I mostly write about women and relationships. Simply put because I’m a woman, my thoughts are largely focused on how females can love better, mother better, and how it feels to be hurt, and how I want to love when people hurt. Today I’m reminded again about leadership and how it connects men and women from a book I read in 2016.
“Men, let me plead with you. The greatest fight of your life is not lust. You may think it is, but it isn’t. The greatest fight of your life will be rejecting the passivity that has infected your heart since the fall. Your natural default, especially as it pertains to sacrificial leadership of your wife, will be to mutely witness.”
Matt Chandler, Mingling of Souls
Women are designed to be led. We are. Men, you’re designed to lovingly lead. So, fellas, if you’ve noticed you’re not the leader in your home, let me tell you how that manifested from my experience.
The word submit is broken down from Latin submittere “to yield, lower, let down, put under, reduce,” from sub “under” (see sub-) + mittere “let go, send” (see mission). This means to have a “mission” to be under, y’all have to come up with one first and then agree that’s how it’s to be done. And follow through with it, be under it together.
So men, when you and your wife decide as a team that you’re going to go to church, to have family time, to stick to a budget, to have a family mission and plan, etc., we look to you guys to help execute it. So if your wife deviates from the plan, let’s say she doesn’t want to go to church and decides to watch it online…that doesn’t seem so bad for one weekend, but one turns into 7 turns into 6 months turns into “let’s not watch it let’s just sleep in” and then you’re completely away from the plan…men, stay with the plan. Keep going to church, get those babies up and dressed and go anyway. “Are you sure you don’t want to go, honey? Ok see you when we get back.”
We can only watch you keep leading, sticking to the plan we agreed to with you, for so long until we catch back up. When we fall short and you fall short with us, when you follow us, you’ve turned US into the leaders of the house and we’re not designed for that. When we’re the leaders of the house, you’re not designed for that, either. We start to not trust you as the leader, you feel disrespected and unheard, and then the seed of resentment starts to root, which will intimately lead to behavior that leads to divorce.
Guys, I realize this may seem unfair and burdensome, but that’s how you were designed so take that up with God. I’ve been married and divorced so I can’t tell you how to stay married, but I can tell you how to get divorced, which is kind of the same thing.
Come up with a plan together, stick to the plan until there’s GOOD REASON to make a new plan, and be the leaders God designed you to be. This doesn’t include “mutely witnessing” and being “passive” when we want to unilaterally change the plan. It means keep going and let us catch up.
Deeper Than a Puddle 