I have a hair that grows on my chin without my noticing. At times I will get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and lo and behold it is already an inch long. I pluck it like the diseased plague that it is. Shortly after my husband and I got married this infamous hair appeared. I ripped it out, thankful that no one had noticed, and plopped down on the porch swing next to my husband. He glanced over at me, smiled and said "I see you finally got that hair." Needless to say I was a little ticked and went into great detail about the proper approach a husband should take in this sort of situation. First, he is to put aside all fear that I might get mad at him for critiquing me. (Which he would say is of course unavoidable.) Second, he is to tell me as soon as this hair appears so that I can pluck it IMMEDIATELY!
A couple of years later while in labor with Mason and en route to the hospital; Shaun leans close and says “Honey, just so you know, that hair is back.” (A little disclaimer: I have been told that Muslims believe that when a woman goes through labor all her sins up until that point are erased. I tend to want to agree. Seems reasonable to me that this forgiveness starts just AS SOON AS labor begins.) Even more ticked this time around I once again blew up.
“HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO PLUCK IT NOW?!?”
“But baby you told me to let you know!”
“Not on the way to the hospital! What am I supposed to do? Now all the nurses are going to be distracted and staring at this BIG BLACK hair on my chin when they are supposed to be helping me have a baby!” (I’ll spare you the details of all the other stupid things I said.)
It was later that I realized how he must have felt. We now laugh together at this story, but it helped me to understand that in certain situations he feels like he just can’t win. I am so moody. I am hard to live with. At times my depression makes marriage even more difficult. I have this way of expecting so much of him and then even when he meets my expectations I am unsatisfied.
“As For Me & My House” by Walter Wangerin, Jr. Is a book on marriage that has been part of my reading agenda since my marriage to Shaun. The truth is I hate self help books. They are insulting and usually tend toward legalism. But, this book is different. Wangerin conveys truth and yet leaves so much room for discernment by the individual. He opens the book with an invitation: "I intend this book to be both practical and personal-as though I were your pastor and we sat discussing holy, intimate necessities over a cup of coffee. I’ll seek to find you and define your marital experience by offering myself, my knowledge, my faith, and my own experience." Despite my stubborn skepticism, that is precisely how I end up feeling throughout a majority of the book. Perhaps vulnerability instead of preachiness is one of the main reasons this book is so good. He touches on many topics that we as a fragmented culture never venture into. This book has now become a great treasure to me. It has helped me to understand much more clearly myself, my sin, and the way I make my husband feel.
I was part of a diverse Bible study a while back and the married couples were very frank about their prayer needs. Many of the singles were shocked. They expressed that they had no idea just how hard marriage could be! Some in the group argued that we “marrieds” were ruining the prospective ideal marriage for these poor singles. Some of us disagreed; wishing that we ourselves had heard more frankness and honesty about marriage before entering into a life long commitment. Wangerin clearly understands the shock a lot of newly weds experience:"Let’s admit that getting married, as good as it may be for those who choose it, is nonetheless a crisis in the lives of newlyweds because it requires radical changes in their habits and behavior, in their assessment of their worlds and themselves, in their priorities, and in their responsibilities. Marriage is an unacknowledged cataclysm to lifestyles." "This is the fact: the woman does not know who her husband is until he is her husband, nor the man his wife until she exists as wife." Reading a book like this helps us to understand better why marriage can be traumatic, how to understand our spouses better, and how to truly love and forgive in a God-centered relationship. Wangerin says: "Love (though it may be an overwhelming inducement, finally, to marry) does not make a marriage. At that point each may feel an intense commitment to the other, but that is not independent of feelings. Rather, it’s founded on nothing but feelings-and feelings are as unstable as water, while marriage is the establishment of stability itself in a relationship. Feelings come and go. Marriage is meant to endure in spite of them."
Yes, we live in an age where marriage is based on feelings. When those feelings go sour, so often does the marriage. Wangerin understands these tendencies in a marriage and has hope to offer. I have read this book during good and bad times. I have skipped chapters, jumped back and forth, reread chapters, and each time I understand more and more about my marriage. I have much to learn. (Especially if I can get mad at my husband about a chin hair.) But Shaun and I are committed for life and this book is a wonderful tool for us to use as we fight for our marriage.
(To read a wonderful excerpt from As For Me and My House click the link below “To continue Reading...”)
In times past, cultures divided the labors of the household, clearly declaring what was “husband’s work” and what was “wife’s.” There was not much room in any particular marriage for latitude or personal choice; and there were, in those days, powerful reasons for the imposed similarity of most marriages. Each family depended, for its immediate survival, upon the close association of many families. Single families could not exist in isolation; more important than any marriage was the community at large-and the community divided its greater labor between what men did together and what women did together. The community needed to trust the general support and participation of all females for certain tasks, all males for others, since the community oversaw the survival-work of everyone.
“Times past” are not so very long ago. Do you remember how at harvesting the men worked field-to-field and farm-to-farm, while the women gathered to cook and feed them as they went, to boil the jellies, to preserve the fruits and vegetables? Do you remember, at slaughtering, the natural division of labor that put the men nearest the bloody beast and put the meats in the hands of the women? Even so did our grandparents allow the expectations of the community to teach them their tasks.
But things (so suddenly) have changed today. The immediate survival of any one family does not depend upon a close association with the community. Industry has taken the basic labor out of the family’s hands. As our contemporary culture has chosen to survive by mechanization, it has less right or reason to demand similarity of our various households. We do not farm together; we do not hunt, slaughter, and salt meats together; we do not; in fact, depend upon our neighbors to perform, together with us, the labors of survival. Therefore. It no longer matters to us or to the community what tasks our neighbor or her husband have chosen for themselves. Families can and do survive alone. As a result, the old distinction between “women’s work” and “men’s” has lost its purpose and its force.
But cultural habits run very deep in us; so parents and grandparents, and even the marrying partners themselves, maintain unconscious expectations of what shall be the wife’s tasks in the marriage, and what shall be the husband’s. The old pattern, the old division of labor which sent a man into the world while it kept woman with her children, still exerts great pressure on our consciences. Is it wrong? No, it need not be an improper pattern to follow-so long as the spouses realize that they are free, now, not so much to obey it as to choose it.
The division of the tasks within a marriage, in order to be a “sharing,” must be made willingly and consciously, each one assured that it is his and her choice, each one aware of the other’s choosing.
The old pattern is not wrong; rather, it is easy because it has been so common among us. Many marriages mutely assume that the husband’s greatest labor is outside the home, earning an income from society, and that the wife’s most significant contribution is inside the home, keeping house and raising children. But discuss this choice! Speak it aloud; assure yourselves that you agree together. Willingly choosing this division, constantly affirming one another in the choice, husband and wife shall surely share in the common job of survival. Moreover, you will be flexible, making changes upon this pattern as your marriage itself changes to accommodate new necessities.
But if either partner assumes that the old cultural pattern is a law imposed upon him or her, then any divergence (in behavior or in spirit) from that law will cause trouble. The marriage, trying to conform to a code it does not fully understand (since that code’s purposes have passed away) will have difficulty finding its own true character, its own unique and holy fulfillment. It will remain bound to unrealistic restrictions and so remain an undeveloped being.
A wife may feel imprisoned by the role she didn’t truly choose. She may grow frustrated and then guilty at her own frustration, as though her desire for other tasks is sinful. I’m a bad person, she may think because I’m not content with motherhood. I am weak and wicked because I hate to do the dishes. Had she chosen these duties she might still dislike them-but she would not doubt or damn herself. As it is, her discontentment will affect the marriage whole.
Or a husband may be bothered that the house is not as neat or organized as he thinks it ought to be. If the man were free, he could take upon himself some of the responsibilities for house-keeping-take them over totally as tasks of his own. But so long as a “law” constrains him (either externally or internally, in his own attitudes), his irritation will grow to private bitterness or to open abuse and complaint against his wife’s “faults.” And his discontentment will affect the marriage whole.
A “law” can kill. An unreasonable “law” certainly will enslave a marriage (the living relationship itself), arresting its growth. But (1) when tasks are divided in a conscious and harmonious discussion between the spouses; (2) when each spouse chooses his or her duties, thus claiming them as his or her own and acknowledging responsibility for them; (3) when each partner fully participates in the process and is obviously respected by the other (“Your opinions, your willingness, your abilities are necessary to us,” such a discussion implies, “and you are important to me!”); and (4) when each one hears the other today, proving that either can hear the other as well tomorrow-then there is no law but “sharing.” Both guilt and criticism have been laid aside. This marriage has shown the ability to revise the duty roster whenever necessary. Neither partner needs to feel neglected, used, demeaned, subjected, or dominated. And both partners may work with a complete and willing commitment at their tasks, even the tasks they don’t particularly like, while trusting the other’s contentment in his tasks. No woman need feel ashamed of housewifery-because the choice was hers; it belonged to her, not to her business-sisters, and was made internally, within the marriage. No husband need feel ashamed of house-husbanding-likewise, because that choice shall have been his and supersedes the patterns of the culture. Such individual contentment affects the marriage whole. For the written code (any code!) imposed upon a marriage for no good purpose, kills; but the spirit of sharing gives that marriage life.
Therefore, husband and wife, attend self-consciously to this division of labor. Talk about I, out loud and earnestly. Make your talk a special event early in your marriage, and then repeat the event periodically through the years.
Walter Wangerin, Jr.
As For Me & My House
Pages141-144
This book was reccommended to me by my parents via their ministry Ransom Fellowship. If you would like to read their review and many other treasures please visit their site at www.ransomfellowship.org.
It is not often that I read something that immediately makes me laugh out loud, but, I will admit, the chin hair episode did that... There are so many experiences in life, including labor, marriage, etc, that are idealized. I remember watching A Baby Story on TLC almost every day before giving birth to Aidan thinking that this would help to prepare me for labor; but, to my surprise, watching these beautiful, excited women experience their baby's birth did not seem very realistic when I was gripped by the pain of child labor. Noticing that your wife has a large hair growing from her chin instead of being overwhelmed with anticipation of seeing your new baby--that is real. Marriage seems to be equally idealized. After the beautiful ceremony, expensive clothing, and climax of emotion displayed within the church service have passed you are left alone with this person through good, bad, and worse...Thanks again for being so exposed.
I stumbled in and took a look around. Thanks for writing so beautifully. I have loved being here.
Amber: thank you for your comments. It's good to know that there are those out there that understand. I hope that people become more exposed than ever, that barriers are broken down and community made stronger. Sigh, it is huge.
Lisa: Thank you so much. I followed the link to your site. It is beautiful. I abviously am a newbie! :o}