Archive for the ‘Marriage’ Category

Let Our Men Lead

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

men-leadRecently I watched a series of DVD’s called “Fathers of Vision” produced by the Homeschool Channel. Seven sessions (most of them one hour long) address what it means to be a godly man and lead a family. Half the sessions were preached by Kevin Swanson. His passion for God and his flailing arms make him interesting to watch. My sons, as they were listening to his sermons, stood up and began flailing their arms, and I smiled in hopes of raising at least one preacher. My 11-year-old son blurted out, “I agree with what he’s saying!”

As a woman, this is the first time I’ve heard a series of sermons on what it means to be a father. Women are always banished from the room when men’s roles are mentioned, as if it’s supposed to be a secret. (That’s because women turn into shrews and basically bash their husbands over the head to get them to do what they perceive is the right thing. When women do so, they are the ones ruling, and it never works. Besides, it’s sin.) But I think it’s highly helpful to know that our husbands are responsible for us (their wives and children) before God, and that we need to yield to that dominion and move in the same direction that our husbands want us to go.

I think that’s the key. Find out what’s inside the heart of your husband, what his vision for the family is, and then make that your priority. If your husband doesn’t have a vision for what he wants his family to be, these DVD’s would be excellent for him to watch because they give a biblical vision for how the father is supposed to function in the family.

Wouldn’t it be great if Christian men would rise up and say, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Men can take dominion over their homes and decide how to lead their families toward righteousness. The family should reflect the man. In order to do this, a man must actually pursue God for real. He can make such an enormous impact for Christ when he takes his God-given role and says, “I will fulfill it; so help me God.” And even if he fails, and he will, we as wives can support and pray for our husbands and make their task as easy as possible by yielding to his headship.

When I got to the sixth session, “The Heart of It All,” my heart was in my throat. That was an absolutely phenomenal session. Kevin Swanson admitted that he didn’t love his son, and the transformation that occurred inside of him to cause his heart to be woven to the heart of his son was incredible. That was the most Spirit-filled session, and if your husband only has time to watch one, that session is worth the price of the entire set.

Why We Have a Cat: Part 3

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

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So the whole cat thing backfired, and it made me more fatigued during the last time I would ever enjoy a baby of my own. But I couldn’t resent my husband because I had been justly punished for my own manipulation. Now let me tell you about a time that I was manipulating and didn’t even know it.

I love my husband. If you’ve read my love story, you know that I’ve always loved my husband dearly. I wanted my husband to sleep in on the weekends, because he loved sleeping in. Of course, I loved sleeping in, too… But I wanted my husband to feel refreshed. So I let him sleep in every weekend. I felt no resentment whatsoever, but only a purity of heart. This went on for years.

Come to find out after we we were done having kids, I suddenly wasn’t willing to fall on the sword any more. I wanted my husband to watch the kids so I could sleep in once in a while. A veil lifted, and I saw the real reason why I let my husband sleep in: I didn’t want my husband to feel fatigue so that he would give me more children.

Why am I sharing this story with you? Because you need to understand that ALL of us are selfish pigs, and we don’t see the reality of our actions. I knew that I had purity of heart for wanting to let my husband sleep in. You see, you do things that you think you have godly motives for, and you’re only deceiving yourself. This holds true for all mankind.

The only way to have pure and true motives is to yield to the Spirit of God. Even our good works are as filthy rags before God. When the veil lifted for me, God showed me other layers of selfishness. He peeled layer after layer of selfishness off me. My whole life (since salvation) I was pure and obedient to God. At least that’s what I thought. I was like the good son in the prodigal story. If I ever sinned, I always repented as soon as I knew. I never went through a rebellious stage as a teenager. I even obeyed my parents behind their back, avoiding parties that I could have gone to because I didn’t want to ruin my father’s reputation as a seminary professor. I had done so much for God over the years, or at least I thought I had.

Then I came across the passage in Isaiah 6, where the holy angels had to block their faces in the presence of God, and I suddenly cried out with all my heart and soul, “God, make me holy! Do anything!” You see, I realized that I wasn’t.

He peeled so many layers of sin off me. He burned them off. It was so painful as I saw that everything that I had ever done was worth nothing. I did it because I liked thinking that I was good. I thought I was doing all that for God, but God showed me that I was sorely mistaken.

Was the real purifying of my soul worth all the pain? Absolutely. I feel the presence of God in my life now more than ever. I am overwhelmed by the holiness of God, and God does things through me I never thought possible. Being yielded to the Spirit is true freedom, and everything you do through the power of the Spirit has eternal value.

Why We Have a Cat: Part 2

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

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Not knowing for sure if I was over my cat allergies, I knew that getting a cat would score points with my husband. Why did I want points, you ask? Because I wanted another baby. Yep. I wasn’t thinking properly, and my husband said that a house wasn’t a home until you had a cat by the fireplace, and technically I agreed. I just didn’t want to suffer. But I decided to take a chance.

My husband thought that as long as we had babies and toddlers around, he would never be able to do anything. (This included godly things like going on missions trips, to his credit, so he wasn’t just being selfish.) We were both so tired with four tiny children under the age of five, three in diapers. My husband thought subconsciously that he couldn’t have anything he wanted until we stopped paying so much money for diapers.

To prove him wrong and show him that he could have outrageous things even when we had babies, I got him the cat. He was very pleased. I didn’t tell him the real reason I got the cat. Instead I mentioned the mouse and the squirrel as valid reasons, plus I’ve always loved cats.

The cat ripped everything to shreds, jumped into the indoor plants and shoveled dirt onto the carpet, and if that wasn’t enough, she dropped marbles on the landing at nap time and during the middle of the night.

I had a newborn at the time. I needed rest badly. So I grabbed the cat during nap time and forced her onto a chair. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “You’d better obey me. Take a nap now.” She knew I meant business. Within a few days, I had the cat trained to take naps. Sometimes I would see the cat jump up on her nap chair; I would look at the clock, and it was exactly one o’clock. The cat’s internal clock was programmed to nap at one.

To make a long story short, we never had another baby. I went through all that for nothing. (At least I didn’t suffer allergies.) When I told my husband the real reason I had gotten the cat, he laughed.

(Stay tuned for Part 3…)

Why We Have a Cat: Part 1

Monday, September 26th, 2011

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A shrill scream left my mouth involuntarily as I saw a small, furry brown shape scurry across my dining room floor. “It’s a mouse!” I shouted with surprise to my husband. “Kill it! Get it out of the house!”

“You think I know how to kill a mouse?” my husband asked, bewildered.

“You’re the man. Who else is going to do it?”

My husband paused for a minute. Then he left the room. My feet were up from the floor on the couch where I was sitting, and my eyes were riveted towards the place where I last saw the shape. I did not want to let it out of my sight. If it was lost, I just know that it would scurry across my face in the middle of the night.

My husband came in with a jar, and after about ten minutes of my screaming “Get it! Get it!” with a darting mouse, we caught the mouse in a jar. I didn’t want to know how he killed it, so I didn’t ask. I just said, “Don’t let it loose in our backyard. He came in once; he’ll come in again.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Several weeks later, a squirrel was eating my tulips. I love red flowers, and those were my only red flowers. “Is it legal to shoot a BB gun in the backyard?” I asked my husband.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I took 63 shots to get rid of my allergies. The worst of my allergies was cats. If you’ve read my book Growing Up as a Missionary Kid, you know that I broke out in hives because of a cat. My nose would always drip like a faucet around cats, and the allergic reaction would sometimes progress into full-blown asthma. I was hospitalized once because of asthma caused by allergies set off by a cat.

Then I went to an allergist as a teenager. Each time I got a skin test, I nearly fainted. My vision got dark around the edges, and right before I hit the floor, my vision would suddenly be clear and crisp. Someone had put some rubbing alcohol under my nose.

After the course of several years, getting a shot in my arm every week, then every month, I was theoretically no longer allergic to cats. Well, I had never really tested out this theory before…

(Stay tuned for Part 2…)