Knowing Your Man

“But trying to save a life isn’t wasting your life, is it?” – Sarah, Rambo 4

One of my favorite things about stories is how they can highlight an ordinary reality, teasing it out into the light, helping us not take it for granted, through exaggeration.

One of my other favorite things is to see Christianity in stories. They can’t escape the fact that Truth, God’s Truth, tells the best stories and resonates with the most people. It’s like we were created in His image or something. This practice of looking for Christ even in secular stories often redeems them and utilizes them by bringing into sight that which we believe by faith.

This is what I love about war movies and shows, the Marvel movies, fantasy movies, Anime, cop shows and so much more. This is what I love about stories.

My favorite movie is Rambo 4. I can wax eloquent about it for hours. Be careful asking me about my love for this film, you might want to find a cup of coffee and get comfortable. It’s gonna be a while.

What does all this have to do with knowing your man? Well, when I think about the self-sacrifice of spending my life studying and supporting and knowing this one person, it’s tempting to think that’s a stupid waste of a life.

Waste.

That word brought to mind the above quote from Rambo 4.

(Welcome to my brain. At any given moment something someone said has probably brought to mind a quote from a movie or TV show. It’s a messy, chaotic, loud place sometimes.)

Dying, or living, for someone isn’t a waste of your life.

On one hand, the world would agree. We still honor motherhood on some level. And self-sacrifice. We like the exaggerations, but feel put upon when we’re told to sacrifice our lives for this specific, particular man. We’re okay as a culture with a man living and dying for a specific woman, but we’re not okay with women being told to live life fully for the specific point of being this specific man’s wife.

Look at our husbands.

They’re not Tom Selleck, Sam Elliot, Michael Biehn, Tom Hardy, Chris Evans, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, or any other ‘good-looking’ man. Our husbands are normal, humdrum, silly on a level we women can’t understand, farting and burping, with their gone-to-seed bellies. They’re not Mr. Darcy, not Bingley, and not Knightly. And if you’re me, they’re not Aragorn, Faramir, or Captain America. Our husbands are normal, finite sinners.

These stories aren’t here to make you discontent but to help you see your husband, that guy on the couch, in a different light, to see beyond the aging man with all his faults and failings and annoying habits. To see the warrior behind the ordinary man.

We are the HearthKeepers. This is both a general spirit of delighting in the ordinary magic found in the domestic arts and a specific, particular, boots on the ground home we’re making. It’s spirit and practice.

We are making a home.

For who?

Well, I’m not making a home for your man, an imaginary man, or a beefed-up celebrity. I, Abby, am making a home for Price, specifically.

This isn’t a cage. It’s not a waste. It’s not belittling.

I’m a homemaker, and he is the one I’m making my home for. We must go to war against the feeling that this is a waste of our efforts or something that makes us slaves, and we must make sure we’re studying our own, God-given man and not someone else’s, or a figment of our imagination.

Being a homemaker, a specific homemaker is making a home for a specific man.

My man isn’t a good sleeper. I never know when I start my day if he got a full night’s sleep or just a few scattered hours. Sometimes his best sleep is from 530-8 AM. So I endeavor to guard his mornings, to not have things on the schedule until after 10 AM if at all possible. I manage my home for a specific man with specific struggles and gifts.

My man ‘feels’ loved when I notice the details, little things, and consistently do them. My man doesn’t like change. My man is an extroverted thinker who needs me engaged in his thoughts. Knowing both the physical wants and needs and the personality of your man takes work, effort, study, and a willingness to accept criticism. It takes humility and a gentle and quiet spirit, or you will resent the man God gave you whether he is the strong silent type, the artistic type, the silly type, the goof, or the jock. Some men are hunters and some men are thinkers and some men are both and some men are neither. You need to be willing to embrace your man.

I can sense some of you women smirking. “You just spoil him.” Who wants to know this much and do this much for their husband? Who has the time? Isn’t he supposed to be taking care of me?

Ladies, you do this for your children, right? I’m 100% certain that all of you moms know your children better than they know themselves. And you know you, right? If someone asked you what was important to you in your home, you can rattle off a fairly comprehensive list. But when we think of studying our husbands, knowing their likes and dislikes, ‘whoa there, let’s not get crazy’, or ‘how dare you!’ tend to be our responses.

Why are our husbands so unworthy of our respect, care, and consideration? Why do we think they’re not worth the effort? What if they treated us that way?

I sometimes think we get this twisted view of our men. We subconsciously begin to think that their job is to constantly serve us. That they function at our beck and call, that’s what being a loving leader is all about, right? Serving? So serve me!

This is compounded by our praise of the man who comes home and jumps into the chaos and does the dishes, cooks dinner, bathes the kids, and vacuums for you because you’ve had a hard day. These are beautiful acts of service and are worthy of being praised, but we tend to twist them into the only measure of love. We measure our men by them and find them lacking, or we set them up as the standard for proof of a successful and happy marriage.

I, personally, love the little domestic stories of the man who is up before his wife and always makes her a cup of coffee. It’s so sweet.

I must not let it define my marriage. It would be easy to be hurt and angry at my man because he’s never done this for me. But then I laugh. My man rarely gets up before me and doesn’t drink coffee…so even if he did this the coffee would probably be bad. And I’d have to show him how to do it. It’s unfair to set a standard for feeling loved based on someone else’s husband. Stop it! My husband, at this point in our marriage, isn’t hands-on with the domestic work. He’s very hands-on with the spiritual and philosophical thinking in our home. He is a big picture person. The details are important to him, but he doesn’t often focus on them. I can’t allow some other wife’s praise of her husband cause me to value mine less.

I need to be a studier of mine, my husband, and you know what? When I try to see him, notice him, pay attention to him, my robotic Sherlock of a husband has adorable ways of showing me he loves me. I can see him learning, growing, trying. He may not do the things your husband does, but he has his own ways of lovingly leading.

It isn’t a waste of our lives to spend them supporting, cheering, and helping our individual, specific men. And we must not allow very visible acts of service to define service and love as a whole between us and our husbands. Keep your eyes on your man and I’ll keep my eyes on mine.

Watch, read, and listen to your stories. See the truth hidden deep and don’t let sin and lies tell you that giving your life for someone else is a waste.

Maids: Guard your hearts. Do this now to keep yourself from falling for the first guy that winks at you, but know that you’ll need to do this even more in marriage. You’ll be tempted to think serving anyone else but your husband is somehow nobler. Think proactively about marriage. Study real, actual men to see what to expect and to have a standard, especially your deacons and elders. Cultivate friendships with these couples and actively, purposefully, intentionally think about who you want to marry. A couple can have very little ‘romance’, but if they have the truth of the gospel, they can have a happy and healthy marriage. You can have all the chemistry in the world, but if you don’t share the gospel and sound theology, your marriage will sour and become a living hell.

On the other hand, don’t expect young men to be at the deacon/pastor level. Don’t have an unrealistic standard, or no man will be good enough for you. You’re looking for seeds and roots, not fully formed oak trees.

Work on yourself. Practice being a homemaker, talk with and befriend homemakers at all stages of life. Make yourself attractive to the kind of man you want. That isn’t entrapment or wrong.

Learn the difference between a woman being honest about the faults of her man and marriage and the bitter woman, mocking her man.

Wait on the Lord. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that in this temporary life the goal is sanctification, being made like Christ, and your church is your most important relationship. The goal isn’t being a wife or a mother. That’s not the ultimate goal. Can you greatly desire to be a homemaker and God deny the fulfillment of that desire? Yes. Is your desire wrong? No. Is marriage a blessing experienced by the majority of women? Yes. Is it owed or promised to you? No. You must set that great and good desire at the feet of our Loving Lord and trust Him with it even if He says no, or not yet. Trust Him with your HearthKeeper heart even if He never gives you a hearth. You can’t see all ends and you will need to submit to this providence with grace, courage, and kindness. And! It isn’t a waste to practice being a dwelling your whole life. God will use it.

Matrons: It is easy for us married women to swallow the lies of man-hating and man-belittling in both obvious ways and very subconscious ways. Look, men are hard to live with and they can be infuriating and terrifying, irresponsible and lazy. But we must hold the line on respecting them. We must not allow ourselves to belittle them, treat them as fools, or unworthy of our love, or like they’re toxic. Yes, men are funny creatures. Humor and laughter are gifts. But don’t mock them or their position as leaders of the home. It will make you and your home miserable.

Your church comes first, the means of grace, your identity in Christ, and with your local body. But after that, make your marriage and your home your priority. This is more important than your kids. You may end up not having kids, and if you do, they won’t be in your home forever. You don’t want to wake up 20-30 years down the road next to a man you don’t know, in a cold, chaotic home you have no idea how to manage. Do you know what happens? Not only are you miserable, and he’s miserable, but your kids won’t want to come home to visit. Putting your focus on your long-term work and your long-term relationship provides kids with much-needed stability, structure, and self-discipline. Think of homemaking like food: nourishing meals are important. If you focus on cooking then your kids will be fed. If you’re wise, you’ll bring them into the process and now you’re molding them, shaping them, bonding, and preparing them. Kids don’t need to be the center of the universe. Start with the church, then husband, then home, then kids, and kids, home, husband, and the church will all be well-nourished, nurtured, tended, and cherished.

Crones: If the Lord has seen fit to make you a widow, remember the wealth of male experience you have to bring to the table. Watch your words. Don’t mock other women’s husbands and don’t tell them that knowing him and tending him is a waste of time. Build them up in the work! Notice and appreciate and compliment the ways the women around you specifically serve their husbands. This will lift their spirits and help them stay in the work.

Be a safe person to talk to. When a matron comes to you complaining about her man, listen, laugh even (life and people are funny), but don’t lose respect for her husband. My dearest female friends are the ones who I can go to with a marriage struggle safely, knowing that they will still love and respect my husband and they will speak the truth reminding me to love and respect him too. They won’t take sides. Be that person.

If you’re still blessed with a husband, show us. Be an example of the beauty of a long marriage. Deny bitterness and gracefully age.

Help the maids of all ages balance between a high standard and a hopeless standard.

Help maids and matrons see they aren’t a waste of space just because they’re husbandless and/or childless.

HearthKeepers, we are dwellings. Us. Body and soul. Made to be a dwelling place, mirroring the church to our husbands’ mirroring of Christ. This is a wonderful, life-long work. We don’t go through our Christian life not knowing Christ, saying he isn’t worth our work and effort, and that it’s wasting our life to spend it enriching our knowledge of him. Now our husbands aren’t Christ, but they are mirroring him in our marriage, so let’s get to know this man, to be his helper and serve him. Doing this, serving him, isn’t wasting your life. It’s not stealing from you something owed to you. It’s not trampling your rights. It’s a good and beautiful sacrifice offered to the Lord by his free and brave daughters.

“There isn't one of us that doesn't want to be someplace else. But this is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something. Your call.” – Rambo, Rambo 4