Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

Tagged: Helpmeet, marriage

This topic has 43 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 9 months ago by jkkyker.

Viewing 14 posts - 31 through 44 (of 44 total)

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September 8, 2014 at 10:41 am
Melanie32
Participant
Wings2lfy-I have a similiar story and my husband has changed so much through my submission to and my respect for him. As I’ve focused on loving him unconditionally, he has returned that love and spent a lot more time with both me and our kids. I don’t believe God’s called us to confront them. We have a right to respectfully share our concerns and opinions and they have a right to make their own choices as grown men. The only people we can change are ourselves.
Many men come home from work every day and sit in front of the T.V. It’s just a fact of modern day life. Is it selfish? Is it wrong? Maybe, but focusing on the negative won’t help the situation. God’s word gives us clear direction and His direction leads us to focus on being the best wives, mothers and people that we can be while trusting Him to do the rest. I’m so thankful for His direction in scripture-it has brought so much joy and peace to my family and home.
September 8, 2014 at 11:45 am
jkkyker
Participant
I agree. While others have posted an ideal of mutual submission in the different ways that husbands and wives were created to respond in relationship to each other, the reality is that it isn’t always so. Even in Christian marriages. I do believe that we as wives have the “right” to gently, lovingly adress the issue with our husbands, so long as we can spend much time examining our own hearts and praying for the grace to bring the issue to him out of love for him and not out of anger or selfishness or bitterness. After all, we were brothers and sisters in Christ before we were husband and wife. I believe that is one way that we DO “help” our husbands. ANd it’s one way that they are called to love us as Christ loved the Church – by speaking truth into our lives with grace when we are the ones with the blind spot. But it does matter how we go about that tricky business. It’s really hard to address a situation like that with a heart for him and his growth in mind and not soley out of annoyance and our own hurt. SO much prayer should go before a conversation like that.
ANd in the mean time, I think your prayer should include begging God for the grace to do what he has called you to do, even while your husband flounders in his responsibility. I don’t mean doormat style, I mean smiling. And asking how you can help. And daily praying that you would see your husband through the eyes of the Lord. I promise, it does change your perspective!
I think my husband and I have a pretty healthy marriage. We’re both believers and we both take our roles seriously. Even still, we are sinners who fall into selfishness. Sometimes it even takes us a little while to realize it. We don’t always respond with grace when it’s the other who is being careless in our relationship. Even an “ideal” marriage isn’t always going to feel “ideal”. And that’s where we have to decide whether we’re going to walk in the way that God has laid out for us to walk or whether we’re going to wait to do so until our husbands are also walking in that way.
If, after much prayer and gentle conversation with your husband, Wings2fly, and he refuses to listen to your concerns, I would take it to a pastor. It’s important. and, in my opinion, you’re loving your husband by getting help. Sin thrives in secrecy but openness and accountability can help drive it away.
September 8, 2014 at 11:49 am
jkkyker
Participant
Also, a book titled Sacred Influence, by Gary Thomas is excellent. It about how wives really do have so much influence (for better or worse) over their husbands and how to walk in our very specific role as wives well.
September 9, 2014 at 11:05 am
Melanie32
Participant
Thanks for recommending Sacred Influence. I’ve been thinking about buying it. I’m always looking for good books on this topic because I always need encouragement in this area. 🙂
September 10, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Amanda
Participant
Just another book suggestion- Carolyn Mahaney’s “Feminine Appeal” is wonderful!!! While I was reading it, my husband asked what was going on with me b/c I was acting so different (in a good way!). Hmm. Maybe I should RE-read it…
September 10, 2014 at 5:33 pm
Karen
Participant
Oh, I second the suggestion of “Feminine Appeal” – great book!
September 10, 2014 at 5:56 pm
coralloyd
Participant
I wanted to make sure that everyone knows that I am all for submission without your husband reciprocating. I think it can change our husbands in sooo many ways. I am just against Debbie Pearl’s brand of it ;). I talked about about being our husband’s helper because that is what the op asked about, not submission. I see being a helper as different than being submissive. The two go hand in hand and work together but my deffinition of helper is not my deffinition of submission.I wanted to make sure no one was confused by that.
September 10, 2014 at 6:34 pm
mrsmccardell
Participant
Thanks, coralloyd. I, too, was wondering why submission was brought up in the first place. I am prayerfully pursuing how to be his helper. I can understand that they sometimes cross over too.
I am reading an amazing book called, Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I think many of you would enjoy it. There are so many things I never even considered to be a lie but truly are.
September 10, 2014 at 9:00 pm
LindseyD
Participant
I thought this was a timely post in light of our discussion. I have been subscribing to her posts for a long time, and I have found that she genuinely wants to help women be biblical wives. This particular post is something I can whole-heartedly agree with, and I think she articulates some of the points I was trying to make before, but in a much better way.
Hope it helps someone!
To Love, Honor, and Vacuum
Although she doesn’t specifically address being “the helper” to our husbands, she does address how our actions can either point our husbands toward or away from Christ. If our actions are pointing him toward Christ, then that’s pretty helpful to him, don’t ya think?
Blessings,
Lindsey
September 11, 2014 at 11:29 am
jkkyker
Participant
To the OP, I just remembered some good advice I received from an older woman after I had my first baby. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with my new responsibilities but still wanted to be a wife and helper to my husband. SHe suggested asking him specifically what were the three things that I could focus my attention on that would make him feel most loved and cared for. For him it was was food, laundry and time together (even with our baby present, just not getting spun up in a “to do” list). For your husband that might look totally different, but those three things, when considered by you, will make your husband feel thought of and nurtured and “helped”.

September 11, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Karen
Participant
jkkyker, my husband likes a cleared off kitchen table (inviting looking or even simply a bare tablecloth); the smell of coffee; and time together. It’s now a joke – he comes in the house and says “I smell your love” – meaning the fresh pot of coffee that’s brewing.
And I second the reccommendation of the “Lies Women Believe” book — it’s also very good.
September 11, 2014 at 3:34 pm
JenniferM
Participant
MrsMcCardell, it has been quite a while since I’ve done this, but I used to ask my husband at breakfast if I could do anything for him that day. Sometimes he would respond with, “yes, could you mail this or call about that,” but a lot of the time he simply said, “just love me.” We have a close, reciprocal relationship. There are different things we each do to help our home/family life run smoothly, but at the same time each of us jumps in to help the other when needed. For instance: He is the trash-taker-outer, but it smelled AWFUL one day this week. I did not wait for him to come home. I took care of it myself. I am the laundress, cook, and cleaner. Recently, I had a really exhausting day, and I found him washing up the dishes I had soaking in the sink. That’s just the way we love. Don’t know if that meets the Biblical standard, but we are happy and do not have issues I see in many marriages. I think it is also helps that each partner is growing closer to God. When your relationship with the Father is is place, your relationships with people sort of fall into proper perspective.
September 11, 2014 at 3:57 pm
Phobo
Participant
Just thought I’d let everyone know that Lies Women Believe is on sale for $5 at christianbook.com right now!

Rachel
September 11, 2014 at 6:22 pm
jkkyker
Participant
“When your relationship with the Father is is place, your relationships with people sort of fall into proper perspective.”
Yes! And when that relationship is struggling then our human relationships will also tend to struggle more as well. That’s why it’s hard for me to embrace the thinking that focuses on what *should* be instead of what *is*. WHile we can help our husbands by speaking truth into their areas of weakness, I think that should be a way lesser part of how we help. I think our focus always needs to be on my role in loving my husband and not his response. And in the case of unbelieving (or struggling believers) husbands, our sweetness and gentleness and humility in service to them is like a beacon of light. I’m not talking about being a mousy doormat, but a willing and gracious friend.
I was bothered by many of the comments from the blog post above and I think it was all of the suggestions that the wife stand up for herself and only do the cleaning that was important to her if he wouldn’t help and put her own money in a seperate acct. if he was going to insist on her working… etc. Those comments are the opposite of a grace that pours in when a mate is struggling. Yes, that wife has the “right” to be treated well. And that husband is commanded by God to lay down his life for her! But clearly there are bigger struggles going on there that go far beyond their married relationship that she cannot fix by putting her foot down and demanding better treatment. To me, that is just building the wall of seperation in their marriage even higher. Grace moves in and loves more when our spouses are in sin. And sometimes that love looks like bringing in a third party for accountability. But it always looks like dying to my own rights in order to humbly love another. One day it might be me who is struggling to be a delightful wife for my husband and I hope that he’s willing and able to trust the Lord to give him the grace to fulfill his role anyway.
Anyway, sorry for that little tangent. 🙂
(and Karen, coffee brewing smells like love in our home, too!)