Completed in marriage

In a recent post (http://journeyingtochrist.blogspot.com/2015/05/marriage-by-book.html)  I wrote that a woman will follow her leader, that my husband leads and I follow. After my husband read that post he and I talked about it. He said that that trait in women can easily be seen. It can be seen in the women who ride motorcycles with their men, in the women that watch certain movies or listen to certain music because he does. My husband went on to say how it’s the way we’re designed.

As I thought over that, thought about just how much following is involved, I could easily see that following does seem to be deeply ingrained into women. It’s not just that we follow our husbands but that relationships in general are engaged in on a follow kind of basis.

I’m not a follower by nature. Put me in a group of people and I won’t be the one following along no matter what they’re doing. My sister and I have talked about disaster situations, about what would happen if… (we live in tornado alley). Those conversations were mainly a way to pass the time and enjoy visiting with each other but as we have talked about those things we both commented on what we thought the other would do in a situation like that. My sister is certain I would not be the one standing back waiting to be told what to do, nor would I be the one falling apart no matter how bad the situation was. She firmly believes I would be the one making plans and giving orders.

My sister, I believe, would be more likely to stand quietly in the crowd, not giving orders or telling others what to do, but she wouldn’t be following the crowd either. She has an interest in survival skills and would quietly put them to use, sharing her knowledge with those around her. We both agree that we would, in a survival situation, trust the other enough to follow each other.

When I was in my teens there was a lot of talk in my family about whether any given child was a leader or a follower. My youngest sister, it was easily decided, was a follower. My cousins were given their spots based on their personalities. There were leaders, followers, and the ones in between. Each child was then further labeled as the one likely to lead the group into trouble, follow along blindly, or abandon the group in order to keep themselves out of trouble.

That isn’t the type of following I’m talking about here. I am not a follower. Put me in a group of people and I may be the one sitting quietly in the back but when something comes along where the group is going to do something I’m not going to follow along. Put me in a situation where my survival, or that of my loved ones, is at jeopardy and I’ll be the one making decisions.

Unless I have a whole lot of trust in the other person.

I would have to know the other person well enough, to trust them deep enough, to know that they know what they’re talking about, what they’re doing, and to know that I can confidently place my life in their hands.

That’s what I did when I said ‘I do’ to my husband.

I handed my entire life into his hands. I entrusted myself to him. I, with those two little words, told him I trust him enough to let him lead. I told him I would be the follower.

I didn’t need to say it in words. I didn’t need to explain it. It is just the way it is. According to my husband, that is how women are designed.  We have had other conversations where he has said similar things, where he’s made similar observations.

I had someone tell me a couple of years ago that women don’t have the ability to separate reason and emotion. This person, who happened to be a man, said that if a woman was in a war zone and a small boy was riding into a group of people with a bomb strapped to his body that a woman wouldn’t be able to kill the boy because her emotions wouldn’t let her, that she couldn’t separate her reasoning from her emotions enough to act. He went on to say that a man would shoot the boy and feel remorse later.

Personally, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I think there are women that would kill the boy and men that couldn’t pull the trigger. But I understood the point he was making. This man went on to say that when a boy is developing in the womb there comes a point when testosterone floods the brain and disconnects the reasoning abilities from the emotional ones.

Is that true? I don’t know, I never researched it. But there was something else in that story that I do believe is true. It wasn’t anything he said, it was an underlying point that was made while he was not so subtly getting to the place where he said women were brain damaged because our reasoning couldn’t be separated from our emotions.

That man, in my opinion, made a good point while totally missing the point, if that makes sense. My husband and I have talked about that very point many times. It is the point where women are designed to be different than men. We were created a certain way, they were created a certain way.

There is no brain damage involved. No right or wrong. No good or bad. It isn’t an either or situation like that man tried to point out. There’s no brain damage in a woman simply because her emotions and her reasoning are connected. We are quite simply designed to be that way. The Lord created us to be that way. And there’s no brain damage involved because a man can separate his reasoning and his emotions.

I’ve wondered a few times as the need to discipline a child has come up if that doesn’t play a factor in my difficulty in being strict with my children. Whenever one of them is acting up, even if they’re being very disobedient or mean to another person, I simply find myself thinking about how I would feel if I were getting into that kind of trouble. It’s not that I can’t see that they need to be punished, I clearly see that, what I have trouble with is actually dishing out the punishment needed because I know that any punishment will be uncomfortable for them.

In those times…my emotions get in the way of my reasoning.

According to the man that pointed out that women can’t separate their emotions from their reasoning, women will react one way in any given situation and men another. He’s right about that. Everyone knows that to be the case. There will always be exceptions, always be differences in how one man (or woman) reacts verses how another would. Personalities, life experiences, beliefs…they all play a role in how a person responds. But the basic design of men and women places us in a spot where we will react to any given situation based strictly on whether or not we are male or female.

So much attention has been given to the rights of homosexuals and transgendered people lately that the lines are steadily being erased between what is male and female. Our society is trying to remove the very lines that make us who we are.

Several years ago I read in the news about a family that had two young children. The parents were raising these children in a way to believe they weren’t male or female. They hadn’t disclosed the gender of their babies to even their closest relatives. These children were allowed to buy clothes in either the girl or boy department based on which clothes they liked as they were shopping. Nothing was off-limits. It was the same way with toys, school supplies, and anything else. I’m not sure if even the children knew what gender they were.

The line was erased in that family. For the children anyway. The parents were mom and dad. One man, one woman. But the children had no such distinction. I wondered at the time what they were teaching the children to be. If they weren’t boy and they weren’t girl, what were they? Apparently, according to at least one social media site, that question can be answered in about 75 different ways, so I understand. At least that’s what I read in a news article recently. Roughly 75 different options for whether or not you’re male or female…or maybe it’s roughly 75 different options to keep from being called either male or female.

The whole thing confuses me. It’s much simpler to go by a very basic rule.

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. Genesis 5:2

No alternatives. No options. No choosing between dozens of different definitions that completely erase what a person is. When I was expecting my now five year old, my then six year old told me she thought the baby was a giraffe. When I told her it wasn’t a giraffe she informed me that I couldn’t know that because I didn’t know what the baby was so it could be a giraffe. Coming from such a young child it was cute. One of those sweet little things that we file away in our memories. But the whole gender definition thing reminds me of that conversation.

If you don’t know what you are…you can be anything.

Male and female he created them…

Simple. Straight forward. No room for confusion or argument. You’re either one or the other. And because we’re either one or the other, we are created to be and act a certain way. My husband leads, I follow. Not because I am a follower by nature but because the Lord has designed me to respond to my husband a certain way. He has his place, I have mine. Scripture defines exactly what those places are. He is the provider, I am the helper. He is the strong one, I am the weaker vessel.

As my husband and I discussed how wives follow their husbands, as we shared how we both acted and reacted because of the other, I began to see something. It’s much like a dance. He acts, I react. I react and he’s challenged to act in certain ways because I will react based on him.

When I was a kid I took dance lessons. The teacher would count of the steps…one, two, three, four…there was a rhythm, a flow, to the movements. Right foot did this, so left foot did that. Because our feet were doing one thing our arms were supposed to be doing another. And when it was all put together it flowed. That was ballet. This is marriage.

But the more I think about how lead and follow works in marriage the more I’m reminded of all those dance lessons. There was a lead and follow then to, an order that had to be kept to make everything flow. Those dance lessons came natural to some but were nearly impossible to master to others. Some of us were able to not only grasp the steps and movements needed but were able to do it with ease, some of the girls were able to move with so much grace (that’s the term in the ballet world) that it looked like they were just made to move that way, others were constantly stumbling over their feet and forgetting where their arms were supposed to be when.

There are wives that fall into those same categories. Wives that easily find their place in marriage, wives that struggle and fight the entire way. Yesterday I did some research on an author a friend mentioned in reference to a book she was reading. As I read the comments at the end of an article about this author there was quite a bit of discussion about Genesis 3:16 and how it applied to women and their place. Or more specifically how it applied to a woman’s role and actions and reactions in relationships. There seemed to be just about as many opinions on what it meant as there were comments. It seemed everyone saw it a different way.

The people making those comments were like the girls in those ballet classes I took. To some their place came easy, to others it was harder. Some fell into it with a natural ability that made it all flow, while others fought it like a fish on the end of a fishing pole.

After that conversation with my husband, quite by accident, I read something that brought all that to mind again. It was a very brief passage written by a professing ‘Christian’. What I read had enough good points to keep me reading to the end but still left me wishing they could have gone a little deeper, pointed out more truth. But they made several points that made me once again think of the conversation with my husband about the roles of husband and wife.

In the passage that I read the author touched on the fact that woman was created to be a helper for man. But they went further to say that woman completes man. She fills his empty places. She is there to share his life and by so doing she pulls him out of himself and into them.

That was where I began, again, to think on what my husband and I had talked about, on what Scripture says in reference to men and women, husbands and wives.

As a wife…when I became a wife…I discovered that being a wife completes me. Being a wife lets me be the me that I am deep inside. It brings the me that I am on the surface and the me that I am deep inside into a fullness that lets me…just be. I feel complete in everything. I am me. I’m a mother. I’m a daughter. A sister. A wife. It’s like being a wife closed the circle of who I am, it made a whole out of all the pieces. It gave me a sense of completeness I didn’t have before. It gave me security. It gave me the ability to be weak. And it made me stronger.

The role of wife gave me that completeness but it wasn’t the title that did it, although I do find a certain completion in just being a wife. It was my husband, my relationship with him, my interactions with him, my trust in him…those were what brought the full completeness that I feel because I am a wife. When I am away from my husband, be it for hours or days, there is still a sense of belonging, of completion, in just knowing that I am his wife even if I’m not with him. The security lingers even though he may not be physically present.

That is what I thought of as I read that passage that spoke of a woman completing her husband, of what it does to a man to have a wife. And then I thought more of what they said and less of what I felt because I am a wife.

When a man is married, no matter his beliefs, no matter his personality, no matter who he is or what he wants to be…he is no longer him, but they. Where once he was alone, now he has her. The Bible says:

and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Mark 10:8

Where he was alone he is now two people that are one. Because of his wife he no longer has only himself to think of. She makes him think of his actions because he knows they affect her and that in turn makes him a better person, makes him try harder, because he has the responsibility of leading her.

At least that’s how it should be.

When a man marries his wife is entrusted into his care. She was created for him just as Eve was created for Adam. She isn’t just any other person but the woman that God created just for him. When God created Eve He put Adam to sleep and removed one of his ribs making Eve not just for him but through him. She was, quite literally, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. She was made from a part of his very body.

As such she was created for Him.

House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD. Proverbs 19:14

She was a gift, given to Adam, by God. She was created to fill a certain role in Adams life. There were certain traits that she was given that would allow her to fill that role. They were deeply ingrained, built into the very fiber of her being. She was there to help and follow Adam. He was there to look out for her, take care of her, lead her.

She had a role, he had a role. She was made one way, he another.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18

Eve…woman…was created because God saw that it was not good that man should be alone. He didn’t elaborate on why it wasn’t good, only said that it wasn’t good for man…not Adam but man…to be alone. And so woman was created to fill the void, the empty place, in man’s life. She was made to fill that emptiness, to complete him.

When a man and a woman marry it creates a wholeness, a completeness, that wasn’t there, in either of them, before they married. Before they were two incomplete people, through marriage they became one whole person.

and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Mark 10:8

Marriage brings a completeness that wasn’t present in either the husband or the wife before they married. That is the Biblical design, God’s very plan, for marriage. The husband has a role and when he fulfills it the wife is completed. The wife has a role and when she fulfills it the husband is completed. She is bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it…Ephesians 5:28-29

A marriage, in the Lord, places both the husband and the wife in their God given roles. It lets them be who they were designed to be. Marriage can be a completion or it can be a competition. I am blessed to be completed in marriage but I’ve seen many marriages that were competitions. Neither the husband nor the wife were happy, they weren’t satisfied, and they weren’t completed in their marriage. They fought each other and the very fact that they were married. Marriage was a curse and not a blessing.

Those marriages weren’t based on Biblical principles. And neither the husband or the wife embraced the role of man or woman as they were designed to be. They embraced, instead, the role they wanted, the role the world said they could take. They didn’t find fulfillment in being the kind of man or woman they should have been, and therefore they didn’t find completeness in marriage.

How much better is the design, the plan, of the Lord?