Teaching younger women to love their husbands

I recently wrote a post titled ‘The role of a wife.’ In it I went into Titus 2 but I only touched on certain parts of it. As I wrote it there was a part I wanted to go into more detail on but the time for that didn’t seem right. I’m going to do that now.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, ⁴ and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, ⁵ to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Titus 2:3-5

That is the ESV version of the verses but for me…with these verses…I find it helpful to look also to the KJV because it is worded just a bit different.

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

⁴ That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,

⁵ To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

We are to teach the young women…to love their husbands.

How?

Exactly how can we teach anyone how to love another? I have a daughter that says she doesn’t want to be the kind of wife that I am. She thinks that my marriage is too…something. She…at this point in her unmarried life…has in mind to be more of the kind of wife that has her life while her husband has his. And who knows she may be that kind of wife.

But…how am I supposed to teach her to love the husband she doesn’t yet have? I’ve always taught my girls that whether they’re married or not they are somebody’s wife. That they should remember that in all they do. That there will come a day when the Lord will bring them and their husband-to-be together and until then…with or without him being a part of their lives…they belong to him.

I’ve shown my girls by example what being a wife is. I’ve talked of what it isn’t.

And still…my daughter says she doesn’t want the kind of marriage I have. I pray the Lord gives her one anyway. She can’t understand what she’s saying she doesn’t want.

But…so much teaching goes on through the example we set. I used to have neighbors that with only a few minutes in their company everyone around knew that the wife ruled the home…and her husband. He literally ran to do her bidding. Another set of neighbors in that same block was a married couple that fought near constantly. The wife spread all sorts of stories about her husband everywhere she went. I never heard her say anything nice about her husband. Another set of neighbors…same block…screamed and yelled at each other in the front yard.

Those were three couples. Three marriages. Within one block. What were those wives teaching the younger women? All three of those wives had daughters, two of them had preteen and teenaged daughters. What were those wives teaching their young daughters? The third of those wives was no longer raising children…her children were grown…but she was still an example to the daughters she had raised. And she was an example to every younger woman that crossed her path.

These were three women…three married women…that all taught younger women about marriage if in no other way than through the example they lived in their own marriages. How could they teach anyone to love their husbands when they didn’t show any of that love to their own husbands…at least not in a way others could see?

I’ve heard many times that a lot of parents teach their kids to ‘do as I say not as I do’ but the reality is that everything we do sets an example for others. My mother likes to quote something her grandpa used to say…your walk talks and your talk talks but your walk talks louder than your talk talks. In other words…you can say anything but if you don’t live it out what you say has no purpose. You set the examples by what you do. What you say only factors in if it supports what you do.

We can’t teach our children not to lie if they hear us tell lies every day. In the same way we can’t teach younger women to love their husbands if we don’t love our own husband. And show it.

Whether he’s there or not.

I read an article last night that was speaking about the more intimate side of marriage but there was one part where it warned wives not to speak of their husbands shortcomings in front of others.

I try never to speak badly of my husband even to myself but this was a reminder as I read it. I learned many years ago that we can notice and focus on the good things in a person or the bad things in a person. What we focus on will have an effect on our relationship…whatever it may be…with that person. If all we see is the bad…it will ruin the relationship. If we focus on the good…it will strengthen the relationship.

And so…we are to teach younger women to love their husbands. I will admit that I have no idea how to teach that. The only thing I can figure is that we are to teach by example. If we love our husbands, if we respect him, if we appreciate him…and we show it to him and everyone else…maybe that will be the example that will teach younger women to love their husbands.

Ephesians 5:33 says….

…let the wife see that she respects her husband.

If we respect our husbands maybe…maybe…we will teach younger women by example how to love their husbands.

I’ve heard and read many times that kids will model their marriages after their parents’ marriage. How mom treated dad is often how daughter treats her husband. Or so I’ve heard. In the day to day of family living we set many examples for our children that we don’t even realize.

We show our husband and children how we feel about them through the tone of our voice and our actions toward them. I’ve noticed that when I talk to my husband on the phone my voice changes. It takes on a tone that I don’t use with anyone else. I don’t do it on purpose it just…happens. Every time.

That tone…tells me…my love shows through in the way I speak to my husband.

Those around me…including our children…may or may not notice the difference. Whether they do or not has no bearing on me doing it. I don’t change the way I speak when I talk to him on the phone on purpose. It’s one of those things that just happens and because it just happens…it’s just there. It just…is.

But it’s also one of those little things that sets an example for our children whether or not I’m aware of it…and even if the children aren’t aware of it. The example is set simply because it’s lived out.

In the same way I almost always greet my husband on the front porch or in our driveway when he comes home. I do this because I miss him when he isn’t home and because I’m genuinely glad that he’s home. I want to see him, to tell him hello, to just be with him. So when he comes home I go meet him but in doing so our children see that. They see that I set aside what I was doing when he pulls into the yard…and they come running to let me know he’s home just in case I might have missed his arrival.

 The fact that they run to let me know he’s home tells me that they’ve picked up on the way I set everything aside to greet him when he comes home. I’ve never told them it was important to greet your husband when he comes home…I haven’t had to. They see me do it every time my husband comes home.

I recently read an article on marriage in a ‘Christian’ magazine. The article was very good. It was full of information on marriage in our modern world and then went to Scripture to tell what marriage should be like. Everytime I read the verse that says that older women are to teach younger women to love their husbands I wonder just how we are supposed to do that. There is no curriculum that can be written to teach a young woman…or any woman…how to love her husband. There is no check list of things that we can instill in our daughters to ensure that they will love their husbands.

How…exactly…are we supposed to teach younger women to love their husbands?

I just don’t know. And yet…

I think of the article I read and how it said marriage has become a laughingstock. It is the brunt of many jokes. Where marriage was once seen and portrayed as a good thing…today so many people…so many wives…speak ill of it without thinking. Or they represent marriage in a poor light by their actions and attitude.

Everytime a woman says she doesn’t want to be married…she is possibly influencing a younger woman.

Everytime a wife speaks ill of her husband…she is possibly influencing a younger woman.

I think of the many rolled eyes I have seen in young women when the subject of marriage has come up. I think of the conversations I’ve heard where women speak of marriage in a ‘someday’ kind of way.

When I was in my teens and early twenties I remember how men were tagged with the label of ‘Peter Pan syndrome’ if they didn’t want to settle down and be a…man. They were stuck in what was seen as Neverland because they wanted to stay little boys forever. At least they wanted the freedom of living life free of any responsibility.

I haven’t heard that term used in years but I can think of women that should wear that same label today. They speak derogatorily about marriage preferring to be ‘free’ or ‘live their own life’. It used to be mostly irresponsible men…the kind that wouldn’t have made good husbands anyway…that expressed those kinds of thoughts. But like a disease that way of thinking has spread into females and is being exposed to younger and younger ‘victims’.

And as that ‘disease’ spreads to an ever wider and more varied population I wonder if the teaching of younger women…teaching them to love their husbands…couldn’t be spread in much the same way.

Only…there’s a problem with that…you see there is a ‘disease’ that has run rampant in America today. This ever growing, highly contagious ‘disease’ has been spread so far and wide that it’s nearly impossible to combat. There seems to be no treatment for the ‘disease’ and there appears to be no end to the epidemic that is spreading faster than a forest fire.

Our society has so filled the minds and hearts of young women with the idea that there is so much better in life than to be a wife that no matter how hard we try to combat that ‘disease’, its much like trying to stop a flood with a washrag.

There was a time when television portrayed marriage as a very good thing. Shows that had the parents not only working together for the good of the family but that showed marriages in which the couple truly seemed to enjoy each other.

In time those shows gave way to married couples that not only seemed to care little for their families but that both the husband and the wife hardly appeared to even like each other. Marriage was depicted as more of a battle ground then a wondrous, safe place.

The problem with hoping society could ever teach marriage as a good thing is the very fact that marriage, whether it’s seen as good or not, isn’t seen as something that is forever. It’s something people do because…well, because they do…and it lasts until it gets hard and then divorce is an option. That is the best idea our society gives to young people today.

Christian women are told to teach something different to young women. In a world where the ‘disease’ of bad marriages is spread like an epidemic Christians women are told to teach younger women to love their husbands. I can’t begin to figure out how to teach anyone to love another person. But that is what I’m told to do.

How do we even tell someone how love is much less teach them how to love another? I don’t know the answer to that but I do know there is a place we can go to find out the very principles of marriage.

In a society where the very definition of marriage is being rewritten we can go to the Source of marriage and see a different purpose for marriage. We can see that we are given not only the basis for what it is but we can see and understand the very laws that govern it.

Yes, there are laws involved in marriage.

Those laws were written by the One that created the first marriage and each and every marriage after that. I may not know how to teach my daughter to love her husband but I can tell her where to find the source of marriage and the laws that govern it.

I can point her to Genesis and the first marriage. I can remind her that the Lord created her for her husband. I can tell her that marriage isn’t a legal contract…no matter that our society requires that we enter into such a contract with our husbands…but a covenant agreement with her husband and the Lord.

I can show her through Scripture, through my words, and through my marriage that marriage is a holy and sacred union. That in that union she as a wife has a certain role that she needs to fill and it isn’t just in the wearing of the title of wife. The role isn’t in the title but in her place within the marriage.

I can show her with Scripture and with my own life how to live out that role. Much the way I show her how to be a mother in my interactions with her…I can show her how to be a wife as I live out my role of wife before her.

In our modern world where society as a whole tends to lean toward the thinking that people control all…marriage is but one of the things that is often seen as controlled by people. But people did not create marriage, they do not make marriage, they do not define marriage. The Lord created marriage when He created Eve. He made the first marriage then and He has made each marriage since then. It is the Lord that defines marriage.

Scripture tells us that…male and female he created them. It tells us that…a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. It goes further to tell us that…man should love his wife as Christ loved the church…and that woman…should submit to her husband as to the Lord.

There is the definition for marriage. It is the who of marriage and the how of marriage.

Because marriage is created by the Lord, it is only the Lord that can show us how to succeed in marriage. He has a plan for marriage and He laid out the roles for each person within their marriage. When a couple lives within those roles they reap the benefits of the Lord’s creation. If both people are in Christ and live for Christ…and in so doing they live out their role within their marriage as Scripture lays out…they receive the blessing of a Christ honoring marriage.

This is the way to love our husbands. Scripture says wives are to respect their husbands, it says they are to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord.

I was sitting in a ‘church’ building with a family member about a year ago and the preacher used some verses from Ephesians 5. I don’t remember the verses but I do remember that in showing them to my younger relative, she read the verse about wives submitting to their husbands. This relative…a self-proclaimed Christian…wrinkled up her nose and shook her head no. Just moments before that she had been studiously writing down other Bible verses but when she came to the part about submitting to her husband she vehemently refused to do so. In just a few seconds time she eagerly accepted some of Scripture and adamantly refused another part.

She picked and chose what of Scripture…I believe all on marriage…that she wanted to accept.

Just that easily she dismissed what she didn’t like and grabbed onto what she did. There was no opportunity to teach this younger woman that submitting to her husband is loving him. There was no chance to explain that submission is honoring to Christ and to her husband. There was no chance to explain anything. There was just a very real example of exactly what our world…what a good number of ‘Christians’ believe about marriage.

They pick and chose what they want and discard the rest…in Scripture and in marriage. There is so much in Scripture and it’s all so very good when taken just as it is without adding any of our ideas to it or removing parts because our fallen human hearts and minds may not like what it says…but if I was going to pick only two rules for marriage from Scripture they would be…

Husbands love your wives…Ephesians 5:25

And…

Wives submit to your husbands… Ephesians 5:22

I would never pull from only those two partial verses but if I was to pick and choose those would be the two I would chose for marriage. Because all the rest could so easily be placed within those two ‘rules’ for marriage.

I think of the young woman that sat beside me and wrinkled up her nose at the very thought of submitting to her husband. In our society that is the very idea that is ‘spread’ among women today. Women don’t want to think about submitting to their husbands, some of them never even entertain the idea.

Most women today have been raised on the idea that they are at least equal to men if not superior to them. Very few wives today become wives having any idea of the concept of being submissive to their husbands.

I remember seeing my grandmother time and time again argue with and flat out defy my grandpa. This happened for as long as I can remember. My main memories of my grandparents together as a couple are of them arguing and of them exchanging quick kisses when they parted company.

My children and grandchildren see my husband and I take walks hand in hand, they see us walk through town the same way, they see us sit together on the couch, study the Bible together, sit on the swing or the porch together. These are the memories I want our children and grandchildren to have when they think of my husband and I as a couple.

This is the way I want to teach younger women to love their husbands. Through example. I want to show them that marriage isn’t the eye rolling subject of jokes and derision. I want them to see through me that marriage is a wonderful, worthy, honorable, holy union that should be upheld and desired.

That is the teaching I want to impart to younger women.

That is the message I want to pass to them.

That is the legacy of love I wish to impart as I teach them to love their husbands. Because I can’t think of any greater way to teach someone to love their husband than by showing them what that love looks like in all I do with my own husband.