Stars: ★★★★☆ (Good Read)
Premise
Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is a very popular book and has been recommended to me multiple times. While I believe the premise of unconditional love and unconditional respect is excellent, I struggled to get through it because the author doesn’t seem to think very highly of women. I have been on the search for a marriage book that I can recommend to other people, and I found it in Rocking the Roles. The authors walk through why neither of the two dominant ideals of marriage in modern Western society are actually biblical. They then spend several chapters discussing practical advice for husbands and wives to both fulfill their roles in a biblical way and to support their spouses doing the same.
Loved
- The Modern Day Dilemma
The first section of the book was able to put into words an idea that had been bouncing around my head for a long time – that neither a traditional marriage (as we think of it in modern Western culture) nor the role-less marriage advocating by society is what a marriage should actually look like. A biblical marriage based on Ephesians 5:21-33. Too often we pick out the one or two verses from that reference and use them to support our side during a conflict. This book walks through how each of them is necessary: submission to one another, wives embracing their roles as a husband-lover and a child-lover, and husbands immersing themselves in the practical ways to love their wives and children in the same sacrificial way Jesus loves the church.
Before becoming a disciple, I expected myself to have a role-less, egalitarian marriage. I would ignore the fact that I hate doing most traditionally male roles, including outdoor work and handling car problems. As an ardent feminist and someone who hadn’t seen too many healthy marriages, I saw a “traditional marriage” when I considered a biblical marriage. The authors define a traditional marriage as one in which the wife stays home all the time, always cheerful and happy to bear all the burdens of raising the family, and the husband earns all the income but does nothing to support or help raise the children or take care of the household – outside of financially. The breakdown of why biblical marriage is so much more than this is one of my favorite aspects of the book. - What Every Man Needs to Succeed
Admiration. Support. Companionship. This was my favorite chapter because it detailed these three things as what every man needs to succeed and how wives can provide them to her husband. Due to the practical writing, I could easily check off the places in which I am doing well as a wife and the areas in which I need to do better. I admire my husband more than anyone else on earth, and I can say that without sarcasm or irony. The amount of time and energy he devotes to ensuring the kids and I have everything we need, both physically and emotionally is unparalleled. He does a majority of the housework, and he is an incredible cook. We are also great friends. Spending time with him is far and away one of my favorite pastimes. It’s easy to be with him, and he has coached me through how to handle conflict maturely. This section was helpful in affirming the areas we are doing well in.
It also showed me that I need to find more ways to support my husband. If I ask him if I can do anything or spend any amount of money, he finds a way to make it happen. I can always buy new running shoes or leave the house when the kids are driving me up a wall, but this chapter helped me see that I don’t provide the same support for him. Because he gets to leave the house every day for his job, I find it challenging to let him leave the house to do other things too. I start counting hours that I’ve been with the kids and that he has gotten to do other things, remembering that he doesn’t keep this same score card in his mind. I’m grateful that I was able to so clearly see the ways that I can be a better support to him in his friendships with other men and his interests outside of serving our family. - Definition of Submission
Submission is so often misunderstood, misapplied, and misappropriated. Too often, we take our Western ideas of a traditional family and force biblical commands into those, when it should be the other way around. The authors state the “biblical submission is a Christ-like response to recognized leadership” and then continue to explain that submission is not a wife’s role. Too often in American Christianity, we are taught that it is a man’s role to lead and woman’s role to submit. Submission is the response – the wife’s role is to love her family, in a variety of ways.
The chapter fits in well with the ideas behind ezer kenegdo that I have been learning over the last few months – the importance of this role and how it has been too often boiled down to “housekeeper” in modern parlance. (Our application of it is detailed here.) The choice to submit as a response to recognized leadership allows our husbands to fulfill the role of servant-leader that God intended. Forcing myself into the role of leadership will only lead to strife inside my marriage.
Didn’t Love
The section that advocated for mothers to stay at home full time was challenging for me. It is a whole chapter on why women working outside the home is not the ideal, biblical marriage. My first, very visceral response to this chapter was “These men have no idea what they are talking about! I am an excellent wife and mother even though I have a full time job!” After my short, internal temper tantrum, I realized that so much of the book that I appreciated and learned from and that maybe I needed to slow down and consider the parts of this chapter that I could learn from as well. Quitting my job is not financially feasible for our family right now, and I don’t know that we would choose that even if we could. However, I can look at this chapter and see that the authors are advocating leaning into caring for my children in a loving, whole-hearted manner rather than prioritizing corporate success. That is an idea I can get behind fully. I try to always keep in mind that my job, no matter how good I am at it, will replace me in weeks. My children will never be able to.
Lessons Learned
- Biblical roles are not equivalent to traditional marriage roles; they are so much more. There are very practical ways that both the husband and wife can embrace and enjoy these roles that bring peace, cooperation, coordination, and strength to a marriage.
- I need to make a daily habit of providing my husband support in the places he needs it most. The time and space to spend time with God, spend time with his friends, and spend time fulfilling his mission. As we plan our week, these need to be as high a priority for him as they are for me. I ensure that my needs in these areas are met without considering his.
- My role as a wife boils down to two important phrases: loving my husband and loving my children. Because each person and family is different, this will look different; so I have to figure out exactly what it looks like for my husband and my children.
- In many ways, this book showed me how far Afa and I have come from the early days of our marriage, and I am grateful for that. We have worked through a variety of challenges and difficulties and come through the other side stronger together. (One example is here.) These skills are not mastered overnight but with gentle consistency to get better in one area at a time.