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August 30, 2006
Submission 'Defined'
Here's a draft of a post I wrote a couple weeks ago. I finally finished it. Here it is. It's not edited or anything...just a rough cut.
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American Heritage Dictionary:
1. a. The act of submitting to the power of another: “Oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission” (Simone Weil).
b. The state of having submitted. See Synonyms at surrender.
2. The state of being submissive or compliant; meekness.
Roget's New Millenium Thesaurus:
Main Entry: submission
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: compliance
Synonyms: acquiescence, appeasement, assent, backdown, bowing, capitulation, cringing, defeatism, deference, docility, giving in, humbleness, humility, malleability, meekness, nonresistance, obedience, passivism, passivity, pliability, prostration, recreancy, resignation, servility, subjection, submissiveness, submitting, surrender, tractability, unassertiveness, yielding
How can a hallmark of a relationship be defined? How can I boil my heart and my attitude and my goal down to a series of words? And read these words! "Acquiescence." Ok. "Deference." Not bad. "Giving in." Sure. "Humbleness and humility." Ok. But "cringing?" "Capitulation?" "Servility?" "Subjection?" No. No! I am not a mouse! I am not a scullery maid! I am not a bowing, servile, cringing house-elf who must punish herself when she has an independent thought! I'm a wife, a mate, a partner.
I don't want some pagan unchurched person reading Roget and getting the idea that we are commanded to adopt the mindset of a slave. That is not biblical, and it's not right.
Here is what I've figured out in a year and a month and a week of marriage:
- It's a relationship. It's dynamic, fluid, and filled with change.
- It's a process. We have to take it day by day and sometimes minute by minute.
- Submission works best when a godly, trustworthy, loving man sacrificially cares for and nurtures me. (How do women whose husbands are selfish and selfcentered and ungodly manage?)
- Submission is taking the nature of a servant. It is having an attitude where I don't scrap and fight for my way...it's letting the control-freak tendency go, and choosing to be governed by a set of principals that aren't necessarily my own. But remember, too, that Christianity is basically the same thing. Taking the nature of a servant? Check. Being willing to yield? Check. Yep, those are commands we carry in our Christian walk anyway, so taking the same commands and applying them to my success or failure as a wife isn't a burden. I'm working towards those goals anyway as I walk to heaven.
The rest of it all I'm still learning. I know how it looks in my life and in my heart when I'm not submissive. That's what I shy from. I am working toward deeper and deeper compliance to the command Christ gave us: Love one another. How do I love the Dude? The Bible tells me how: Wives, submit to your husbands in the Lord. It really grates me at times but I know enough to know that Scripture tells us the truth, including the truth of how best to show the Dude that I love him. So there you go.
Wifery | By The Newest Worker | 04:31 PM
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