The Proverbs 31 Wife vs. My Wrinkled Reality

Wanted- A Good Wife

The Bible presents a noble vision of a wife—a woman of virtue, strength, and wisdom. Proverbs 31 describes her as industrious, compassionate, and capable, a cornerstone of her household. She wakes early to provide for her family, brings honor to her husband, and extends kindness to the needy.

While this portrait is inspiring, it can also feel like an impossible standard. What about those of us who aren’t morning people, who burn dinner, or who consider wrinkled clothes a perfectly acceptable fashion statement?

The Perfect Wife

Let’s be honest—the Proverbs 31 woman seems to have it all together. She’s buying fields, planting vineyards, and making her own bedspreads while I’m just trying to remember if I’ve fed the dog today. Her lamp never goes out at night, but sometimes my only goal is to keep the smoke detector from going off during dinner.

Surely, there’s room for wives like me in God’s grand design.

The Reality

“We need a wife,” I grumbled to my husband, as I hoisted a heavy laundry basket full of clean clothes onto the bed.

Surprisingly, he actually understood what I meant. This comes from being married for so long.  I’m not sure he realized at the time he married me that I was not a domestic goddess.  Goddess, yes, domestic, no. Not only did he not quite comprehend that he wasn’t getting Martha Stewart, but he also came from a home in which his mother excelled at every domestic skill imaginable. She was a great cook, homemaker, seamstress, decorator, and hostess. In other words, a poor role model for women such as myself.

But to his credit, he rarely complains, even when he wears clothes with more wrinkles than a Sharpei puppy or eats nuked leftovers three nights in a row.  Still, I figure if the wrinkled clothes bother him too much, he can choose not to iron them just as well as I choose not to iron them.  And if the thought of eating Tuesday’s lasagna again on Thursday makes him wince, he can whip up some Hamburger Helper just as easily as I can (and frequently does).  Or, better yet, he can always say those five magic words, “Let’s go out for dinner.”

So what if I’m not the perfect homemaker?  I have plenty of other good qualities, such as . . . well, I’m really good at Wheel of Fortune.  And I can draw blood from a parakeet (a surprisingly marketable skill in very specific circumstances).  I can also recite all sixty-six books of the Bible in order without breaking a sweat.  One never knows when those skills are going to come in handy.

The Helper Experience

When we moved overseas, I discovered that in many places around the world, people commonly employ live-in help to handle all those pesky domestic chores—cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even childcare. Our first live-in helper made me feel like I’d won the

lottery—for approximately 48 hours.  She was a lousy cook, but we didn’t mind all that much as long as we didn’t have to do it. She spoke no English, so at first, we had some comical communication challenges—such as the time she interrupted me frantically saying, “May O Neese!”  I feared we were in a life-and-death situation until she led me to the refrigerator, where I discovered the catastrophe that we were out of mayonnaise. Things were going reasonably well until her family forced her into an abusive marriage, and suddenly, we found ourselves unwilling participants in a domestic drama before her husband demanded she quit.

Our second helper was a woman in her fifties with four grown sons. Perfect! I thought. She’s got real-world experience and won’t be husband-hunting. Uh, no.  Not only did she lack basic common sense, but she also had a persistent personal aroma that no amount of gifted toiletries could address. She had an uncanny talent for interrupting precisely at the climactic moment of any TV show and insisted on speaking broken English despite my pleas to stick with her native language.

The deal-breaker came when she allowed our five-year-old son to take a lit candle to bed. When we called to check on him (several hours past his bedtime), he answered the phone and cheerfully informed us he was reading with a lit candle under his blankets. After demanding to speak with her, she finally came on the line several minutes later and justified her actions by explaining that our son wanted the candle. Apparently, in her culture, you don’t deny employers’ children anything, even if it might burn down the house. She also pilfered my broccoli, but that’s a story for another day.

Embracing Imperfection

So, while having someone handle all the tedious household tasks sounds heavenly in theory, the reality often falls spectacularly short. I’ve resigned myself to continuing my less-than-perfect domestic odyssey the same way I have for decades.

So far, no one has perished from my casual approach to housekeeping. The dust bunnies under our bed haven’t organized a rebellion (yet), and we’ve developed robust immune systems from my relaxed attitude toward kitchen sanitation.

In the grand scheme of things, maybe what makes a house a home isn’t perfectly folded laundry or gourmet meals but the laughter, love, and occasional exasperated sighs that fill its rooms. And if anyone disagrees, they’re welcome to come over and fold my laundry.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pile of clean clothes giving me the side-eye from across the room. Time to grumble and fold.

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