What I Learned in the First Year: Biblical Womanhood

In the months leading up to our wedding I read a lot about marriage. While I had read books about biblical womanhood in my single years, I hadn’t read them with my future husband in plain view. So I wanted as much information to prepare me for marriage as possible—even if it meant rereading material I had read before. You can never be too prepared, right? In my sinful attempt to control every aspect of my life, I thought that if I just read enough than I would be fully prepared and perfected for the task of being a wife. Thankfully, God did not leave me in that delusion for long.

It didn’t take long for reality to set-in in my marriage. The hype of the wedding was over. The presents were opened and put away. The family and friends had left us and gone home. We were left with each other and it was so exciting for us. But it was also real life. And real life can be really ugly sometimes.

Within a few short weeks Daniel and I had to work through some decisions that affected both of us. At the time Daniel’s decision for us was different than what I wanted for us, and primarily what I wanted for me. His decision to go against my desires felt like a stab in the back. I thought he was against me, and sadly I treated him that way too. “How could this be happening,” I thought. “If he loved me he would give me everything I want, right?” Wrong.

Thankfully I woke up from my selfish delusion. It hit me one day when Daniel and I were talking and he said, “You know that I am for you, Court, don’t you?” His care for me, and decision to lead our family, was the perfect expression of his love and commitment to me. He knew his responsibility before God was a serious one, and he didn’t take these decisions lightly or without prayer. What I failed to see was that his leadership of our home was for my good, not my evil.

My failure to understand this reality said far more about my trust in God than it did my trust in my husband. God gave Daniel to me to lead me, protect me, and provide for me. It was not an accident. God’s love for me is not contingent on all of my felt needs being met. Neither is my husband’s love.

In my pride, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the whole biblical womanhood thing before I got married. After the wedding, it was a whole other story. I was afraid to even say anything about biblical womanhood because I thought people would know how miserably I was failing at home and not believe me. But that’s the whole point. I am a failure at loving, respecting, and submitting to my husband. I don’t naturally have a gentle and quiet spirit. None of us do. That is where Christ comes in. He has accomplished all of these things for us already on the Cross. He is our hope to live in obedience to his call as women, single and married. When we fail to live according to his purposes for us, and we will, we can look to the only One who ever lived perfectly—our Christ.