“You can’t imagine what happened last week. I went home after work and announced that in two weeks’ time I would be away for 3 weeks and that I was sure they would miss me. My husband turned towards me, looked me in the eye and reflectively said, ‘by the way Jane, I don’t think any one of us will miss you. You are rarely around and when you are, you are dead tired or on your laptop working.’ It got to me,” she said, trying to hide her tears.
These were lamentations of Jane my childhood friend last Friday as we bumped into each other at the Mall and I asked how she was.
A little surprised and a bit hurt for her sake, I said “Wooow!! waaa! That’s a joke…..right?”
“Hmmm….you wait!” She went on.
“I turned to my cousin for assurance after Jack’s comment, but she glanced at me, then at John then back to me and said ‘by the way Jane, you are rarely here.’”
I was a little surprised, as I dragged Jane along to Tom’s Café. You see Jane has always been a family person, one who is involved in every minute of her husband and little girls’ lives, despite her busy schedule.
As we sipped our much needed coffee, Jane shared how she admired a friend of hers, Suzan as a submissive wife.
“Suzan holds a busy job but she seems to be able to balance many things: she gets home and cooks, serves her husband herself, massages him, goes shopping for his organic foods, irons his cloths herself, etc etc, and the man makes all the big decisions and is in charge of all their investments”
“Wow!” I said. “Jane, so, do you really feel you are not as submissive as Suzan because you do life differently?” She looked at me a bit confused. She said she thinks she is submissive but she was not sure.
“Hmm….there is an identity crisis here Jane” I mused.
“But you told me the other day that if you had not been involved in your husband’s hardware business, it would have collapsed; that you initiated many ideas that he implements eg the idea of building you family home in the village; that you suggested when the children went to school; you identified the plot for building the house you now live in, right?” I said, “So why do you think Suzan is more submissive? Is it because her roles are around the home and around her husband as a person?”
She nodded to all my reminders, looking confused and a bit sad.
I went on to ask whether she thought submission was about certain traditional tasks and she seemed not sure. I laughed out loud and she joined me. I shared how she had just reminded me of the confusion around this subject of leadership, submission and being a helpmate vis-à-vis self-awareness. I immediately felt tears roll down my cheeks. Shocked and full of empathy, she asked why I was crying and I explained the pain I always feel whenever such a subject on gender confusion comes up.
Amidst tears and laughter, I went on to assure her that she was just fine and just she needed to stop comparing herself with anyone but to embrace her identity and unique giftedness. She can never be Suzan.
You see, the husband’s comment had eroded her sense of self-worth and self-esteem. To her, this was rejection “maybe because she is not submissive enough”.
Men and women are gifted and skilled differently. In a marriage relationship, each one needs to express oneself according to one’s uniqueness. Maybe Suzan is gifted as a home-maker while Jane is gifted as a strategist and a business woman.
Gender equity from the biblical perspective demands for mutual submission where each spouse enjoys unconditional love that motivates one to thrive in self-expression based on one’s uniqueness.
A wife as a helper is an equal partner to her husband. She brings ideas on the table just like the husband does and in the spirit of mutual support, they work to fulfill their pre-determined personal and family goals. (Ephesians 5:2 submit to one another in the fear of God (NIV)).
…..and they live happily ever after…..
