At Home

A lot of women I know will look askance at the CNN article on Stay At Home Wives. Two in particular come to mind. In conversations we’ve had, those two did not understand why a woman would not utilize her education and increase the household income.

They didn’t understand me. For the last twelve years of my career, my husband was the stay-at-home. Had we both been working, we could have bought a lot more “things.”

Instead, he was able to do what Anne Marie Davis describes as: “… a lifestyle, Davis says, that has made her happier and brought her closer to her husband. ‘We're no longer stressed out,’ she says”

These are not stay at home moms being discussed. These couples have no children. Isn’t it wonderful that a woman can feel sufficiently free not to be tied to the work force? There is no stress as to whose promotion is most necessary, more important. No contention as to scheduling vacations, days off. No competition as to income nor titles.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it. Yet, this is considered unusual. Just as stay at home moms, especially those home schooling, seem unusual.

Shouldn’t be. The feminist movement touted freedom for we females. How can they complain about how we use that freedom?

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; … So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. (Ephesians 5:21-25, 28 KJV)

Now there’s a beautiful portrait of loving husbands and wives – and the Christ who connects us all. The strength of the triangle is so apparent in this portrait.

The scripture continues to paint a broader picture of this mystery, saying that it is one:

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. (Ephesians 5:32-33 KJV)

Know God’s will for your own life, and may the Lord increase the joy of marriage for you.