Resolving family strife

In the previous article on resolving family strife the focus was on the husband’s contribution to family strife through uncontrollable anger.
This week’s focus is on the wife’s significant contribution to family conflicts and marital drift.
True, the man may fail to love you as he ought to. He may be keeping bad company, telling lies about his whereabouts and missing dinner time without notice. He may not want to be asked why he always has a backlog at work that causes him to always leave home early and come back late. Sometimes he may require you to do things that you are not comfortable with like kneeling down before him while serving him food, visiting his parents at short notice and so on. Other times he may not give you enough money for the daily necessities.
Admittedly, these practices are wrong and must be corrected.
However, the way you respond to your husband’s wrong acts must always show submission and not rebellion.
You have a God-ordained duty to recognise and respect his delegated authority and ability to lead the entire household.
Just because your husband has failed to observe his duties does not give you the right or excuse to calculably fail yours and to usurp his authority as the lord of the house. Instead of submitting to the headship of their husbands, most wives allow their deep-seated fears, jealousies, suspicions, and insecurity to surface as a quarrelsome, fighting spirit.
A contentious spirit is not the best response to husband’s weaknesses. In fact, the opening scripture informs us that it is better for a man to live alone in the corner of an attic than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home. If your husband is a lone ranger or an early riser or late-comer you may need to examine yourself and see if you are not repellent to him.
The wife’s contentious spirit fosters a wandering spirit in the husband but a submissive spirit in a wife always creates and ignites a homing instinct that leads the husband home to his wife on time.
Instead of arguing with him over suspicious text messages, secretaries and movements, relax and genuinely submit to his authority while trusting God to expose the hidden things in his life in His own way and time. Trust is the key, because if you cannot trust him then you will have to put him in the pouch of your bosom to ensure that he will never stray. But is that practical?
It is regrettable that some quarrelsome wives have ruined their marriages in response to gossip and secret lovers’ advances. Haste always has something wrong in it. A quiet and modest spirit will wait for truth to be revealed.
A husband can stand many weaknesses of the wife but not that of contention. A fighting spirit hardens the spirit of a man. It makes him fight back in defence of his turf-the divine right to rule in his house. All contentions or quarrels of a wife are taken as threats to the very throne of the husband in the house; therefore he will not take them lightly. Either he will fight back or he will leave the house and go where he is regarded as lord.
If only wives knew that they can get more of their husbands’ consent to their wishes and opinions along the line of persuasion than that of contention or demand, they would readily submit.
Submission is not a sign of weakness; it is a passive virtue that has the power to drive out forces of wickedness out of your husband.  The statement that a wife who obeys her husband rules him is true. The Bible says that a soft tongue can break the bones.
Instead of manifesting ugliness through a contentious spirit, dear wife, model submission and be the centre of attraction and love in the house. By so doing you will put your erring husband to shame and he will reform.
Naturally, women have more linguistic ability than men, they talk more than men do, so why not use that ability to persuade rather than contend.
The truth is that men do not really fight so as to abuse authority; they just need their authority to be respected, otherwise women actually bear rule in the house.
When you submit, he relaxes the need for defence mechanisms.  Wife’s submission causes the husband to have deep respect, honour, and reverence for his wife. This submission, once mastered, will not fail of its divine purpose of leading many a husband to genuine repentance and true love.
– For counsel and feedback: call 0772889766 or email: mairos78@yahoo.co.uk