COAPN Volume 46: Wives Submit to Your Husbands

"Wives, submit to yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the lord." Ephesians 5:22 (KJV)

Wives, submit to your husbands.

Even when he starts fights with your parents so emotionally damaging that they never quite look at you the same way, and you have to hide your children in a bedroom so they won’t witness the fight that they can nevertheless hear through the paper-thin walls of a trailer home.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

Even when he doesn’t share your religion, refuses to go to church with you, and gets a kick out of sending missionaries away questioning their own faith in the face of his reason and intellectual superiority.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

Even after he finally converts to the version of your faith that gives him divine right to strip away your hobbies and interests, and exert total control over your friends, speech, money, dress, time, and attention and that of every single family member under his roof.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

Even when he gets in a fight with the preacher and robs you of the church family and friends that you have made because of his disagreement over an obscure piece of disputed doctrine.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

Even when his fear for the security of your adult children drives him to domineer, question, belittle, and attempt to control their thoughts and opinions and feelings to the point that one child moves over a thousand miles away and the other child allows him to disown them for daring to disagree rather than placate him any longer.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

And tell yourself that because he pays for the roof over your head and the food on your table, and because the bible tells you so, the rest of what he has done does not matter.

Wives, submit to your husbands.

It’s the right thing to do.

Thank you for reading,

B