***this post kicks off An Unla­dy­like Week in the Blo­gos­phere with blog­ger and author Rachel Held Evans lead­ing the charge. For my first blog post, I am offer­ing some­thing I have rarely done on this blog and that is give read­ers a peek into my mar­riage. I wrote much of this post last year dur­ing the writ­ing of my book. It ended up on the edit­ing scrap heap and has now found glo­ri­ous res­ur­rec­tion in being pub­lished today. I hope it will demon­strate how what we believe very much mat­ters, espe­cially in the most inti­mate of our rela­tion­ships. And please be sure to fol­low Rachel’s blog this week. She’s also posted the hash­tag #mutuality2012 on Twit­ter to help folks find one another’s posts. Be sure to check it daily. I know I intend to! Together we are build­ing momen­tum that will carry us for­ward into forms of church where women are hon­ored in our full personhood!!!

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A few weeks before I got mar­ried, a friend asked me what kind of part­ner­ship we were going to have. “What do you mean?” I asked. Her ques­tion puz­zled me.

“Well, do you believe in sub­mis­sion or in partnership?”

“Sub­mis­sion, of course. That’s what the Bible says.” It was so clear to me that Chris­t­ian women were to sub­mit to the head­ship of their hus­bands that I had not given any thought to it what­so­ever. It would have been like ask­ing, “Are you going to sleep in sep­a­rate bed­rooms?” “The Bible teaches mutual sub­mis­sion,” she qui­etly replied. “My mom and dad have a part­ner­ship and they’re Chris­t­ian.” I didn’t want to debate my friend about whether or not her par­ents had a bib­li­cal mar­riage, espe­cially with prenup­tial bliss fill­ing my nearly wed­ded heart. I brushed her off with a dis­mis­sive quip. “Glad that works for them.”

I had high expec­ta­tions that in our mar­riage, Jerry would be the leader and I would be his helper. He would pro­vide head­ship in our rela­tion­ship and I would respect his author­ity as the leader of the home.

To be an obe­di­ent, true Chris­t­ian woman who hon­ors the Bible meant I took verses like this to heart:

Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman. (1 Cor 11:3)

We never talked about this, but since we both were Chris­tians why did we need to? It would just come nat­ural since this was God’s cre­ated order for men and women. I rel­ished the thought of being Jerry’s sub­mis­sive, respect­ful wife.

I’d been study­ing Chris­t­ian cou­ples since I became a believer at age 18. I was more than ready to be Jerry’s help­mate and have my Jesus-​​sanctioned hap­pily ever after. Hav­ing a hus­band meant some­one else could call the shots about my life. I wel­comed the prospect of hav­ing a per­sonal man­ager, coach, and spir­i­tual advi­sor all wrapped up into one hunky hus­band who’d take care of me for life. All I had to do was cook, clean and make babies. We’d be just fine.

But… it didn’t quite work out that way.

It’s not that I didn’t try, because let me tell you, I tried. And Jerry tried, too. He tried to fill the role of being my sugar daddy, but he wasn’t very good at it and frankly, I found that I really didn’t want to give up con­trol of my life to another human being, even one whose name I had taken as my own. The head/​helpmate model of mar­riage was not work­ing for us.

Pam & Jerry Wed­ding Day, 7/​23/​88

But here’s the thing: I could not have defined this for you at that time had I tried. My per­cep­tions were dulled from a veil of fog­gi­ness that hung over my eyes like dirty lace cur­tains. I just couldn’t see right. All I knew was what I felt, and I felt crappy. I felt like my Chris­t­ian mar­riage was not very Chris­t­ian. Did this mean we were headed for dys­func­tion and divorce?

I had heard infer­ences of mar­riages going rogue when the roles of hus­band and wife were out of God’s cre­ated order. One woman at a Bible study once described how women who lead force their hus­bands to be quiet and become pas­sive. She said, “It’s like emas­cu­lat­ing a man when a wife takes over and insists on call­ing the shots. She needs to let him be the leader of the home.”

I heard vari­a­tions on this from the pul­pit, too. When bib­li­cal exam­ples of women lead­ers were called into ques­tion, for exam­ple, it was deter­mined that they were only in a more pub­lic posi­tion than the men around them because the men had failed. Wayne Gru­dem and John Piper note this in their book, where they inter­pret Deborah’s lead­er­ship described in the book of Judges as an “indict­ment of the weak­ness of Barak, and other men in Israel who should have been more coura­geous lead­ers.” (Restor­ing Bib­li­cal Man­hood and Wom­an­hood, page 72)

It was in this kind of evan­gel­i­cal, patri­ar­chal sub-​​society that I mea­sured and judged my mar­riage, myself and espe­cially my hus­band. From this point of view, Jerry looked weak and I came across as a rebel­lious wife who wouldn’t sub­mit to her husband’s author­ity. These ten­sions swelled inside of me, col­or­ing the atmos­phere of my mar­riage and per­cep­tion of my hus­band as well as myself.

I thought our roles would be clear, that he would take the lead in most things like the reins of our spir­i­tual devel­op­ment as a cou­ple and lead our mar­riage in devo­tions and prayer times while I would fill the role of a domes­tic diva, cook and clean and man­age the hos­pi­tal­ity of our home.

But a prayer life between us did not develop. Jerry is so pri­vate when it comes to prayer that he has never been com­fort­able pray­ing out loud with oth­ers. Through the lens of the headship/​submission model that insists God calls men to be the head of the home and women to live under their spir­i­tual cov­er­ing, I could only see that Jerry failed. That I had failed. My mar­riage was tainted with a sense of anx­i­ety that we were an unhealthy, unbib­li­cal effed-​​up cou­ple who would be lucky if our mar­riage sur­vived another five years.

I didn’t speak of these things. It was too ambigu­ous, too murky. I didn’t divulge it to other women either. I was intent on pro­tect­ing Jerry. I didn’t want peo­ple to see him as weak and less of a man just because he didn’t pray with his wife or speak up in pub­lic more than I did. It was con­fus­ing. There was a social order, an unspo­ken code that men are to be more expres­sive in pub­lic with their wives sup­port­ing their husband’s sphere of influ­ence in demure domes­tic­ity. I just wasn’t cut out for that. Jerry wasn’t cut out to be the fam­ily spokesman. I’ve always been the wordy one in the fam­ily, but instead of rec­og­niz­ing each oth­ers gift­ing I inter­nal­ized an image of Jerry and of myself as being flawed. We were messed up. Our mar­riage was messed up. This was the ghost that haunted my mar­riage for more than a decade.

I tried to find a way to adjust our mar­riage course, fear­ing the worst was up ahead for us. We seemed to be doing ok today, but accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian rela­tion­ship experts„ we were not. I’d read a few Chris­t­ian mar­riage books hop­ing for encour­age­ment in either how to make things bet­ter or that we were actu­ally ok, but instead each book sim­ply regur­gi­tated the mes­sage that to have a healthy Chris­t­ian mar­riage the woman must sub­mit to the head­ship of her hus­band. It made me want to scream.

One night, I was read­ing yet another mar­riage book in hopes of find­ing a map that would make sense of my rela­tion­ship with Jerry. When the author insisted that a man who won’t lead his fam­ily in prayer is a man with­out con­vic­tions, I froze in my read­ing tracks. I was lying in bed, next to my sleep­ing hus­band. In the room across the hall slept our two young chil­dren. The quiet night seemed to shift as I won­dered about my mar­riage once again and the Chris­t­ian mold of headship/​subservience.

I had strug­gled with try­ing to fit the role that my reli­gious cul­ture insisted upon, but to no avail. It was like try­ing to squeeze my size 16 body into a size 12…worse; it was like try­ing to fit my hus­band into a three-​​piece suit when he is a t-​​shirt and Levis kind of man. It was ill-​​fitting.

But this night, some­thing clicked. Or maybe snapped. I sup­pose it depends on your point of view. I laid there in my bed next to my hus­band, the man who was com­mit­ted to liv­ing life in part­ner­ship with me, and who gave me the space to be the woman I had been cre­ated to be. I thought of this author indict­ing him as a man with­out con­vic­tion because he did not fit the Chris­tian­ized ver­sion of the he-​​man-​​priest husband.

With a flare of fury in my gut, I threw the book across the bed­room. Thud! It hit the wall before hit­ting the floor. Jerry didn’t even flinch, obliv­i­ous to the inter­nal bat­tle rag­ing in bed next to him. Fling­ing that book across the room was like throw­ing off the strait jacket of patri­archy that I had attempted to stuff my mar­riage into all those years. My mar­riage would no longer be sub­jected to the demand­ing code of tra­di­tion­al­is­tic Chris­tian­ity. Nor would my identity.

Jerry and I had a solid mar­riage. Why I hadn’t I seen it before? I was a faith­ful wife, he a faith­ful hus­band. We were com­mit­ted to one another and to our chil­dren. I was fin­ished try­ing to emu­late the ideal Chris­t­ian cou­ple, what­ever that meant. It might work for some, but Jerry and Pam had our own, cus­tomized ver­sion of what works in a mar­riage. God, I was begin­ning to real­ize, must not be as rigid about male/​female rela­tion­ship­sthan we sup­pose him to be.

A fresh wind of lib­erty blew into my home and mar­riage that night. I had crossed a thresh­old into a new era of mar­ried life. From that moment on, I began to enjoy the strength of my mar­riage to Jerry rather than fret­ting over its lack of patri­ar­chal propriety.

I had a dream a few years ago of Jerry and I show­ing up to a ban­quet. When we signed in, we were directed to dif­fer­ent din­ing halls, one for men and a sep­a­rate one for women. Not only that, but Jerry was given a shirt to wear that matched all the other men and I was given a pair of shoes that matched the other women.

We went to our dif­fer­ent din­ing rooms, but soon after I sat down my feet began to hurt. The shoes didn’t fit right. Noth­ing felt right. I finally left in search of Jerry only to find him in search of me. We peeled off the shoes and shirt we’d been given and dropped them in the garbage on our way out of the ban­quet hall. Once out­side the build­ing, we began laugh­ing like high school­ers who had just played hooky.

Jerry and Pam at the Ore­gon Coast, 2011

Get­ting out from under the submission/​headship teach­ing brought joy­ful lib­erty for me in my mar­riage. I no longer hold up my mar­riage against an ideal that it can never live up to. It’s not who Jerry and I are.

I met a cou­ple not too long ago. The wife is a strong leader of a thriv­ing min­istry. She is viva­cious and instantly charms the room with her pres­ence. Her hus­band is much dif­fer­ent. He has a mild per­son­al­ity and is soft spo­ken. He does not play an inte­gral role in her min­istry, but instead helps hold the fort down at home. He also works full-​​time, but when it comes to lead­er­ship, his wife is a natural.

She is often swarmed at church by many who want to con­nect to her, while he takes care of pick­ing up the kids from their Sun­day school classes. In a headship/​submission model, it looks like they both are fail­ing in build­ing a bib­li­cal mar­riage. And I feel for them, for I know that they are part of a faith com­mu­nity that tells its men to man up and its women to get out of the way. I hope they both know the joy of accept­ing one another and cel­e­brat­ing the unique union each mar­riage is. There is no cookie-​​cutter bib­li­cal model.

I read a quote some­where about every mar­riage being a remar­riage since the rela­tion­ship changes and shifts over the years. This is cer­tainly true of mine. I had been a young bride will­ing and want­ing my knight in shin­ing armor to save me from myself. I wanted a man to lead in man­ag­ing my life for me.

Instead, I have a part­ner, an equal who is free to be who he is and who hon­ors the woman I am and the unique gift­ings I pos­sess. It is good to be Pam and Jerry. It is good that our Chris­t­ian mar­riage failed.

****Here’s a link to a short inter­view I did with Jerry ask­ing him about the unique pres­sures of being a Chris­t­ian hus­band. I think you’ll enjoy hear­ing what he has to say!