The submission of the wife is her willful surrender to the
authority and leadership of her husband. Can that surrender be measured on a
linear scale that stretches from defiant and unyielding to totally surrendered? Or is
it an all-or-nothing type of transaction - either you are or you are not submissive? Perhaps there is another way to visualize
submission.
Think of a woman as a complex being comprising many
different zones or “rooms”. Together these rooms within her nature make her the
unique individual that she is. These rooms are furnished with experiences and
the lessons learned from these experiences. Each room carries its own emotional
identity: some rooms are crowded and disorganized, one or two may resemble a battle
zone where the dust hasn’t settled, still others reveal patches, duct tape, and
scars upon closer inspection. Keep looking and you may find still more rooms
characterized by confidence and boldness - in these rooms, the woman is rarely
rattled by threats or challenges and is eager to be hospitable and let others
in.
At the core level, in the control room where she stands
watch over all the rooms in her mansion, the woman chooses to submit herself to
her husband. She wants a husband-led marriage, and the price she must pay for
this powerful union is to give her mansion to her man. She is eager to share
it, but still a little afraid that he won’t treasure all the rooms as she does. She has been the
mistress of the mansion for a long time, and has put a lifetime of work into
looking after every room. Can he really take as good care of her rooms as she
does? The wife thinks long and hard about it.
Her will evaluates all the options and finally chooses the path of
surrender. She loves her husband more than she treasures her mansion, and she
wants to give it to him.
Excited by the prospect of sharing herself so deeply with
her husband, she hastens from room to room, inserting the key in the lock that
opens the door to the outside. In the rooms where confidence saturates the
environment, she swings that door open without hesitation, inviting her husband
in. Without thinking twice, she gives him the keys to these rooms. He can do
with these, her favorite rooms, what he wills.
She hesitates a little with the rooms that need some (or a
lot of) attention. She is embarrassed by the mess, and would prefer to have
more time to restore some order. Her husband assures her that he doesn’t mind a
little chaos, and that he will be happy to help her organize that space. She
hands him one key after the next, convinced that he doesn’t think any less of
her for having a few crazy rooms.
Then her husband points out one of the remaining rooms. May he go
in there, too? The wife hesitates and reluctantly pushes open the door just a
crack so he can see inside. It is clean and tidy, he observes as he peers past
his wife. The key is tightly grasped in her hand, and she doesn’t invite him
inside. “Will I be master of this room, too,” her husband asks? The wife
nibbles her lip anxiously, and finally mumbles “yes, I guess so”.
Her husband pushes the door open and steps inside. His gaze sweeps
around the room, and he admires the furniture and the artworks on the walls. He
notices damage everywhere he looks, and that it has been neatly patched up. He
sees the repair tape holding some books together, and the glue marks on the side
of the cracked vase. There is wire wrapped around some broken chair legs, and
neat repair stitching pulling together the shredded upholstery on the sofa. He
wonders out aloud about what happened in this room, and his wife is quick to
brush his query aside. When he moves to sit on the old chair in the corner, his
wife guides him away. “You’re too heavy - you’ll break it,” she whispers
timidly. He moves to pick up a pretty china teacup from the table, and his wife
snatches the little cup from him. “Careful, honey. You might let it fall. It’s
one of a kind.” She promises to leave the door open at all times, but conveniently
forgets to hand the key to her husband.
Does this describe a submissive wife? Or does her hesitation to trust
her husband in one area of her life exclude her from bearing the title of
“submissive wife”?
A wife that has chosen to walk the road of submission has
made a wise choice. That choice, however, only gets her to the starting line. From
that point forward, she is one of the elite: the courageous few who have chosen
to submit to their husbands - she is a “submissive wife”. Ahead of her lies a
journey many women hesitate to take. It may scare her a little, but she knows
she wants to take that journey. Her heart has converted to submission, but she
may not realize that it will take time for the rest of her to follow that
example.
A wife doesn’t make the choice to submit and instantly get
beamed across to the destination of “Perfect Submissionville”. She must walk
the long, sometimes rough and thorny, road into submission, one choice at a
time. Will she drag her big bunch of keys with her the whole way and hand them
to her husband when she arrives in “Perfect Submissionville”?
With every step she takes along that road of submission, the
wife’s desire to unload the weighty keys will grow. A patient husband who loves
first and exercises his authority second will make the journey appear shorter
for his wife. He will quickly collect her set of mansion keys as she willingly shares
them with him. His bunch of keys will grow as she leaves the little gifts upon each
milestone along the road.
Not the patient husband type? Go ahead. Demand that bunch of
keys at the start of your wife’s journey into submission, or even part way into
it. What will you get? Most likely you will get a few keys. You might even get a lot of them. But will you get
them all?
