A Suitable Helper

A lot of people, when they hear the word “helper”, immediately think of a servant, low-status, or even inequality. If we asked the average woman if she valued being a “helper” to her husband, we would probably be the recipients of strange looks. For many, being a helper means doing menial work—work that is of no benefit to the one helping. But God doesn’t see it that way. When he fashioned Eve out of Adam’s side he was making a woman perfectly designed to complete and strengthen Adam. As a result, her fulfillment of her created function would only complete and strengthen her (Genesis 2:20-22). The marriage relationship, when ordered properly, brings glory to God and great joy to the spouses. But notice how God never tells us exactly what being a “helper” looks like. He just tells us that he made a helper for Adam. She came with no specific job description.

Before I got married I thought being a helpmate to my husband was a list of already defined tasks. So when he would ask me to help him with things that were outside of my “perfect idea of a helper” I would become easily annoyed. I didn’t know how to help him personally. All I had was a perception of helping him, not an understanding of what he desired and what made him tick.

Being a helper to our husbands is something far more profound than being the most gourmet cook or immaculate cleaner—although that can be very good. Rather being a helper means knowing our husbands intimately, his desires, his needs, and even his weaknesses. It’s often a lot easier to cook, clean, and run errands, than to really understand what it means to be a “suitable helper” to our husbands. We can do all of the outward acts of service and miss the heart behind the helping.

When God created Eve for Adam he was fashioning a woman who was designed for him, to be a helper specifically for him. This is why no two marriage relationships look the same—one husband might be helped by his wife cooking the majority of the meals and preparing his lunches. Another husband might love cooking and be helped by his wife keeping an orderly home. The point is that we learn what helps our husbands and not be drawn into comparing our marriage with others.

Helping our husbands biblically also frees us from the slavery of comparison. It’s so easy to look at another relationship and judge it based on our own. But if we know our husband and serve him based on his own unique personality, then we will have no problems with the way our friend exercises her role as her husband’s uniquely suited helper. God specifically designed us for our husbands, and vice versa.

Although he is talking about submission, I think John Piper’s definition is a good guide in thinking through what being a helper to our husband’s means:

“Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband's leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”

Our calling as wives is to use every drop of our God-given giftedness to help our husbands thrive in their callings before God—be it secular or vocational ministry. And this is no light task. It requires much prayer, wisdom, and excellence on our parts. More importantly, it requires a daily, utter dependence on the One who created us to be our husbands suitable helpers.

One Month Later

In some ways it feels like it has been an eternity since we lost our baby, not one month. It feels even stranger to say that it has been 30 days. But it has. Our hearts are healing. And while we grieved in the immediate aftermath of the miscarriage, there are days where it feels like the grief is just beginning. When it first happened I was in shock. I cried for days. But most of the time I was just floating through life, holding on and barely getting my most basic tasks done. Now there is normalcy to our lives again. I want to cook now (which is a huge milestone). I want to clean. I want to make a home and be around people. I don’t cry every day.

And that’s what makes it so hard sometimes. My life is going on—without my baby. There are days where I just wish I could stop the craziness of work, church, and life and just think and reflect. The hardest part is that I can’t stay where I was last month, in the freshness of my lost pregnancy. I have to keep moving. And everything around me has kept moving too. My body no longer makes me eat every two hours, or makes me want to go to bed at 7 pm. These are acute reminders that I am no longer pregnant. One of the strangest things I have heard come out of the mouth in recent days is, “when I was pregnant.” I know what it is like to be pregnant. I just don’t know the joy of holding my baby. And that still kills me sometimes.

I suppose that this is part of the grief process. Moving on with each passing day even when your heart is screaming to stand still and keep mourning. Or maybe you just learn to mourn with the new days, grieving what could have been. It’s a hard balance to find; trying to continue with your life when you have a deep wound that you are afraid could open at any given moment. And I’m still learning the balance.

So that’s where I’m at one month later. Still processing, still crying, and still thinking. God has been here, and I am more thankful for his comforting presence than I ever knew I could be. It doesn’t take the sting away, but his comfort is a constant covering of fatherly care. He isn’t finished with me yet, and he hasn’t left. And that gives me hope.

Friday is for Fotos

Happy 1st birthday, David Benjamin Tarter. We love you so much! May you grow to trust and treasure the Son of David, our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Love,

Uncle Daniel and Aunt Courtney

Why We Have a "Date Night"

One of the many great things we learned in our pre-marital counseling is the importance of a scheduled date night. Our counselors told us that unless you schedule concentrated time together to draw one another out and enjoy each other; inevitably other things will get in the way.

It’s really easy when you are newly married, or have no kids yet, to assume that planned date nights are not a necessity. You might think to yourself “why would I need to set aside time. Every night is pretty much a date night.” I suppose that could be true for some people. But I know for us every night is not date. Many other things get in our way and take time away from each other. Obviously this is not law for marriage or anything. It’s just some things that I have learned about my own tendencies in my brief time being married.

We choose to schedule a date night on Fridays because if we don’t we will just find something better to do. It’s not that we don’t hang out a lot, or even talk. We make an effort to talk over dinner or throughout the day. But honestly, if we let ourselves, school, reading, blogging, cooking, cleaning, laundry, church, friends, and anything else you can think of will take the place of intentional time together. We have realized that we schedule everything else that we deem important. Since the marriage relationship is the most important earthly relationship in our minds, we try to keep our schedules clear of everything but each other on Friday nights. Once again, this isn’t law, so there are things that come up that we have to do—and if that’s true we do our best to reschedule date night. Our biggest concern for our marriage is our own hearts behind wanting to continue pursuing one another and working on our relationship.

It doesn’t have to be super intense or expensive. We don’t have a lot of money—in fact some months we run out of date night money before the month is over, and then date night is a walk and an evening at home. It can be simple or something fun you have wanted to do together. The point is that you are together, communicating, and growing in your relationship.

For myself, I have had to learn to continue to follow my husband’s lead regarding date night. I used to gladly accept his requests to take me out when we were dating or engaged. In fact I could hardly wait for him to ask me! Now I have noticed that I am the one who tends to find other things to fill our schedules on date night, and sometimes they are very good things—but things that can be done at another time. As the wife, I need to learn to preserve our night together just as much as I desire him to. For me it means gladly accepting our planned date nights as my husbands loving attempts to continue winning my heart. I need to pray for the same anticipation and excitement for our Friday night dates that I had prior to us saying, “I do.”

Planned date nights are not a must to have a good marriage. But we have been encouraged by and admired many godly, older couples who thrive in their marriages because of the active pursuit of each other. This is our goal for our marriage—and one of our preferred means of pursuing each other is a date night.

Comfort in the Storm

"The painful things that come into our lives are not described by God as accidental or as out of his control. This would be no comfort. That God cannot stop a germ or a car or a bullet or a demon is not good news; it is not the news of the Bible. God can. And ten thousand times he does. But when he doesn't, he has his reasons. And in Christ Jesus they are all loving. We are taught this sovereignty so that we will drink it in till it saturates our bones. He is getting us ready to suffer without feeling unloved."

"So when suffering comes, God's children are meant to experience it as God's fatherly discipline. It does not speak well of our faith if we doubt his love or if we become angry at God when he ordains pain in our lives. The story of Ruth (along with Joseph and Job and Esther and others) is in the Bible to prepare us for bitter providences by showing us again and again that God is doing a thousand things that we do not know. And they are meant for our good..."

"That our pain has a loving and wise and all-powerful purpose behind it is better than any other view--weak God, cruel God, bumbling God, no God. To know that in his hands 'this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison' (2 Corinthians 4:17) is profoundly reassuring. And yes, 'light' and 'momentary' meant, in Paul's case, a lifetime of suffering. The excruciating 'lightness' of his suffering was light compared to the weight of glory. And the interminable 'momentariness' of his suffering was momentary compared to the eternality of glory."

-John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race and the Sovereignty of God.

Friday is for Food

Daniel gets really excited around August 1 because August means it's almost fall, which means it's almost college football season. And it is now upon us. Last night we watched Ohio State play at the local Buffalo Wild Wings (because we don't have cable or the Big Ten Network). Tomorrow we will watch all of the television programming surrounding the first Saturday of college football season (and Daniel will study Greek vocabulary while watching).

Last year I didn't really grasp how excited he got about it all. I was new to the whole wife thing (and still am!) and I was clueless. Now I know and I am prepared. Daniel loves queso and chips, and I love to eat, so we are in for a feast tomorrow. Here is our menu:

Queso (32 oz pack of Velveeta cheese and 2 cans of Rotel)

Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Style Salsa (best ever!)

Chips

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas (recipe from my dear friend, Laura)

• 3 chicken breast (cooked and cut)
• 2 cans of cream of chicken soup
• 16 oz sour cream
• 4 oz can of green chiles
• 1/2 cup of chopped onions
• 1 bag of cheddar cheese
• 1 package of flour tortillas

Mix chicken, soup, sour cream, chiles, and green onions in a large bowl. Spoon into individual flour tortillas. Sprinkle cheese inside tortillas and roll. Place in a 9 x 13 casserole dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350.

I think I am going to make a spinach and strawberry salad because we need a vegetable. Plus Daniel likes it.

Happy weekend all!

Missions Wednesday: Pakistan

By now many of you are aware of the massive flooding that has taken place in Pakistan. So far 1,600 people have died, and 1.6 million are left without food, water, shelter or healthcare by the disaster. Without immediate help, many in Pakistan face the possibility of death due to disease, starvation, or exposure to the elements. I have heard reports of women having to give birth in horrific conditions, surrounded by flood waters.

Disasters have a way of drawing our attention to a country that is previously not on our radar—and that is to our shame. There are nearly 200 million people living in Pakistan, and 96% of those people are Muslim. Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, and in some areas there are no known Christians. Shari’a law is applied in Pakistan, making it very difficult for anyone who does not adhere to Islam. Christians are increasingly facing persecution. There has been a Christian witness in Pakistan since 1833. In the early days Christians reached out to the “untouchables” of the Hindu castes. Because of cultural bias against Hindus and the caste system, many Pakistanis would not even consider Christianity due to their previous work. Still, in many areas of Pakistan, to become a Christian is a sentence to persecution.

Ways to pray:

• Pray for Pakistani Christians. They face the greatest threat of persecution and death. Pray that they would have courage to speak about Christ and would be welcomed into the Christian community.
• Pray that the Church will grow amidst persecution. Fairness is not a reality in Pakistan. Pray that the Church would be strengthened and sharpened even in the middle of fear and hardship.
• Pray for the unreached peoples. There are over 160 ethnic groups and 40 language groups with no known church or missions plan. Operation World says that “few countries present a greater challenge for missions.”