Submission: being "sub" his mission.
This Spring semester in Ladies Bible Class has been such a blessing to me. To be quite honest, it was life changing for me. The wonderful women I have grown to know and love over the last 10 weeks or so will forever have a pretty large footprint in my life. These last 10 weeks will be one of the influences in my life that I will always remember shaped me into the woman, wife, lover, mother, servant and friend I strive daily to be. I learned how to love my husband in a way of respect, how to be submissive to my husband (ladies don't balk at this. I will explain.), how to be a confident mother to Peyton, how to be hospitable, how to be kind, how to be pure and even how to be better in the kitchen.
In my prayers over the last 10 weeks I have really prayed to grow deeper in my relationship with God as well as with Aaron. As we all know, when you pray for the heavy stuff like that, God WILL give you the opportunity to grow. Sometimes it just doesn't look as pleasant while you're in the middle of it. (So when you pray such a bold prayer, be ready. Pray that the eyes of your heart would be completely open to seeing God work. Seek God, and hang on. He's there with you. He doesn't throw fuel on the fire and then back off. While He's refining you, He's right there holding your hand. There will be moments when you want to throw your hands up -- instead squeeze His hand harder.)
So after I made my bold prayer, for weeks I still just kind of felt like I was going through the motions and I couldn't really see God working. But over these weeks slowly but surely Aaron and I started to get on different pages. It started with little things here and there. Then this past weekend we were all. over. the. place. It felt like we couldn't agree on anything. Plans were difficult for us to make, parenting Peyton as a united front was frustrating and then on the way home as we were attempting some adult conversation - we were on different planets. We were talking about future plans for our family and we were waaaaay off. We were both in tears and I was terrified. Above all else in this world, my #1 priority is my relationship with God and my #2 is my marriage. My #2 was hurting this weekend.
When my marriage is hurting, my first thought goes to my divorced parents. Divorce is not an option for my marriage. {side note: I love my parents dearly, they know I do not condone their divorce. I know that if they could go back I am sure they would do things differently-- I mean waaaay back, not just the act of getting divorced. But that's not how my or their lives turned out and we have all moved on and they are extremely happy. As am I, for them. That is a whole other blog post that I pray God would give me the words to write someday. :)} Anyway. So when I allow Satan to seep in for that moment and whisper the words "divorce," I freak out. It was only momentarily but it usually makes me sick to my stomach.
We kind of just agreed to disagree and we left that conversation "on the road trip." I began praying that God would work on my heart. Tuesday during our last Bible Class for this semester, God started to put it all together for me. It was our last class so I was reflecting over all that I had learned in the last 10 weeks and our lesson on Loving Our Husbands just kept resonating in my heart. Aaron has our family's absolute best interest at heart. He is very selfless in leading our family. I needed to let him lead. I needed to submit to him.
God intended the following for this world:
God -> Christ -> Man -> Woman
I needed to respect my husband and allow him to lead me. If I force my ideas of how our family should play out, I undermine the authority God gave him to lead me. I undermine his role in our family. That's on me. At the end of the day, God calls on Aaron to lead our family. That's a huge responsibility He placed on my husband's shoulders.
I went back and re-read some notes I took during my Ladies Bible Class and a woman I hold with such high respect said "When we get the headship order wrong, there is not order in our home." That hit me hard this morning. That chaos is what I was experiencing this weekend because I had it all wrong. I wanted Aaron to do things my way, selfishly. I forgot how our home needs to "run".
Submission doesn't mean I am weak or don't have a voice. I think it gives me a stronger voice. I am the woman God chose to help Aaron lead. Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." Gen. 2:18 Substitute "man" with "husband." It is not just my purpose, but an honor for me to help my husband lead. His mission is to lead our family, I am "sub" to that. Sub means "situated under or beneath." I imagine myself as a support beam holding up Aaron and his mission to lead our family.
Thank you for allowing me to be vulnerable with you. Thank you for letting me share my heart with you. xoxo Lauren
