The Power of the Transformed Wife: Part 2 – Grin and Bear It Silently

The Power of the Transformed Wife: Part 2 – Grin and Bear It Silently January 20, 2017

Transformedby Suzanne Titkemeyer

We’re back in chapter 8 ‘Win Him Without a Word’ word salad and Lori says this:

Remember, the real fight is not with your husband.

Ah yes, that old scapegoat from behaving with personal responsibility – Satan. I’m sure he’s out there causing tsunamis and earthquakes, far too busy to make your Mr. Right fail penis first into a strange vagina. Satan gets blamed for a lot of things in this culture that we ourselves willingly do.

The author follows all of this up with insisting you put on the full armor of God every day. Ever notice that the passage in Ephesians 6: 10-18 describing that armor never mentions putting on a pair of pants. Must be why infidelity seems to be such a feature in this flavor of Christianity. Pants would solve it all. But I jest.

Imagine your husband as a gift in a box with a bow on top and give him to the Lord.

Which, to me at least, seems to imply ownership of the husband by the wife. You have to own something before you give it away. But she flip-flops immediately from the implied ownership of a man by his wife by going into all the ways you must continually submit to him so that God can convict, comfort, encourage him to change his sinning, sinning ways. She does allow that you do not participate in his sin, and that in some circumstances you might need to leave him.

Often, affairs happen because their wives are not respecting their husbands at home, or worse yet, in public.

Not even close. Affairs happen when those people participating in the actual affair, both male and female, decide to have an affair. It’s not like tripping on a rock and falling into a mud puddle. Usually by the time someone makes that leap from committed relationship to smashing gonads with someone else whatever bond is between them has been severed in some way. And it’s not always by perceived ‘disrespect’ either.

Some will accuse me of condoning abuse since, in their minds, a wife’s desire for submission always leads to abuse………it takes a lot of strength to be a woman like this, and it is a weak woman who gives into her emotions and is led astray by her feelings.

So we’ve stepped into another of the more toxic tropes – deny your feelings no matter what. That is a recipe for disaster for most of us. Emotions and feelings are a good bellwether for normal human beings that haven’t been brainwashed. They can be red flags or tell us to proceed with caution. Repressing emotions because of the words of a female cultural enforcer leaves one much more vulnerable to manipulation. Allowing emotions to build up without dealing in a healthy fashion with them only leads to huge horrifying explosions.

Think of it this way. In the big old steamships like the Titanic they were driven by steam from the boilers. Emotions, and steam must be vented or swiftly dealt with when they are strong and overwhelming. Not venting the steam turns that entire metal ship into a floating bomb that would devastate everything in its path for miles. Just like happened in Halifax in 1917 in the Halifax Great Ship Explosion. The pressure from a collision with another ship set off an explosion of munitions that was intensified by the exploding boilers of the other ships in the harbor.

So consider this: it takes no strength at all to vent your angry thoughts and pour disrespect upon a husband, but for some reason, we are led to believe that treating a husband with love and respect will cause him to abuse us.

That would be because so many of us have personally witnessed how many of these guys in this movement – Christian Patriarch Movement – have morphed into petty, tin-plated, demanding, abusing jerks as the wife has become a ‘yes dear’ full submitting Godly woman.

There are times in marriage when it is vital to stand up to your husband and not take his bad decisions laying down. But you must pick that battle very carefully. This very morning I had to do this very thing. My husband had a sudden health issue pop up and had to go immediately to the urologist that takes care of him. 15 years ago he lost his right kidney to an advanced large cancer, and the recent symptoms could possibly mean that it has come back in his remaining kidney. After examination, some testing and talking to the doctors they wanted to do several tests, one of which is painful and invasive. He said no. I didn’t care who was listening when I turned to him and started to rather passionately object to his decision. I did it right in front of the doctor and physicians assistant. Hell, they likely heard me all the way into the waiting room. In the end I prevailed and all the tests were scheduled.

If I had simply simpered, smiled and said ‘Yes dear’ and it turns out to be worst case scenario I would have felt guilty forever. Sometimes blind submission is not what is needed.

Not even if Lori tells you to always allow your husband the consequences of his own bad decisions.

I love my husband and my goal is to keep him with me on this planet as long as possible, even if I have to get in his face a little bit occasionally.

I just can’t even read any more of this garbage after the morning we’ve had at the hospital. But we’re done with this chapter. All that remains is Lori retelling the tales of several cheated upon  wives who were left by their husbands with everything healed up handy-dandy by submitting. Oh, and a blog post from her old blog from a wife that discovered her husband’s porn habits before forgiving him and being more submissive to him. Please do not do that if your husband has a struggle with pornography. Get him help, hold him accountable and decide for yourself where this should go.

Next chapter is all about training your children. Knowing that Lori loves the Pearls makes it likely there are a lot of harsh pieces of advice that will damage children.

Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

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Suzanne Titkemeyer is the admin at No Longer Quivering. She’s been out of the Quiverfull Evangelical world for nine years now and lives in the beautiful Piedmont section of Virginia with her retired husband and assorted creatures. She blogs at Every Breaking Wave and True Love Doesn’t Rape


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