heart of the family--as Bishop Fulton J. Sheen so aptly stated." What does it mean to "be the heart of the family?"
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Krysta
Mom to 6 little blessings
DD-00', DS-02', DS-04', DS-07', DD-09', DD-12'
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SallyT
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Krysta,
My husband and I have spent a lot of time discussing the word "submission," which I instinctively dislike! One of the things he has pointed out to me is that although yes, St. Paul does direct women to be submissive to their husbands (or obedient, as in Ephesians), he also uses words like "respect" far more often, and whenever he's exhorting women to be submissive/obedient, he is also, and equally, exhorting husbands to be loving and self-sacrificing, as Christ loves His Church.
So at least as St. Paul seems to be envisioning things, husband and wife aren't equals in *function,* but their respect for each other is *mutual," and the submission of one to another is a surrender of will in a mutual, giving, self-sacrificing way, not a cowering in submission of one before the other. (I'm totally paraphrasing our many conversations and his references -- as a Catholic theologian, he comes well equipped with Scriptural and other references!). Being submissive, in biblical terms, isn't about being a doormat, and it isn't about the husband's having absolute authority.
Here, for example, is a sort of outline of what "submissive" might mean for a wife. This isn't a Catholic site, but it's one my husband references in his attempts (eta: I should really say "efforts." "Attempts" sounds as if he's not successful, and he definitely is) to grow as a husband, and he often recommends posts to me. Here's the analogous post on the man's role. . Again, this is coming from a more sola-scriptura Evangelical viewpoint, but scripture is authoritative! And I do think that this model opens the door for mutual engagement with issues and, yes, for compromise, or at least an arrival at some kind of agreement.
More on male headship and what it's not.
This is kind of helpful, too, in parsing what "submission" doesn't mean for women. . Again, the Protestant sola-scriptura thing is limited in a way -- as Catholics we have the riches of a whole, living tradition to help us navigate! But I think this blogger has some very useful things to say.
Can you tell that this is an ongoing conversation in my house, as we seek to sort our our almost-24-year marriage? :) It's not a bad conversation at all!
Anyway . . . yes, I agree with you that you want to work out a set of rules that satisfies both of you. It's no good if one person is left simmering in resentment, and although at the end of the day the buck stops with your husband, there's no biblical or faith-based reason for your own M.O. and personality to be written off. For you to be "the heart of the home," you have to be the person God made you to be, with the strengths and areas of wisdom He has given you. And you can certainly enter a conversation from that place.
At the same time, I think you also have to respect what you can discern to be the goodness and rightness of your husband's overall goals: more order? more ready obedience? more reliable mealtimes? (men really like to know when they're going to eat, I find!) Whatever his greater objective is, you can also start from a place of respect for that objective. If you can agree on the big picture -- that is, if you yourself can agree that what he wants, in a large way, is good and right -- then you can perhaps more easily negotiate the "how" from your place of strength and wisdom, as long as you're also speaking with respect. I find that even when we haven't reached agreement on an issue, conversations with my husband are less like quarrels and more like conversations simply because we've made a resolution *always* to speak respectfully to each other.
Speaking of meals, I need to feed my kids now! I know this is rushed and probably kind of disjointed, but I wanted you to know that a) you're not alone in figuring these things out, and b) I think the news is better than you might fear! And there are some good resources to help with clarifying these basic questions of roles in marriage.
God bless you!
Sally
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SallyT
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PS: Here is a Catholic marriage site my husband and I also reference. I can't think of a particular item on this issue from this site, but if you have time to read around a little, you might find some pertinent wisdom from a Catholic perspective.
Sally
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krystab
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| Posted: Feb 10 2014 at 4:01pm | IP Logged
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Thank you Sally! Those links really helped me understand the issue. That "submission" word rubs me the wrong way too and I think I fight more against the word than what it actually means.
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Krysta
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DD-00', DS-02', DS-04', DS-07', DD-09', DD-12'
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SallyT
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| Posted: Feb 10 2014 at 5:32pm | IP Logged
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Exactly. :)
Those links have helped me, so I'm glad they shed some light for you, too!
Sally
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JodieLyn
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Yeah "that word" causes more problems... 
Sally, I'm so glad you had some resources at hand today, I'm looking forward to getting to check them out.
So, I'm a bit gun shy with this topic.. so many do react exactly like you're talking about just to the word, that they reject it without exploring the *idea* of it further.
I tend to be a bit of a associative/intuitive thinker. So rather than defining something I look for things it's "like". So if you were the Vice President of a company would you feel belittled or any of those other things for it to be expected that you'd have to pass things through the President? If you were the President of a company would you ignore what your financial adviser told you about what spending was ok and what was not? That would be silly. So then you take that to a marriage.. there's nothing demeaning about the wife checking with her husband before committing to something and the husband ignoring what the wife says needs to happen in the areas she has expertise would be of little benefit.
So in a strong healthy perfect marriage this hierarchy isn't a problem at all. As a matter of fact *this is something I just saw the other day* it is what makes the marriage work, it is mutual respect and mutual love and every time we practice it it helps the other person do their side just a little bit better or easier and you then have this wonderfully spirally out of control fountain of love and respect within the marriage.
I mean think about it. When someone treats you with respect, with love, doesn't it make you want to treat that person the same way? And what about a person who belittles you or disrespects you? don't you want to kick 'em in the shins? 
But.. unfortunately we live in a fallen world and we tear down those we want to build up and we're selfish when we should be generous and we make mistakes and we lash out in hurt.
So instead of that spiraling out of control fountain.. it spits and reverses and sometimes stops altogether until we remember to give it a good kickstart like a car on a cold cold morning that needs to be cranked several times before it'll catch and we get it going in the right direction again.
And even that isn't as straight forward as it might seem. We have different "love languages" and different history and different personalities so that it can be a bit of a struggle. Sometimes I think that as a woman I need to let my dh be the head and give him that respect because that's the hardest thing for me to do. I mean, I'll just go ahead and make that decision because *someone* needs to make that decision and we can't keep limping along without someone making that decision in a timely manner. 
I know Jen or Angie has brought this up some in the threads on dealing with boys in the early teens/preteens. But men think differently.. they like having TIME to consider problems.. they don't want to discuss things without having first had time to think about them. Me I want to talk about stuff as soon as I hear it because it makes me think of 14 other things and I need to talk to sort it out.. and the sooner the better.
Oh I've learned how to do it.. I've had 21 yrs of marriage to figure this out and keeping my mouth shut when I should is still one of the hardest things for me to do.
I learned that I frequently need to bring up a topic and then let it go. And then bring it up again days, weeks later and just see if my dh has any thoughts on it yet and to keep on biting my tongue if he's still not ready to discuss it.
Now, your mileage may vary no one can be painted with the everyone acts a certain way all the time brush. And of course you can't really go into changing the way you're acting just to manipulate the other person. You have to go into it with love. Because you want to improve your relationship with this person because what you do is something you should do no matter if the other person ever acknowledges it or changes one iota.
Oh and if God is holding my dh accountable as the head of our household, in love, I would want him to have the final say. Even when I don't really like it a lot but if we come to an impasse, someone needs to have the responsibility to make that final call. And I've been in the position of responsibility without authority and I know it's not a good place to be and I know you start resenting those others pretty fast.
Now one more disclaimer, because it always seems to come up but.. abuse is abuse, period. And we're talking about behavior within normal healthy boundaries. If you're dealing with an abusive situation there's a lot of people out there who want to help.
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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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CrunchyMom
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I also like to look at submission in light of our strength as women. Women tend to be stronger emotnally, and perhaps that is what is called to mind when Sheen says they are the heart of the home. But I know that this strength also means that I could have my way all the time if I wanted. I feel we as women are asked to submit, not because we sre weak or defective in some way, but because we are strong, stronger than our husbands. The gross absence of this is the image of the hen pecked husband.
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SallyT
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I'm an associative thinker, too, Jodie, and one thing your comments make me think of is "accountability." Our fallen tendency -- both men and women -- is to assume that we're accountable only to ourselves. To submit to another person involves admitting that you are accountable to that person, and don't just make your own decisions and set your own course.
We do this in our finances: we don't make purchases without consulting each other. Even groceries -- if my husband wants to stop and pick something up on the way home, he calls or emails to ask what we do and don't need. I don't just go on shopping jags -- if I need or want something, we talk about it, set a budget, and discuss how that's going to happen. We both participate in paying bills, though he keeps the master calendar of what needs paying when.
That in itself has been a challenge to work out, because I'd grown up with the notion that it was somehow a weakness in me, as a woman, not to run the whole financial show (ha. I am so not an administrator that it is to laugh. I was so much happier once I acknowledged this reality). Neither of us, actually, is much of an administrator, but he's taken that on as something of a sacrifice. And just as a good administrator practices transparency with the people under him, those people also have to practice accountability to the administration, or the whole thing collapses.
Finances, I think, are a relatively easy area in which to submit. Parenting is much harder, especially when husband and wife come from very different places. But maybe the idea of accountability is a good place to start: that one parent will not implement rules or levy consequences without the knowledge and consent of the other parent. Neither can operate as a free agent in the family.
Sally
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JennGM
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SallyT wrote:
| Finances, I think, are a relatively easy area in which to submit. |
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Ha! Speak for yourself. Seriously, though, at times I find this harder than the parenting differences.
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SallyT
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:)
Well, I do get anxious about finances and want to know where money has gone, when it has gone, and sometimes I am kind of -- "What did you do with it??" -- about it. So he pulls out the spreadsheet and says, "Here is what *we* did with it."
Oh. Okay. Never mind. How much do I have for groceries for next month, again, dear?
Sally
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Erica Sanchez
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SallyT wrote:
:)
So he pulls out the spreadsheet and says, "Here is what *we* did with it."
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LOVE THIS! Made me laugh!
I agree that parenting and finances are the hardest. Finances are easy when there is enough money, but so stressful when there is not and we are going about things independently. We need more *we* in this area especially. And, the parenting....why does this have to be so hard?! It is hard to submit in this area when I am with the children all day and know their needs and how the day has gone, etc. I want him to trust me more, but I think it almost becomes a power struggle rather about the actual discipline issue at hand. We are working on it. Slow and steady. Our motto for all family members lately has been 'it is not what you said, but how you said it'. What is being said is usually quite good - it's the delivery that needs improvement. Sorry for getting off-topic....
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JodieLyn
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I would love to turn over the finances though I am not bad at doing them (a little creative at times but it generally works ) But because of his bizarre schedules, it's really better that I stay on top of it so that we don't have any hiccups in getting things paid on time. It doesn't mean he doesn't know what's going on and that I don't talk to him about any major purchases just means I get the drudgery of keeping track of it all and paying the bills 
My dh will often let me take the lead with the kids as far as I know more of what's going on than he does. But I also bite my tongue when he steps in. The kids need that relationship with their daddy and to know that sometimes they can actually trigger him getting mad (not generally an easy thing).
But so many people will take me as the "stronger" personality.. I laugh at them.. I'm simply the more volatile personality. I can not "run over" my dh.. I love it. I need to know that I can be myself and not have him give up just because I'm loud and emotional He's really good at letting me be and then when I calm down we can talk. But he's the one that holds steady and is really the stronger, just much quieter, of the two of us.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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Mrs. A
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I have been thinking about this subject quite a bit lately. I found a series of lectures on the topic to be very helpful. You can find the first one here and that's actually the one that talks most about submission, so you may not need to go on to the others. It is from an Eastern Orthodox priest, not a Catholic, but I don't think there are any doctrinal issues that might make it inapplicable for Catholics. I think what he speaks about is really a universal Christian truth, regardless of denomination. 
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: Confusion on being submissive to husband
