Submission

I get asked nearly every day how I can possibly believe in "submission."
There is this gigantic fear in the world that those of us who are suggesting that submission be a part of the marriage experience might somehow be getting ripped off-- that we have been screwed out of our COMPLETE happiness and joy by our own beliefs.
I've been very strongly advocating wifely submission since as long as I have been a Christian. It has so much permeated my experience of Christianity that I cannot say that I can imagine what being a Christian without it would be like.
But lately, current events have me constantly putting the practice of submission into a concrete context, and I'm seeing and discovering new things about my faith through it.

On the internet and in debates, women who advocate submission are usually very quick to respond "being a submissive wife does NOT mean being a doormat," in the hopes that the other person will understand that they are still empowered, in control, etc etc. I try to refrain from doing that (even though I know alot of you reading have seen me do it before! haha) because I think it comes off as defensive, for one, and also because it sometimes isn't true. There are times, as Oswald Chambers so eloquently puts it, that we are called to be broken bread and poured out wine. Our Lord, who told us to turn the other cheek and to offer to another our last bit of clothing, humbled himself to the point of death on the cross at the hands of fools.

Let's think about that for a minute.
First, He is God. He could have smited any one of those people who were trying to crucify him--- any one along the way TO the crucifixion. In actuality, he could have simply stopped time and made it all start over at 0. He could have caused everyone to come into a deep sleep and put somene else in his place. He could have done anything, but instead He suffered and died for us SO THAT WE WOULD KNOW HIS LOVE AND RESPOND TO IT.
If He hadn't done it, the roman soldier who pierced his side would not have been saved. The Jewish citizens watching would not have been saved. They had to see him DIE to get it.

This beautiful example of submission is represented not only in the perfect submitting that Christ did to God the Father, but even in His humble submission to US. Second, that humility is what makes the event so shameful for us. We see that the God of the Universe submitted to us and allowed us to trample on His life.. and we respond out of a true desire to be united to His suffering and to love this God who died for us back.
Now let's think about that in the context of marriage, or of relationship.

Has there ever been a time in your relationship when you just KNEW your man was wrong? When he just WAS wrong, no two ways about it? What did you do? How did you respond? Was your response indicative of Christ's own example of submission? How ?

For me, I think of it in similar terms. Those of you who are worried that you will somehow lose your power when you submit have it all wrong.
Submission doesn't mean GIVING AWAY that which makes you powerful. It means choosing not to use it.

I have the ability to keep a great job, to raise two or ten kids by myself, to take care of it all, to keep a clean house, to have a great time doing it. There are days when that sounds easier than putting up with whatever my husband has placed in front of me! But quite honestly, I grow MORE when I don't exercise that power but choose instead to lay it at my imperfect husband's feet. Why? Because it makes HIM grow more too.

Now, some of you are saying... wait wait wait. You've all heard me say that I have the type of husband who it sometimes benefits when I DON'T submit-- when I do put my foot down. And that's true--- but it's all in the "how" I do it.
The answer to every question you may ask is Love.

Love brings the action of putting my foot down into the beautiful context of submission, and then it is free to bear fruit. It is because I love him that I allow him the freedom to grow and sometimes to fail. He cannot grow if he does not fail. It is because I love God that I know I need not fear those moments when he does.


I remember the day I read in my Catholic bible for the first time the familiar passage on submission, and realized that the way it was cut into a section in all my protestant bibles it was missing half the point. The verse says to submit to one another. THEN it specifies that we are to submit to our husbands. All of my protestant bibles cut that passage off so that ONLY wives submitted to their husbands but husbands JUST loved their wives. It was deceptive. And puritanical. And messed up. I was furious, and felt so UNBURDENED to be a Catholic--- free to love and to choose to submit.

And yet we know from scripture that a humble and contrite heart is the greatest gift we can give God. I think humans tend to underemphasize true humilty. What is to be humbled? It is to be brought down by someone who is less than ourselves. Likewise, we are told in scripture to esteem others -- even those who are NOT -- as greater than ourselves. Just as Jesus did. True humility is when my husband works with a bunch of drunken loons in the trades who actually think they are smarter than him-- and he lets them think it! True humility is when someone I have always tried to please and be kind to makes me feel like garbage and uses me... and I let her. It wasn't until some recent events in my own life that were really, extraordinarily painful, that I realized the connection between the root of the words humility and humiliation. Humility is when we are humilitated. Get it?
We pray to be humble, but we don't get that we must then be humilitated. We pray for God to take us ALL, but when He does, we protest.

That's why I can say that true submission, which entails humility, can and often does look like staying when you really, in all human fairness, shouldn't. Because I have seen first-hand how that ONE time you just through you REALLY had had enough and couldn't handle laying down your life anymore was the ONE time where it made the other person react with meekness.... and all of a sudden the other person was FILLED with the fruits of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, longsuffering(patience) , gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance(self control)-- and so was your relationship. God's ways work, and I am a living testimony to that fact.

But here's the kicker. I'm teaching a bible study on St Paul for a group of awesome Catholic women--- and in this week's reading, from Beth Moore's "To Live is Christ" -- basically blew me away. In it she said that she had noticed that to those who see things in black and white, God often shows them grey-- and those who see in Greys, God often hammers with blacks and whites. When I read that, I have to say, my heart skipped a beat. I wanted to hunt her down and hug the crap out of her, because reading that lifted a huge burden off of my shoulders.

You see, for me, this submission thing has been right on from day one. I believe the old adage that it is more blessed to give than to recieve. I believe with all my heart that God is constantly calling us to get uncomfortable, to risk it all for others, to give until you cannot give anymore, and then to ask for the grace to give anyways.

I was talking to a friend today who told me that they don't feel called to love everyone. They feel called to be KIND to everyone, but not to love everyone. I told them that that's because they equate love with an emotion. For me, I am called to love everyone, but that's doesn't mean I always am going to be perfectly kind. Sometimes love kicks people in the butt, right? For this person, to love means to give their everything, their all, and to deplete themselves in it.
For me, to love means to choose to give them whatever God has laid on my heart for them, whether it be a kind word, a stern word, or both!

I share this because this is basic Bible 101 for me---things I see as Black and White, or obvious.

And yet I am seeing first hand that there is grey here: how in the lives of other people sometimes there are exceptions to my "rule" that make sense.... In my own case, for example, I needed to stretch the boundaries of the style of submission that I see as "biblical" so that I could better help my own husband. For one person, submission might look like a freshly pressed apron and fresh cookies in the oven. For another, it might be agreeing to go kayaking or to buy a piece of property that she doesn't see much hope for.
For another, it might mean saying yes when she is tired and has a headache, and for another, possibly it means saying "no" and being honest. I dont know. What I do know is that God has to use a TOTALLY different set of circumstances with me as He does with another to bring us both to sanctification, because we are so totally unique that there is no fix-all for our sin. The only fix-all is the blood of Christ, but applying the blood of the lamb is an art that only those who will listen with open hearts and quiet minds are learning how to excel at. May we all learn to sit in silence and wait for Him to speak.

Holy cow, I think that I just figured out that I truly am called to Carmel.