Today I started attending the ladies intensive course on Becoming a True Believer, which will run on the next three Sundays. The course mainly looks into us as human beings; the fact that we are a noble creature because we are given a heart, soul, mind in this physical body, hence a freedom to choose what we do with it; while we are also naturally greedy, ungrateful, forgetful and so on. The next part I believe we will look into Knowing About God. I'm quite excited.
As of course, the audience is female only (and everyone except ME have kids), the Q&A session revolved around husband-wife issues - as always. People asked again and again about the duties, rights, scenarios etc in marriage.
And the speaker mentioned nothing I haven't heard before; the bottom line is: wifes are supposed to obey their husbands as the husbands are now their guardian and take responsibility over them.
And everytime I hear it I feel quite comfortable with this rule, for I know that it is a great opportunity to please God and get rewards by submitting to your husband; there's really nothing to lose. The husband, on the other hand, can get his share of good deeds when he gives into his wife's preference.
In a perfect world, both parties would race towards God's pleasure by racing towards forgiving, loving, serving, caring, sacrificing, compromising, and doing things to put their partner's interest first. Clearly I can make sense of this wife-obeys-husband theory....how simple it is!
And at the end of this kind of discussion, I'd feel energised and excited to meet my husband and treat him much, much better until........I actually meet my husband. For some reason, things turn almost the opposite, all the time.
I'd argue about anything and everything. I'd boss him around and have no mercy. I'd ask him to do things for me and then complain about how he does everything. I almost don't do anything to help in this household!
It's so strange and frustrating and so on-going that it's become FUNNY now that I think about it.
Like this evening. After my night prayer I had an inspiration to seriously work on my role as a wife. I have to start to contribute more in doing chores and even offer him tea - like a typical wife would do? So I invited him for a discussion to see what sort of reinforcement system could help me change in this way.
Well what do you know? This very discussion soon enough turned into an argument. I was frustrated with his responses which I thought were irrelevant, judgemental, not helping, silly, and the list goes on....
I tried to hold my mouth from talking back...and the things I wanted to say piled up so fast that it made me want to laugh.
THAT'S IT. I've been through this! He doesn't get it. He doesn't always get what I want, or what I think should be. And THAT'S the way it is!
True that you have to (generally) obey your husband but this doesn't mean he's perfect or says the right words or does the right things! That's why they need a female on their side!
We're here to support them; to meet his needs; to shape him into a better man! We're the one sensitive enough to notice the little things; to spot the areas of improvements; to fill the gaps in his imperfect way of life!
Duh!
Recently when I got drowned into winning an argument, I've been using the mantra: "Even though I'm right, I'm not gonna argue with you." It helps a lot to reduce the waste of our energy arguing while still appear as a winner. Lol.
But I still long to reach a higher stage where I don't need to win anything.
So back to our discussion about trying to change me, we figured that Arguing should be my very first step!
He agreed to have one day every week for me to not argue at all. And if I do, I have to pay him $5 per topic (I hope this is motivating enough for him to stay in the game).
Yes, that's a start.
Bismillaahirrahmaanirrahiim...
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