Traditional Marriage Roles are Working!

This week I have been finding great refreshment in the roles that my husband and I agree to fulfill in our home. It has always been one of my greatest desires to have a home that is a haven.

The home in which I grew up was very clearly not a haven.

So I know, in a special way, how important one is. (Though let me clarify that there are all different ways to learn how important a haven-like home is!).

My husband is the breadwinner and I am not. I am the homemaker and my husband is not. He does the outside-of-the-house tasks, and a very tiny few of the inside tasks. I do not do the outside-of the-house tasks.

This agreement of ours to embrace traditional roles works SO well. We each know what our own daily and long term tasks are, and we nearly never trip on one another when it comes to who is expected to do what.

Before we got officially engaged we talked about what we hoped for in a marriage and in a home, and honestly, I was quite intimidated to bring it up - this fact that I wanted to be a full time homemaker even before children. I didn't know anyone young who lived like that. But I knew that I was called to do that. Phew. He wanted that, too! In fact, he was thrilled that I wanted that.

I get tense when I hear about couples who are trying to go into marriage without this sort of plan. But I know of no tactful way to warn them....I am not perfect, we are not perfect, I'm not in a position to tell others how to live their lives. But we can show others by quiet example how well this works, right?

When the husband is not prepared to be a provider and the wife is forced to work outside the home, my heart aches, and their home is not what it could be. But this is so normal a situation, even within the Christian community, unfortunately.

Deep sigh. I have been thinking on this lately, as some of those I love are caught up in such situations.

At one of my bridal showers all the young ladies gathered around me and laid hands on me and prayed for our marriage, and prayed that our home would be a haven. This was very moving, and those prayers have certainly been answered.

Let's pray for families!

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who settest the solitary in families: We commend to thy continual care the homes in which thy people dwell. Put far from them, we beseech thee, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperence, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer, p 829.