I know I probably have a rotting tooth. There's a gap that has the tendency to trap food and despite my efforts to keep it flossed from time to time, I know that it is probably is something big and bad happening in there. BUT I'm avoiding going to the dentist! Scardey cat. I'm living in denial. Well, since there's no pain, i don't need to go and have my tooth (maybe teeth? shudder..) removed. It's just going to bite me back one day.
This post is about how we need to maintain and nurture the most vital relationship in the family. No, not parent child relationship. Though I would suspect most people reading this blog would be most concerned about this, the precious children and how to best care for them.
No. Actually, the most vital lifeline relationship in the family, the one that is the be all and end all of all families: the husband and wife relationship. I am happily married to my dear, loving husband. I feel often that God was so good and kind to have blessed me with a godly man like him, when I am so undeserving.
Sadly, most marriage relationships are so often neglected and placed as the last priority. But when it fails, every other thread unravels. The marriage landscape is pretty ugly if you really stop to count the carnage. It's scary how marriages are failing. What went wrong?
Getting away from God's design is what went wrong. The Creator has specific design specifications for His creation Man and Woman to function and work. It can be seen in Genesis when God created Adam to be the one to have dominion over the earth and subdue it and He created Eve to be Adam's perfect helper.
I've been reading a really really great book Created to be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl. What a blessing this book has been. It has been both sobering and enlightening. Hubby and I were laughing while reading pg 155, a segment taken out word for word from a home economics textbook from the 1950s. Some exerpts entitled How to be a Good Wife Today:
*Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home, and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
*Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so that you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.
.
.
.
Some Don'ts:
*Don't greet him with problems or complaints.
*Don't complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as minor compared with what he might have gone through that day. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow, and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax and unwind.
etc.
(at this point, hubby sticks out his foot for me to remove his imaginary shoe. :p)
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Did any of you baulk yet? I know I did.... but partly in realization of how far my own standards are short from even this 1950s textbook.
Wow. The man is to be treated like a King??? And the woman is there to SERVE him??? Well, look again to the design of God and you will see, it is the way that God intended for blissful marriage!
Genesis 2:20-23 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
1 Corinthians 11:8-12 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.
Stay at home and serve him???
Titus 2:3-5 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
The Word of God is blasphemed when wives do not perform their duties to their husbands! This is serious stuff. But really, is it soooo serious? You will know it is serious when God's blueprint is not followed and things get all kinds of ugly. That's when the sobering fact that God's word is to be feared really hits home. :(
These days, we live in an equal opportunity society whereby women can rise the ranks and can climb the career ladder, as high as any man can. No body wants to blame failed marriages on this. But consider the real cost to the family of having a working wife. The kind of working hours. Eating on the go. The house is like a hotel to eat sleep and bath only to rush out of the next morning. Can a woman honestly say she is carrying out the commandments of Titus 2 when she compares it to her daily lifestyle?
How much time and energy women these days devote to their careers and leave whatever is left to their children. And they wonder why their ungrateful husbands leave them for another woman! Too many women think that just because her man said "I do" somehow guarantees a marriage made in heaven. It doesn't. Marriage, like any other relationship, takes nurturing to build.
I haven't even talked about the children yet. The baby comes along. Your husband and wife relationship suddenly switch to survival mode. Dear, can you pick up a packet of diapers on the way home, we are out of them. Dear, the baby is sick, can you take leave to bring him to the doctor. Been there, done that. Life went on a while like that when the first and second babies came along in our lives. Hubby did his part to help me in raising the kids. That was my attitude. Until I one day realized that it was completely meaningless if I didn't have our relationship right. I wasn't treating him right! Even though I was a stay home mom!!! The children had become the third party. We made a decision to change.
You know, the kids are a lot happier when they know mommy and daddy love each other and they are not the thing that holds the tenuous ties family together. Such a big burden for children to bear! :( Remember my mantra. The Children are NOT the centre of the universe. Fight the temptation to make them that, tooth and nail.
SO how is your husband wife relationship doing? Can it be said to be healthy? Are you constantly in a meeting of minds, spirit and body? Or has the relationship really become more of a partnership, a co-operation to get things done: you do your part and I do mine?
Don't wait till you are in extreme pain before seeing the dentist. Do what you can before your tooth rots and stinks and eventually have to pull it out.
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