Breaking Down the "O" Word

“Praise the Lord! How blessed is the one who obeys the Lord, who takes great delight in keeping his commands”   Psalm 112:1

 Sometimes God’s commands are hard to follow. Sometimes, at least initially, they don’t seem like what we want. We explored last week God’s command to respect our husbands. I reiterate, it does not say “Respect your husband when he is being respectable,” or “Respect your husband when he loves you.” It simply says, “Respect your husband.” Even more than telling us to respect them, it says to submit to them. Yes, this means obey, but it means so much more.

 Obedience can be done begrudgingly. We can do something with our bodies and still resist it in our minds. It’s like a child we tell to apologize to their sibling for hitting them. Yes, they may say, “Sorry,” but do they mean it? Perhaps that’s where punishment came from, to help us feel sorry for what we’ve done. In any case, to submit, or submission, is not just obedience, it’s buy-in. It’s, “I’m going to do what you say because I believe in you and what you're doing.” That’s next level.

 I’ve been working on obedience and submission for 25 years now, ever since I read the chapter I mentioned in an earlier post. I’m not great at it, and I’m certainly not an expert, but I’ve come a long way. Actually, I’ve come all the way to Texas where I’m writing this post! Yep, I’m here because of submission.

 You see, my husband has been passionate about serving the homeless and disenfranchised for a long time now. He began serving at the Tacoma Rescue Mission in December of 2019 and has worked more than 2,600 hours since then. To put it into perspective, 2,000 hours is a full year of full-time work! And that was all while maintaining, well, a more than full-time job and caring for a wife with a health crisis and disabilities. To say he’s passionate would be an understatement. So when I was invited to a fundraising cocktail party for the Mission and Duke, the director, shared about his passion and vision for opening a village of tiny homes for homeless people to transition into permanent housing, I knew where we were headed. That evening, years ago, I knew what would be in my future.

 Did I embrace it. No. Plain and simple. But I was aware that it was a foregone conclusion and one that I may as well get used to. I homeschooled my children for 15 years and much of that used a curriculum called Sonlight, which leverages a combination of non-fiction and excellent literature to teach history. While doing this, I learned about William Carey and his wife, Dorothy. They were missionaries to India in the late 1700s, a dark and difficult time for foreign travel. When William felt the call to India, Dorothy, pregnant with their sixth child and having already lost two, objected. She didn’t think it was a good idea to uproot their family, especially during her pregnancy. He was fully invested though and took their oldest son with them on his journey, leaving her and the other children at home in the care of her family. God had other plans for them though and interrupted Carey’s trip, causing him to return home. Here he again pushed, prodded and cajoled his wife who eventually relented on the condition that her sister be allowed to join them so she wouldn’t be alone. Once they arrived, however, things went from bad to worse. Within a few months of reaching their new home, Dorothy contracted chronic dysentery, a terrible condition. They had to move five times in the first seven months and struggled with desperate poverty. Then her five-year-old son died of a fever. Was that the straw that broke the camel’s back? Only God knows, but from that point on she lost her mind. She was plagued by progressively more severe paranoid delusions that resulted in violent outbursts until she, too, died of a fever 12 years later. I guess I’ve always seen this as a cautionary tale.

 So am I saying that I will move into the village with my husband because I’m afraid I’ll go crazy if I don’t? Nope, who knows, I might go crazy if I do! Dorothy did. No, what I’m alluding to is the importance of a married couple being one flesh, maybe even one mind. I think we need to have unity on this. Would my husband relent and say we didn’t need to do it if I said I just couldn’t? I believe so, but I also believe his heart would be broken and he would never be the same. He would be prevented from pursuing his God-given calling, and that’s enough to drive someone insane as well! And the thing is, I’m not against it. I’m just not as excited about it as he is. I don’t have the same callings and passions. But, as God has been reminding me over the last week or so, I used to. When I was younger I used to beg God to send me as a missionary. I wanted to minister in some far-off foreign field like Amy Carmichael or Elizabeth George. But it wasn’t our time then. For His reasons and purposes, He wanted our children raised in the US and my husband to work a regular, lucrative job. But I believe He was training us and working in our hearts that whole time.

 Now I have the potential opportunity to be a “Missional.” In this case, that would be like a missionary to a formerly homeless community. I could be a missionary to people in desperate need of Jesus, in a completely different demographic than I am used to, without even leaving my home state. Twenty years ago I would have jumped at the chance. Today, I am just so tired. I don’t seem to have the energy to put one foot in front of the other many days, how will I share that energy with others? I guess it’ll be like the widow giving her two mites, not enough to buy anything really to help others, but giving all she had. Jesus said, "Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on." [Luke 21:3-4 NIV]. So here’s the question, am I willing to obey, to submit fully heart and soul, even when it’s hard – desperately hard – life-alteringly, future changing hard?

Here’s the Thing: I’ve been talking about submission to my husband today, but really, it comes down to submission to God. Do I trust that God will care for me and protect me if I follow what He’s put on my husband’s heart? I have the blessing of knowing my husband loves Jesus and is following him. This must be even harder for those whose spouses are not seeking after God. But the command remains. In fact, in 1 Peter 3:1 it specifically tells us to obey husbands that are not Christians. And so, submission to our husbands = submission to God. We are ultimately trusting God to come through and take care of us, to make it all work out, to put it all together according to His perfect will and timing.