I am in the middle of the throes of the final packing for our missions trip to Kenya. We leave on Saturday.
It’s a half medical/half humanitarian mission. My mother and Keith are the leaders; Rebecca and Connor are coming along, as are about 20 other people. Mom and Rebecca and I will be focused on the jobs training program at one of the campuses, where they work with young women who have been rescued from human trafficking (along with their babies).
It’s our fourth time going as a family (and my mother’s ninth). I’ll still be updating the blog when I’m gone, because we’ve planned a lot of posts.
But I’m super busy right now getting some last things organized (we’re taking 35 hockey bags of donations that we’ve been organizing and weighing to make sure they’re all exactly 49.5 pounds).
Anyway, I got into a Twitter discussion last week that prompted me to write something on Facebook, which went rather viral. I was reacting to a post that told men that they set the spiritual climate of their homes, and so they had better step up to the plate.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I also see the other side. When we are told, over and over, that men must be the spiritual leaders, what happens when they’re not?
So I wrote this:
A sad trend I’ve noticed: There is a belief in many Christian circles that a husband must be the spiritual leader in the family, and then, if he isn’t leading, she feels like her marriage is substandard. What might be an otherwise good marriage is cast as something which is severely lacking, causing her to feel angry at her husband and generating distance. Scripture is filled with examples of women setting the spiritual climate of their homes (Lydia or Lois & Eunice come to mind). What’s important is that all of us, whoever we are, pursue God wholeheartedly. If your husband is not, that doesn’t mean you should slow down so that he can overtake you, or that your family isn’t blessed of God. That’s why God made you a helper–so you can stand in the gap and do something! But don’t let your expectations cause you to get angry at your husband and spiral a marriage downward. Love your husband; pursue God; teach your kids about Him.
A number of women told me that they needed to hear that message, so I thought that I would run it today!
And here are a few other posts that may help you:
- When Your Husband Walks Away from the Faith (this one pretty much sums up everything!)
- When You’re in an Unequally Yoked Marriage
- When Your Husband isn’t a Spiritual Leader
Let’s not let our expectations of what our marriage “should” look like wreck an otherwise good marriage, okay? I’ve seen women justify divorcing their husbands because their husbands weren’t “godly”. Just love the man you’re with! It’s okay if you know the Scriptures better, pray more, and talk about God more to your kids. Pursue God, rather than expectations, and life will be much better!
Anyone have experience with this? I’d love to talk about it in the comments! (and I’ll try to chime in more today! Sorry I’ve been so absent the last few days. Lots of packing to do!)
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 29 years and happily married for 24! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 7 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
I wonder if perhaps part of the problem is that the church has insisted on defining leadership in one way, failing to recognize that there is no one right way to lead. Many more patriarchal-leaning churches tend to say the husband must take the initiative, must be decisive, must have the final say, and must have everyone else fall in line behind him, etc etc. Which is unfortunate, because another great way to lead is to LEAD BY EXAMPLE. Thinking even of the personality types you’ve been talking about recently, my husband has a peacekeeper personality, and as such he is somewhat passive. According to this first model of leadership—the kind taught in my church—he can probably be considered a #manfail. And I have been frustrated by his passivity, because isn’t he “supposed” to be in charge? But you know what? He leads the way in service. The way he serves me and our kids is mind-boggling. Instead of standing up and taking charge, he gets down on the ground to help get the work done alongside of everyone else. And you know what, when I think of it this way, I am so grateful that this is the example of servant leadership my kids have. I would much rather my kids have a dad who was standing there right next to them than standing out in front of them/on top of them.
That’s such a good point, Kay! I think one of the best books I ever read on the whole “how do we approach God differently” was Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways. Maybe I should write a follow-up post on it, because it goes so well with the whole idea of personalities! (Okay, I’m going to schedule that for September now after we get back!).
But it does talk about how the hyper-leadership model is really only 1 of the 9 pathways that we have to God (and by pathway, Gary means the ways in which we experience God and feel the closest to Him). For some, it’s service. For some, it’s activism. For some, it’s artistic worship. For some, it’s intense reading and study, with Bible commentaries. For some, it’s getting out in nature.
When we reject the ones that aren’t “typical”, we consign many people to a dry spiritual life, because we tell them that their way of relating to God is invalid (even though all 9 of the pathways Gary talks about are readily seen in Scripture). We do need to get away from this idea that “family must always look exactly like this or God is displeased.”
(And that whole “husbands need to get their wives ready for Jesus” isn’t helping, either!).
I 100% agree with you, Kay! I spent years being so upset with my husband because he wasn’t the spiritual leader I was expecting him to be: ie, the kind of leader the church always taught me he was *supposed* to be. Once I cast it all on the Lord and stopped nagging my husband though (after being totally convicted about it) I realized he IS leading our family. Yes, it looks very different from how I was always taught. But it’s not less or bad or wrong, just different. It’s amazing how when your expectations are stripped away, you can finally just appreciate someone for who they are.
I usually don’t post here, I simply like to watch as everyone grapples with the issues of roles and responsibilities. However, your husband, by stepping and serving his family, is leading. As believers, we have the spirit of Christ living in us. He expresses himself through in many ways; administration, shepherding, encouragement, you get the idea. But the underling way Jesus lead was through service. He said it best when he said, “The Son of man came not to be served but to serve.” Your husband serving is leadership. He has more influence in his actions than in anything he will likely ever say or make a decision on and leadership is influence. God bless.
This message gets lost in our culture. I always say it is one of the times you can be selfish: having your own relationship with God, taking it seriously and being obedient to his leading. This won’t jeopardize your relationship and both you and your husband will benefit. Pursue God – it doesn’t matter if you’re single or married. Pursue Him.
Practically it doesn’t make sense to not pursue God as a married woman; your husband is not God so you’ll definitely need guidance from God’s word to deal with him and everything marriage entails.
So true, Nylse! I’m amazed by how many women think that if they know the Bible better, that God is somehow displeased with their relationship, like it isn’t valid.
Run after God–no matter what! That’s the point. 🙂
Good morning Sheila. This is interesting because for me Grace was my spiritual leader particularly early in our marriage. You wouldn’t have known it though because I was serving on our Church Council, we lead our Youth Group and I was a Big Brother in the Big Brother Big Sister program. On paper I looked great. The problem was I wasn’t truly living it. Grace was though. She was standing by her man living principles of Jesus all the while her husband was acting out sexually and out of control with his anger and she pretty much had an abusive marriage of sorts. Today the role of spiritual leader is more of a team effort. There are areas that I push and or lead if you will but the way I see it is WHO CARES? What does it matter who the spiritual leader is as long as you are both looking to God. I don’t even feel like I need biblical backing for this. To me it is just common sense. If you and your husband were stranded in the middle of the ocean trying to survive. What does it matter who does what as long as you survive? To me this is a survival issue. If you are lucky enough to be married then you have one extra person to help you reach the goal. GOD.
That’s absolutely right, Phil! We are a team, and we have someone to help us read our goal, which is indeed running towards Jesus!
So let’s not allow others to make us feel inadequate if we don’t look a certain way.
My husband faced spiritual abuse and intense pressure in a church because he wasn’t the “command man” type. And I was told I needed to submit more, to back down, and “let him lead”. We both faced abuse just because of our personality types. It was horrible the way the members of the church heaped shame on both of us. It made me doubt my husband too… I appreciate him in so many ways. I have a chronic illness, so he has stepped up to the plate in so many ways. We’ve been away from that church over 10 years and we’re still deprogramming from what happened there. I feel it stunted my husband’s spiritual growth because he kept measuring himself against those “ideals”. He’s only just beginning to receive grace for himself.
Oh, Laura, that’s so sad, but I’m also so glad that you got out of that toxic church environment!
So let me say loudly, for everyone reading this, sometimes churches beat us down rather than build us up. And if that’s the case for you, then please believe two things:
1. Your church is not functioning as the body of Christ
2. The body of Christ IS out there
You are not abandoning God if you leave your church to find a healthy one that actually follows Christ. But also don’t make the mistake of thinking that ALL churches are toxic just because yours is. I am in an amazing church right now, and it is one of the most encouraging parts of my life. We all need a good church! But in toxic churches, we often get the message, “other churches are too watered down”, or “you’ll fall away from Christ if you leave.”
Remember, you’re to follow Christ, not the church. If your church isn’t following Christ, then run quickly to the real body of Christ!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Laura.
My husband and I have been talking about this very thing lately! We’ve been married 3 years and the whole time he has felt lost or insufficient because he wasn’t “leading enough”.
He is the quiet servant type and I have a stronger personality. We’ve both been kind of trying to fit into the “man is the head, woman needs to follow” roles. But not even knowing what that is supposedly to look like and being miserable in the process. Finally we’re coming to the conclusion that we don’t know what it’s “supposed” to look like, but if it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it!
” if it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it!”!!!! Yep.
I have often wrestled with the idea that there are so many ways to lead and often the man out in front or on top is not really healthy. My husbands parents are like that (his mom is incredibly passive so his dad is the big vocal leader, but is not pushing his mom down) and my parents are kind of the opposite. What do you do if your husband only sees this one type of leadership and also thinks thats how he has to be, even when it does not fit with my personality or what I want.
For example: once I was talking to my parents about a big decision when my husband and I were still dating. After the convo with my parents I was telling him about it and my mom had done most of the talking and my dad was relatively quiet, although adding wisdom here and there and just being a strong presence. This is my parents personality and lots of discussions usually went back and forth between me and my mom because we are the 2 girls and talk a lot and my dad is pretty quiet. Well after telling my husband about the convo, he said my dad should have done the majority of the talking because he is the leader. I got upset because I did not think there was anything wrong with what my parents did. We fought because he thinks leadership = talking more and talking first and I just don’t think so. That may work for his parents because his mom doesn’t care, but I do not want that at all. So what do I do? It makes me nervous to have kids because he said the kids need to know who the leader is by who talks the most, who talks first, and all that stuff. I don’t want a leader like that. And I know it would be wrong of me to always talk first or talk the most or try to take over and not let him do his thing, but I don’t want to be silenced or relegated to a certain word count in order to let him lead. Do you have any advice for dealing with this kind of thing? (and the crazy thing is, he isn’t a talk all the time kind of leader, he regularly asks my opinion even on things he doesn’t need to and isn’t super dominating, this is just what he saw of his parents because of his moms EXTREME passivity).
I am wrestling with how as a married couple you can be PARTNERS but he is still the leader. How you are both EQUAL PARENTS and LEADERS of your children, but dad ultimately leads the household. About how to talk to kids about dads leadership without making mom seem less than, and how you show that leadership to your kids (or do you even worry about that) without making dad the boss. I mean, God told BOTH Adam and eve to rule in the garden, but then said man is the head. Any advice, ideas, revelations and prayers would be appreciated.
Also can’t wait for September’s series on submission, such a hard topic to grasp and talk to your husband about!
Oh, dear, there’s so much to say to this comment, and I don’t have a lot of time! I do hope you enjoy September’s series.
I will say this: I think that we have completely misunderstood the idea of “spiritual head” (“spiritual leader” is not actually found in Scripture).
Nowhere in Scripture does God reprimand a woman for taking the initiative to call her family (or others) to Christ. In fact, women are routinely praised for this, or stories show that women who did this did the right thing (Zipporah, Sarah, Esther, Lois & Eunice, Abigail, etc.). On the other hand, women who have gone along with their husband’s bad decisions and haven’t taken the initiative have been punished (Sapphirah, for instance). And we are told, over and over again in Scripture, that we are to use the gifts that God has given us, and we are not to bury them.
I believe that some of these gifts are rooted in our personalities. Some will naturally be more peacemakers (and God then may bestow a more spiritual aspect to this as a spiritual gift), some may more naturally be prophets who see evil and stand up for the oppressed, etc. And we are told that God makes us all unique. So when we act according to our gifts, talents, and innate drive, in order to draw people to Christ or reveal His will, we are ALWAYS doing the right thing. When we try to squander those things so that we live up to some “expectation” or ideal, we can seriously go off base.
But more on this in September!
I’m guessing you haven’t been married that long? If that’s the case, give your husband time!
My husband and I came from very different family dynamics, and I remember getting all kinds of upset in the early years of our married life over different perceptions and expectations I had of him and our marriage. Long story short? 15 years later, almost all of those differences have been ironed out as we have created our own new family dynamic that is uniquely us.
Read and talk and pray and learn, but when you hit a road block between you (such as your comment about “the leader needs to be the one who talks first and most”), just pause & don’t despair! Give it time, and prayer, and if you both have a learning mindset you’ll find that you’ll both shift a little and end up heading in the same direction!
I love Shelia’s reminders that “oneness” doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes, it takes years and that is just the way God designed it to be.
Actually the word submission is referring to one another in the body of Christ. The original text does not use the word submission for wives to husbands it is speaking about the overall submission of one to another. Please read the book “Why Not Women?” By Loen Cunningham founder of Youth With AMissiin (YWAM).
I don’t have anything amazing to say, all I have to say, is it is so nice to read this and hear this and know that I am ok.
My husband didn’t come from a very religious family and his prospective is the “over-intense” (as he would say) Christians and he doesn’t have the relationship with God that I do.
So I am the spiritual leader in our home. It is nice to hear that I am ok and I don’t need to have this ruin or injure my relationship with my husband because he doesn’t have the need that I do to have God in our home.
Thank you for all your posts. This is an amazing blog!
I really love today’s message and I also invite you to Kenya. It’s really a great place. I am a big fan and always following your blogs. They have helped change a lot of things in my marriage and I really thank God for you. Oh and did I mention that I’m a Kenyan. Well, I guess that if you will be close to Nairobi I’ll pass by. Once again, karibu Kenya.
Oh, thank you, Mary! It’s actually a big dream of mine to do a marriage conference in Kenya. We have contacts at the children’s home we go to, and at the hospitals where my husband has worked, but not a lot in churches. We’ll likely be returning next year so my husband can visit some hospitals to see where we’ll be doing some more long-term work, but if you ever know of any churches that may be interested in me coming to speak, I’d love that!
This is regarding your question on FB about husbands gaming and libido (I didn’t want to comment on there and have it show up in friends’/family’s news feed ;-)). This is definitely our case. Currently, my husband’s job hours are 6am to 2:30 pm (8 hours). He hates his job (he just signed up for online classes to change his occupation, so we’ll see how that changes life), but at present, he gets home for the day, takes off his heavy work clothes, gets a snack, and then sits down at his computer by 2:45 to game. He doesn’t get off til 9pm, when I (nicely) bug him so that we can watch a show together (and by that time, we can only see one before he says it’s bedtime. But sometimes even then, he gets back on his computer afterwards, and I go to bed). I bring his dinner and snacks to him at the computer. All day at work, he listens to gaming podcasts, and listens to them through his lunch (20 minutes when he ‘s at home). We have sex maybe once a week… sometimes less frequently. I often consider myself to be the higher drive spouse, but when we’ll go away like on our anniversary trip (where he’s not gaming), he’ll want sex a couple times a day! We even had to have a no-sex recovery day for me because it was a bit much, even for me. 😛 He also is quite obese, so that, combined with the obsessive gaming–and probably discouragement with a job he hates–just kill his libido. It used to bug me beyond measure (I grew up with the mentality of “gamers are losers”), but I’ve worked on letting it roll off me. He says he wants a friend, and wishes I could game with him (…I grew up thinking that if gamers were losers, girl gamers were losers x10!). Besides the fact that I am beyond busy with 3 babies (ages 1, 2, and 3) and a house that will never stay clean, gaming would be number 365 on my to-do-when-relaxing list. But I’m trying to think more seriously about doing it for him so that we can connect more… and because he’s lonely and wants me to be his girl gaming “friend.” The last thing I’d want–but I could definitely see happening–is for him to find some other lonely gamer girl online. Ug.
Maybe if you did join in with his gaming, it would give you some leverage to change the dynamics of your home a little?
For instance… “Honey, if you give me a hand by bathing the kids while I fix dinner, then I’ll be able to play with you for a bit after we get them to bed”.
And, as you say, it will give you something to do together that just might spark in him a desire to other non-gaming things together in the future.
Good idea!
I’m thankful that I was never taught the idea that the husband has to actively lead, yet at the same time I have often wished that he would be the leading in worship sort, though that isn’t his personality. I confess to having been envious of those relationships where the husband did take on this role.
Anyway, welcome to Kenya and hope that it is warmer where you are going than Nairobi and the area around where I am. I know technically the temperature isn’t *that* cold (said 21 as a high yesterday) but I have been frozen for the past two days. Just can’t get warm inside the house! And even outside the air was very cool.
HAHAHA! I was talking with another team member today and I told her, “you’ll find the mornings and evenings cool, but during the day you’ll be fine in a T-shirt. you’ll want a fleece for the mornings and the evenings, but in the day, I’ve always been fine in a T-shirt. But all the Kenyans will be wearing sweaters and multiple layers all day because they’ll be freezing and they’ll wonder how we can stand it!” So I guess this confirms it. 🙂
Yeah, we’re short sleeve people as soon as it’s 17 or above. And it’s been so stinking hot here all summer (like in the high 30s and even low 40s with humidity, which is unheard of where we’re from) that we’re looking forward to it being cool! We haven’t been able to be out of the house much this summer because it’s been too hot, so I’m looking forward to the low temperatures.