Last post, we discussed the statement Peace makes in her book, The Excellent Wife, about the wife making her ministry to her husband the priority (second to God) in her life. As promised, here’s a post about what my ministry to my husband practically looks like.
If my most important ministry is to my husband, I need to put some thought into what that ministry is practically supposed to look like. So as I was mulling this over in my head, I found myself becoming frustrated with the fact that Peace says the husband should not just be the recipient of what’s left over of the wife’s time and energy each day. I mean, it’s hard to give my husband anything but what’s left over at the end of the day. Let’s be honest – after working for 8 hours, driving for 1.5 hours to and from work, planning, shopping for, and cooking dinner, and whatever else is going on that day, there’s barely enough energy left in me to convince my husband that he needs to clean the kitchen. But as I discussed this with my husband, we decided that despite the other demands on my time and energy at this stage in our lives, there were still some responsibilities that he, as leader of the household, was going to delegate to me; these responsibilities were to be a part of my ministry to my husband.
Here are a couple of highlights from this conversation with my husband:
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I minister to my husband by taking care of him physically. Obviously my husband has delegated this responsibility to me, and to me only. This means that if I don’t take of this need for him, it’s not being taken care of at all. But besides this, taking care of him physically also includes cooking and planning meals that are healthy for him. This includes running the household in such a way that we can get to bed at a reasonable hour each night.
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I minister to my husband by taking care of the home. My husband has made me the steward over our home. As the head of the house, he has delegated this responsibility to me. As Peace says, this “doesn’t mean that her husband and children cannot help, but she sets the tone” (p. 74).
This is probably the most important revelation I had during our conversation. Allow me to make a confession: I used to grumble a lot against my husband about the way he helped me around the house. To clear my husband’s record, please believe me when I tell you that he has always been very willing to help around the house. Any time I have asked him to do anything for me, he always does it cheerfully. What a blessing. But I always grew frustrated with the fact that I usually had to ask for his help and then tell him specifically what to do. It was as if he couldn’t figure out that the load of clean clothes on the bed needed to be folded – and put away in the drawers. I used to get so angry that he couldn’t figure it out for himself. Hello?! The shoes you keep tripping over…they go in the closet. For a while, he would get frustrated with me for always having a to-do list that was hanging over my head, but I was always angry at him for making me the only one responsible enough to keep up with what needed to be done around the house.
But over the last couple of months, all this has changed. Now that I realize that the home is my God-given responsibility to manage and to delegate tasks when I need help, I feel no resentment toward my husband whatsoever. There’s no more grumbling, no more bitterness, no more stress. I feel so free. I feel free to manage the home, to keep up with what needs to be done around the house and to ask for his help when I need it. It doesn’t bother me anymore that he has no idea what needs to be done around the house, because now I’ve taken ownership of that. I’ve taken ownership of planning our meals, shopping for the groceries, doing the laundry, and cleaning the house. The atmosphere around our house has literally changed; instead of tension, there is peace. Instead of stress, there is joy. And my husband loves to come home to a place like this!
I’ve also come to a place over the last couple of years regarding my to-do list. Where this list used to keep me stressed and anxious, I have become more submissive to God’s sovereignty. That means that I submit my to-do list to God and allow him to decide what needs to be done each day. There is nothing so important that it has to be done today. Now I still have to be diligent and avoid laziness, but I can complete my chores knowing that the Lord is truly sovereign and He will accomplish his will.
Reality Check – What’s your ministry to your husband look like? Can you relate to the frustrations I was experiencing in taking care of the home? Do you agree that the home is the wife’s domain? Why or why not? In a future post, we’ll discuss whether or not the home is truly the woman’s domain.
