The Woman as Helper—& Why Everyone is Trying to Steal Her Help

Join us here in Ogden this June for our annual new Christmas conference. This year's theme, the War for Normal, features a great lineup of speakers as well as a whole bunch of fun events to make new friends with like-minded saints. Tickets are more affordable than ever this year with a brand new family pass covering your entire household for one low price. Head to newcrissonempress.com/20206 for tickets and more information. This episode is brought to you by Resistance Candles. High quality wax candles that keep the flame of resistance alive. In our current series here on BrightHearth on Being Human, we're talking about four aspects of life where a man or a woman can grow and improve and become more fruitful as a result. Those are the physical, the spiritual, the social, and the vocational. In well over a dozen episodes so far, we've worked through those first three categories, laying out a vision for embodied and physical life, the life of the soul, living well in the community of faith in the church, your people in place. Last week we talked about the central vocation of the man as the head of his wife in his house, his ruling vocation, which includes other vocations as well like that of the father, provider, protector, etc. In each of these he is to rule well. Today we turn to the central vocation of the woman in the productive Christian household, which is helper. In the beginning God created the woman to be a suitable helper for her husband, Genesis 2.18. This pattern repeats and echoes on down through the scriptures as the daughters of Eve help their husbands. Continuing through the New Testament as well, where Paul urges the older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands and children, to work hard in their homes, and to be submissive to their own husbands. Without this good work in homes across the world and through the generations, not only is the word of God reviled, tied as 2.5, but civilization itself cannot be. And yet we've been cataclyzed by our foolish culture to view the homeward focused woman as something of a waste. But imagine what she could have accomplished. She must be unfulfilled stuck there at home, bored out of her wits. Why would you imprison women like this and rob them of their great potential? But it turns out that what that potential always ends up meaning is the potential to go be the helper of someone else. And in a turn of events that would almost be funny were at not so damaging to the world, when you pull a woman out of the home and away from her vital vocation of helping her husband, raising her children, and building community down the generations, she tends to gravitate to the corporatized and industrialized versions of these same things. She teaches school at a vastly disproportionate rate compared to men, tending to the children of others. She goes to the hospital, serving as a nurse and tending to the sick of a thousand households. She enters the office administrative world at again a vastly disproportionate rate compared to men, most often a role that requires her to assist and help some male-dominated leadership team. She goes into social work, mothering communities of dysfunctional families. Again and again, nature breaks through. "Creational norms set by God can't be bound forever. Even in our rebellion we faintly echo God's design. It turns out everyone wants her to be their helper. She was made for this. And so in this episode of Briarth we'll talk about this sensual vocation of the woman, what it means, why it matters, and what other vocations flow from it in her life. One thing we'll find, we'll find that her vocation is no tiny prison cell. No, it's a whole world of glory and hard good work." As GK Chesterton wrote, "How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the rule of three in a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task. I will never pity her for its smallness." "Welcome back to Briarth, everybody. Brian and Lexi are here to talk about being helper." "Why didn't you do it in your.?" "I translate it yet." I probably already sounded enough like I have an accent with the head cold, so. "Well, but you've sounded. it was pretty authentic." "We check the weather app here with my eyeballs. It is hailing." "Whoa!" "It's cozy in here and I've heard it all of a sudden like sitting under the chicken lamp, we're watching the hail come down in our little tiny forest and we're Briarth thing. It's good to be here, Lexi. Feeling a little under the weather?" "I feel better today actually because I worked out enough sitting and trying to recover, and it's time to act like you're recovering and that usually works better to be honest." "Get those adorfins going. That's right." "But I was going to say I was listening to you read that and I immediately thought, oh, this reminds me of that good Chester Tink quote." "Then you quoted it." "Let's go." "It's great." "One flash." "Relocked in. Didn't plan that." "Yeah, there's another one too where he talks about this same dynamic that is probably more commonly heard, but I think fewer people know about this quote." "Yeah, I actually talked about it at the reading group recently because we were talking about the difference between generalists and specialists and having range and how that's a good thing, but Dorothy Sayers has a similar quote too on how because when women left the home to try to become men, then men all of a sudden started to monopolize these things that women were really good at in the home like jellies and like all these domestic skills that men just came and indominated because they're men, but it used to be a women's only sphere, but we lost that because we decided to leave that to try to be. There's another book that I know Eric was reading for his book on the Longhouse that he's working on. And it was pointing out how when women left the home, they go out into the workforce and they kind of, they ended up feminizing the whole workplace because once women go into a male space, just like when men go into a woman's space, it completely changes it. It doesn't just keep functioning by the same rules that did five minutes earlier. It slowly transforms into something totally different. And this is why one of the reasons why workplaces are so HR, bureaucratized, safe, safety, because women came in and they were like, you've been doing what? And they were like, yeah, we drink beer at lunch. And then after that, we go and we go down into this mine and there's no lights. And we just, what about the air? What if the air goes bad? Well, everybody dies. You've been doing this for, well, that was actually probably some good improvements there. But the whole like, oh, you're going to go get reported to HR for, you know, making somebody feel sad today. Just is not a thing that happens when only men are around. We make fun of people for doing that. But yeah, works the other way too. Men go into women's spaces and they completely destroy them. I love that part of the quote where he says, how can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? And that's really what's at stake here with the woman being a helper in her home because in there, we'll talk. There's many vocations that are rolled up in this. She helps him in the sense that like literally in Genesis, one of the problems is that there will be no more people. If it's just Adam, for obvious reasons. And so God says it, well, it's not good for him to be alone. I will make an easier connect do I'll make a helper that is suitable for him. And so part of it is literally having like, there will be no more people if she doesn't help him. So it's mothering. But beyond that, her role as helper is this. She is to be everything to this small group of people to her husband, to her children, to her grandchildren. And yeah, she's many things to other people. But she's everything to those people there in the middle of the house. And I just thought that was such a classic, classically chestertonian good way of putting something. Yes, so good. And you see it with little kids like mom is everything. You should read that quote to some of our male children. There's explain what you mean. Well, you were trying to explain to them recently about why mothers need to be generalists. And that's a good thing that they're not just good at one thing. Yeah, what they weren't really buying it. What makes you what were they saying? I don't actually remember because it was a conversation with you that I walked in on halfway. And they were like, yeah, see mom, you're not very good at xyz. And I was not offended. I was like, yeah, it's because I'm doing xyz abcdfgh. I'd say like I don't care that I'm not that good at that. And they as a man as a young man, they were like, wait. Why are you not offended by this? You should want to dominate. And like, no, that's not what a mother is called to though. Yes, they have these like little. There's still fairly one dimensional. Yes, because they're young men. And they don't yet have much range. So they're just locked into this nature created mode of being a upway. And to the male mind, it's like, whatever is the worthiest thing to figure out, I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to do just that until I am the greatest at it. And nothing else matters. and exist until I am. And there's actually, there's some T-sheet that needs to happen, but with the grain of that, because it's a good male tendency, it needs to be shaped and directed. And they need to learn like, there isn't just one thing though at the end of the day. You really do have to do other things. And it's not all just about being the best. It's about loving people and accomplishing things that are good for your people and not just yourself and your own glory. But they're acting like little boy, like they're acting like young men. And they, because of that, they have no category. They don't get a woman at all. Yeah. They just think that I'm me. Everybody else must be like me. Mom must be basically like me, but she kind of sucks. Yeah. That's true. That's true. That's a funny way to put it. So I was gently explaining to them that they were idiots. I was actually, when I was making those cookies this weekend, when you took some of the kids to the park and I, and when he stayed to help me make the real icing, we were watching some videos about it. And she was asking me who the lady was. And I said something about her being a professional. And she said, what's a professional? And I tried to explain it to her by saying the word amateur. She said, well, what's an amateur? I was like, I'm an amateur. I'm doing it because I love it. She's doing it because she's paid to do it. She might love it too. But she was like, oh, I don't know she got it. But there is something to that as well as like being an amateur is a better. Yeah. In my opinion, we want to be amateurs because we're doing it for the love of the thing. So yeah. And because there are people to serve and there's all these other things to do. And you're not going to industrialize royal icing of cookies to the scale of, you know, giant factory. You're making them for the dinner table and for Sabbath dinner. They're not for the whole world. Therefore, these, they're not to be everything or someone there. Yeah. Or something, something to everyone there to be everyone to someone. There you go. And it's funny because he says the same thing to everyone. And that's such a good way of putting it because work, the workplace in an industrialized world, it really is much of the time doing the same thing over and over. 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Did you know that a woman's health during pregnancy can directly impact the health of her grandchildren? Generational health starts long before birth. That's why Rebecca at Live Oak Integrative Health takes a functional medicine approach, combining nurse-driven coaching, personalized testing, and practical, database care to help women restore balance in hormones, gut health, fertility, and weight. Plus, she can do all of that remotely via telemedicine. Visit LiveOakintegrativehealth.com/Hearth to book your discovery call today. Listeners of the show will receive a special rate. But the woman, my dad and I were talking about this yesterday when he was over, there's no sameness. It is 7,000 things per day, and they're all different. And there are sameness to the series of days, and like the laundry always must be done, and people always must be fed. But even in the task of something like making dinner, the task is making dinner, but you can never do it the same way twice, not because you can't make the same dish twice, but because you will never have the same toddler interruptions twice, and the same dirty diapers in the middle of it. There's variety that's good in built-in to the design of the vocation. Yes. So it is very much very agitated. It's challenging because of that. It requires a certain type of patience and a certain type of mind to go about and praise God, God fitted the woman for this task, just as he fitted the man for his task. They're both fit in their nature for this, which is why we're not arbitrary when we say that a husband is the head of his wife, and he has a kind of rule in his home that's to be ordered by love to the good of the people he's ruling. And the wife is made to be a helper in her home, and so she's fitted for that task in her nature to help and assist and carry out, and etc. So that's what we're going to be talking about today in this episode, this primary vocation of the woman in being a helper, and God's norming of the world in making the world like this. As always, if you like what we do here at BrightHearth, and if it's helped you and your family, and you want to help keep this thing going, then we would invite you to consider becoming a monthly patron. As we always remind you, you might not know this, but a lot of hands touch every single episode of this show. And we hope that it's helpful to you. And if it is, and you want to chip in, you can chip in a few bucks a month and help keep this thing going on our Patreon channel. Just as a thank you, we do it to our supporters. We do a little show called In the Kitchen every week that comes out with the episodes come out early and add free there on Patreon, and then also in In the Kitchen always drops the next day after the episode releases. So the episode releases early and add free the Monday before and then the fall the next day, the Tuesday in the kitchen comes out. And this week's in the kitchen that will go along with this episode is going to be on the art of learning to say no. When saying no to something is the only way to say yes to being your husband's helper or to being your children's everything or to being all of that in the home, there's a lot of nos that come with that. So Lexi's going to talk a little bit about the art and science of saying no so that you can say yes. And if you want to support the show, you can check that out. Well, it's already out by the time this episode comes out there on that channel. But that said, let's go back to the garden here at the beginning and just talk about this primary vocation a little bit more, define it a little bit. Why Lexi when you think about helper there in Genesis 2 18, do you do you agree is is that a good central definition of the primary vocation of the woman, particularly the woman? I actually think it is in before her marriage to her husband too, she's also helping her father and helping her mother there. Why is that a good description? Is there any aspect of it that you think might need clarification for people to understand what we mean by it or what the scriptures mean by it and don't mean by it? When you think of that phrase helper, what comes to mind as the central defining characteristics of that task and that vocation and duty? When I think of it, I think that she is to help him with his mission, not her mission and not her being the mission. So that defines her duties pretty quickly. What I think the world thinks when they hear that is, oh, she has no opinions. She's a robot. Yeah. And because she's a robot, it must not take brains to do this. I think you're right. Because she doesn't think she can't cross him in her opinions. She doesn't have a voice. So those are the two opposite ends of the spectrum that I think of. What was the first one that she is a helper in his mission and she's not the mission. She's not the mission and she doesn't get to define what the mission is. What do you mean by that? And why do you think women need to be reminded of that? Well, because I think women are naturally created to help, like we've already said. But if a husband, if the culture is defining for her what that means, i.e. you need to have some sort of a side gig as a woman. Like productive household means you absolutely have to. She might be creating all of these side gigs that he actually doesn't like because that's not the mission God has given him. The mission God has given him might be something as boring as being a plumber, having four kids that need to be homeschooled. And so her taking her time away from homeschooling the kids to start a side gig might not actually be fulfilling the mission at all. Whether or not he has clearly communicated that to her, that's not what I mean. But I think it's important because they're going to fill that vacuum of helping with some sort of a job. So either the husband has to clearly give that to her with some clear boundaries or she's going to go do it somewhere else. Or if she isn't, I don't want to say lacking in self motivation. Some people aren't as like entrepreneurial type. High capacity as other people are. And so what might happen in that situation is then it's like, okay, so I am home. I am homeschooling. I am working really hard. But also my job, your job should be to because I'm working so hard in the home. That means all of your home time should be about me. It means we should be luxury hopping from one thing to another that mom wants to do because mom being able to maintain enough energy, sleep, creativity, whatever she wants to fulfill the mission of homeschooling the kids becomes the soul thing. Almost as if her being responsible to fulfill her duty as a helper isn't actually her responsibility. It's dependent upon the husband meeting her needs. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. It sounds like you're saying there's a few different places where this can go wrong. Yeah, it can get warped. One of them is we actually talked about this in the last episode. The husband not ruling well over his wife. And this sounds so archaic, but it is so essential. There's a chapter in the book I'm writing right now and how to love your wife. Then I hope you bright heartless and there's will enjoy and it'll be helpful to you. On mission, ambition and agency and headship, there's actually a whole section of chapters on just headship. And it's funny that our world hears headship and rule as like this dominating rude kind of meany head thing. But it's actually deeply unkind to a man's wife if he won't rule. Yeah. Because one of the modes you're pointing at is that if he doesn't actually tell her, what are you supposed to be doing? What is it? Okay, I'm that plumber and we've got these four kids know if he doesn't actually sit down and routinely reminder and define and say, this is what it means to help and this is what we're aiming for in our home. And like here's the target I'm trying to hit. I really need you to do this. I need you to become great at this. I need this to be your thing and you'd love doing this and pour into doing this. If you really define that, then there's a sense in which she can veer from being his helper just because she's like an employee of a boss who never told his employee, employee what to do. Yeah. And so she's going to come up with stuff to do and she's going to try to figure out a lot of it. But not everything. But there's another way that you're pointing at, which is kind of more of an insubordinate or rebellious. Like I'm dissatisfied with the work I really do know I should be doing. It really is my task. Like a CD. It's slob. Yeah, like that book we mentioned last year. Yeah. And the other thing too, like the husband doesn't get to go to his job and then come home and push off a whole bunch of stuff on the wife. Like, hey, you got to fit. You got to finish this presentation for me. You've got to figure out how to run the numbers, crunch the numbers for the boss tomorrow morning for me because I just I didn't have time to get to it. I'm really tired. I need to go use my red light for a little bit. The wife likewise should be my turn responsible enough to not need those things all the time. That's essentially what you're doing. If you're like, I have to have x, y, z, I have to have this for self care. I have to have this for replenishing. This is different guys. Please know that I'm saying this is different from like normal Sabbath type rhythms, but where you're in some ways you're still pushing off your work on your husband because you're just not able to get it together enough. Yeah. If you're, if you're basically saying, you know, some 30% of the chores fit to be a helper. That's what you're saying. 40% of chores are still his or he gets home and it's like, oh man, well, now I'm off the clock and I'm going to go. Yep. A lot of women have this resentment toward their husbands because they actually are trying to make their husband their helper. Yes, exactly. You're not fit to help so you want him to do it because there has to be someone in the marriage doing it. Yeah. And just recognizing that both vocations, the man's and the woman's come with unique difficulties challenges that the other person will never shoulder. Yeah. And that's true in both directions and the answer is to each mutually honor one another. That's for the husband to look at his wife and recognize her vocation has a much more fuzzy boundary in terms of a stop time. There's almost never a time when she's off the clock. That's not true of most men in their vocations. A lot of men do have many responsibilities they can bleed outside of even a certain nine to five. I think very few men really have a true just it's just nine to five and there's nothing else. And I'm not thinking about it. Yeah. And there's, that's not true. It does have more of a border a lot of the time. So he honors her and he does come alongside and say, I want to make sure I take care of my wife and that she does have rest and that she does eat food and that she does, you know, have the tools that she needs and the resources she needs to carry out her vocation. But then she instead of, but he doesn't resent her and think like, oh man, she has no idea what it's like to bear the weight of responsibility for 200 employees. Or for to have to deal with whatever the worst part of your job is that you hate. He doesn't resent her for that. And she shouldn't resent him. She should honor him and think there's aspects of his work that are really hard and I don't have to bear those and I'm thankful that I, you know, if you're the woman whose husband works hard and you get to be home with the children and work really hard at homeschooling or keeping the home and raising these little people. And feeding them and maintaining all these different things and it's a lot of work. But there should be an honoring there where you think I'm honored to be his helper in this. We're doing something great together and we both need each other and we're both on the same team. It's when you start doing the envy thing. Envy never does anything good. Nobody has ever gotten better by envy. It's unproductive. People have gotten better now. There's a fine line. People have gotten better by looking at somebody who has something they don't and not envying them but imitating them. Certainly. Yeah, that's like a form of holy ambition. Absolutely. Like a, oh, her house is so orderly and mine is so chaotic. Instead of envying and just going, I should have that. She shouldn't going, what is she doing differently than me? And then learning and growing and working really hard and a man can do the same thing. That's not envy. Envy's never helped anybody. Envy is certainly one of the lurking serpents in the home. And I think in a very particular, particularly strong way for the woman in her job. Because of her position and what it comes with and all the difficulties of it and some of the realities of it. So I like that. I think that's helpful. You talked about both ends of where we can go off the reservation with helper. What are some of the other vocations like getting specific? We've talked about several of them that attend the vocation of helper that come with it. So like, what is it in tail? I might be missing some of what you have in mind, but I would say wife is definitely up there in priority. Mothering could be educator could fall under this if a husband has children. It's your primary, like he's entrusting you to educate them somehow. Yeah, to be deeply involved for at a minimum. Yeah. Homemaker would in my mind be a subcategory of this vocation because you're wanting it to be a place of rest that he can come back to. So he can have clean clothes and food. Am I forgetting something? When we were talking about this yesterday, like being a trusted counselor. Yeah, that's true. The Proverbs 31 woman, it talks about her people, how their heart trusts in her. Yeah. His heart trusts in her. And I think this is a really important vocation to understand. She used to be a lady of wisdom. Wisdom is personified as a woman. A lot of husbands get the mistaken idea that because they are the head and they are responsible for teaching instruction correction many things in their home. And because she's instructed to ask him like, if you have a question in church, ask your husband at home. And so he has this ordered relationship. Sometimes men can confuse this for I have to always tell my wife everything. And I can never receive information wisdom or anything or even counsel from her. And that is actually foolish. Yeah. A good husband with a good, godly wife. He actually wants to hear from his wife in the same way. I think about. ordering new Christian impressed. They're employees at new Christian impressed that work for me. And I genuinely am in charge of them and responsible for them in a way that they are not in charge of me in responsible for me. Like I'm responsible to pay them. And there's a lot of things that I have to do that they don't have to do. But that doesn't mean because of that that I never ask what their input on stuff. Like there are in the key areas where each of these men work, I'm like, hey, Kent Martin, what do you think about this? And I ask that because I know my trust is in Martin. I know he's great at these things. And he's gonna give me good advice. And then I still have a duty and a responsibility to charge. Sometimes to take that information and say, let's do what you just said. And sometimes to say, you know what, not exactly that or not now. It's similar with a husband to a wife. I really am not just walking into the home all the time and saying, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do that. I'm saying we have to accomplish this together. How are we gonna do this? And then Lexi is gonna have all sorts of input in the direction of that. And the carrying out of that thing, much of it that I would not have had on my-- - You have a lot of questions. Yeah, you rarely are telling me. You are more often than not saying, what do you think about this, what needs to be done? What's the next thing, sort of a, you often defer to me in this way. - In a lot of the time, I am trying to help Lexi understand where the boundaries of her, I am giving you the authority to do this. And so you can do that. And that also means you can do it the way that you would do it. And I'm not gonna bother you about any of that. I'm gonna tell you, here's how much money we have for that. Please do it. And I literally, like I care that it's done well, but I trust my wife. It's not that I don't care about it. I actually care a lot about it. But I trust in many cases that she will do it better than I would have done. Because it's her domain. This is what she does all day. This is her, she's ordering this world. I'm ruling and she's ordering and helping and assimilating and my deputy at all these things. A lot of the time I literally, I'm trying to just say, permission. And I think ladies have to recover an understanding that there is a genuine category out there for women that are just silly and they're not counselors in this way. So if you, if you're like, man, I really am foolish and all I do is sit and text my friends back and forth and my one baby that I have hasn't been outside in six months and, you know, like that sort of a thing. This is a vocation in the sense that it is a calling from the Lord with attendant duties to it. Which means you need to be in scripture and you need to be reading stuff that's equipping you to be somebody who has riches in their heart that can be shared in overflow to your husband and children. We were talking about this in my book group a couple weeks ago. This idea came from the school day everyday book of like, mothers who just give up who are like, I am too busy to read, the diapers and laundry and food. It's just too much. I can't do it. What happens is their family outpaces them very quickly. So when their children are 12, 13, 14 coming to them asking questions, they don't have riches in their heart anymore to give out because beauty, truth goodness and beauty is something, understand this guys. It must be maintained. It requires constant maintenance and work physically, emotionally, spiritually. If you want something to be beautiful, you have to maintain it. So you can't just assume that because life is hard, I can check out for the next 10 years because guess what? That's going to be gone. Not that you can't try to recultivate it. It's going to be a lot harder though. And so I think some ladies just are like, it's just too hard. I cannot do this. It's unreasonable for you to expect me to as well. What we're dealing with in that situation is a silly woman that doesn't actually take the calling seriously enough. Yeah. And her husband's, probably 31, 11 can't be said of her. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. The reason that his heart doesn't trust in her is because he will have a lack of gain if he does. Yes. So you don't want to be the woman who, in her central vocation, whether it's because you've given up that central vocation to go pursue and put all of your zeal and your strength into some other vocation. And maybe you're doing really good there. And then slowly you lose interest in the home because nobody loves and praises you and nobody gives you honor there because the reality is you're putting 10% of your effort there and not your best and you're putting 90% of it elsewhere. And you're doing really good there maybe. And this could be anything from being an online influencer, Instagram influencer, to going and working a corporate job. Something I've seen a lot just being honest with the people I interact with. It's just too much friendship out of the house. It's too much sitting in coffee shops, drinking coffee together and not spending the first part of your day getting dinner on the table for your husband. If your excellence isn't being poured in the center, then even good things can become reasons that your husband's heart doesn't trust in you. Because I keep using employee relationship because it's, I'm a man. But it is like the employee that you go, well, he's really good at these 15 other things, but they're none of the things I hired him to do. And they don't enrich the company at all. They just enrich him, which is good for him. If he was doing a great job, that wouldn't bother me at all. But he's putting 30% lackluster effort into this central thing that he's really supposed to be growing and treating like his total responsibility and he's not. A wife can be like that too if she fails to see. And this is like really if there's one thing in this episode you get ladies, it's that this is your central vocation from God. Meaning the central thing God calls you to do is to be a helper to your husband. And that means a homemaker at home, mothering, being a wife, growing in wisdom and zeal, pouring yourself out there, basically looking at all of those aspects, motherhood, being a wife, home and asking, what would the best wife in the world be like? - Yeah. - What would the best mother in the world be like? - And just, I mean, I can remember being younger and just being wrapped up in, but who's gonna meet my needs? I didn't sleep the last six months. Who's gonna meet that energy need for me? Who's gonna cook a meal that I one occasionally? What's gonna happen if I don't get the house picked up tonight? Who's gonna help me do that? I gotta stay up later. I can't sleep tonight either. And just being so consumed with that instead of like flipping the narrative and saying, this is a vocation that does require pouring myself out for somebody else. And guess what? I'm going to be more lexie having done that than trying to flee that mantle of good work that the Lord has given me. I'm gonna become less and less human going to the other end of the spectrum. And the other thing too is as a helper, you are meeting other people's needs. That's like, we can't overlook that fact. You do, there are oftentimes where you have to put your needs aside, but you have to remember the 23rd Psalm says that it's mercy and grace that walks around following you all day. So even that good work is grace from the Lord to sanctify you and make you more holy, happy and virtuous. Surely the goodness of the Lord will follow me all the days of my life. And David is not talking about the person who lives their life in indolence and self-serving and has that whole thought, follows all those thoughts like he just laid out and goes, "Yeah, you know what? "I better take care of me because no one else "is gonna take care of me." And if I don't take care of me, then who's about me? Ladies who are like this are miserable cows. Yeah. And sometimes, many times, even they've been wronged, but what they fail to see a significant portion of the time men and women both do this is that they respond to being wronged or being neglected or whatever by curving in on the self and thinking it's gonna fix it. And God built the world the exact opposite. All that will do is spiral everybody down into destruction. So the wife whose husband is doing a C minus job of ruling and taking care of her, if she says, "You know what? "I'm gonna do a C minus job of being a wife and mother, then." Everybody's gonna get to an F minus pretty soon. But if the C minus husband has a wife who says, "You know what? "I'm gonna be an A plus wife. "I'm gonna be the best wife. "I'm gonna be the best mother. "I'm gonna be zealous. "The Lord is gonna take care of me. "He's given me these duties. "He's even told me that if I submit to my husband, "even if he's being unrighteous, "that I'm submitting to the Lord ultimately, "and the Lord will watch over me. "Even if in this life and people neglect "this doctrine of eternity, "even if in this life, you're wronged more often than not. "Do you know who's going to take care of you "in eternity forever?" The Lord Jesus Christ. And he will say, "Well done. "I put those good works in front of you "and you walk in them faithfully, "and you're imitating the Lord, "who only did good to everyone around him. "And he was wronged over and over and over and over. "And enduring the cross and the suffering of that, "he reaped the benefit and the reward "of joy and glory and honor and exaltation. "And this is what we're supposed to desire is, you know, if. humble yourselves there for under the mighty hand of God that at the proper time he might exalt you. It's God who exalts. So when we focus on exalting ourselves and serving ourselves, we can't do it. We're not strong enough to exalt ourselves, but God is. So men have to remember this, women have to remember this. It really comes back to this question of, "Am I going to be like the Lord Jesus Christ or not?" But the other side of the coin, and this is the part we have failed to believe, it's so rare for truly, it's truly rare for the wife and the C-minus husband situation to take a year and say, "I'm going to be the A plus wife, A plus mother, and have her husband not see that." He's sitting in some way. Respond. And he was probably sitting and falling short and doing that. The other thing is true too. It is rare for the husband to take an A plus effort and say, "And also in his work of ruling." And I'm not talking just about out there in the world. I mean, like in his correcting and instructing of his wife. If she really is being a C-wife and mother, and she's being that mom whose baby hasn't been outside for a year because she's lazy and loves to text and eat bonbons or whatever she's doing. I don't know. Probably a lot of the time, probably not actually eating bonbons. Or like just being lazy. Okay. If he helps instructor and he gently, kindly, patiently, firmly gives her targets, gives her help, says, "This is what you need to do. I'm going to come home and ask you how the day went. What walk did you go for? What did you accomplish?" It's very rare for that knot to bear good fruit. No. And it can not bear good fruit. The other person can be really obstinate and totally sitting up and ruin everything. That happens. It genuinely does. It's actually more rare than people think. Because we tend to locate far more of our problems in other people than is truly belongs in other people. Yes, that's true. That's a really good point. We are way more often our biggest problem than other people. 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And I think that is so commonly true in the home that women actually think their biggest problem is their husband, their church, whatever it is, and it's like honey. You're a big problem. You're actually a big part of it. I mean, it's bad news and good news. Think how easy this though. You start feeling justified in being like, "I'm going to do the work outwardly. I'm going to have the laundry done, but there's going to be no cheerfulness." Yeah. Not smiling at him. I'm not serving him. I'm not going to be sexually warm towards him. I'm not going to cover offenses. I'm going to cold shoulder him. And pretty soon you're doing the outward, you know, you're a whitewash tomb. That never bears good fruit in the home. Yeah. So, I mean, this vocation is huge. We could spend forever talking about any of these things. Mother, homemaker, wife, trusted counselor to her husband. I'm not focusing on other things like friend and there's other things outside of the home that are truly good things for a wife to do. But we're really focusing here on the central vocation of the woman as helper. I do have a question though. And this is, I think we circled around it to a large extent. But why is this theme in command so often there whenever the scriptures are talking about the wife's vocation? Just a significant amount of the time brings up submission. It's true and tight as two. Older women teach the younger women to be workers at home. Steve, it says there to teach what is good and so train the young women, talking about the older women to the younger women. So train the young women to love their husbands and children. There's wife and mother to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, kind is a big one there. I think that's really important and submissive to their own husbands. Like are you saying why is submission so often tied to helper? Yeah, to her vocation. Ephesians 5 does the same thing. Lives respect your husbands, your playing the role of the church in this which again is like what is the church in relation to Christ? The church carries out the will of Christ as the head on earth. We're supposed to obey the Lord and do what he said. Okay, submitting to him. It brings up submission again. First Peter 3, another passage talking about duties of husbands and wives. Here brings up submission and honor and respect in in Proverbs 31. It very much presents the wife again. She's in the order of hierarchy and the affair, the order of affairs. It's quite clear that that her husband is the head in Genesis 2. And then in Paul's comments on it in 1 Corinthians 11. It's just over and over. This is brought up. And when the scriptures don't talk about something a lot and they genuinely don't talk about marriage a lot. Yeah, because the Bible's not about marriage. It's about Christ. It's about redemption. So if almost every time it talks about it in this particular didactic way, it brings up for the husband the need to love and lay down his life. Well, that should tell husband something. And if it tells the wife, submit your husband and respect him. Why is that such a central part of the helper's role that it's brought up so much? You literally can't help if you're not willing to submit to the task of helping. You can't. There's no way around it. Why not? Because you have to obey. You have to do what he wants. It's like you, you do need to think about it in terms of parenting. Like I'm asking you to do something. In order to do that, you submit to what I said. You have to do it. There's no other way around it. I'm bringing it up because I really think this is something that just like men can fail to think they think about a million things, but they don't think like, oh, I need to love my wife. Oh, not just solve her problems, not fix things for her, not. Yeah, because you can have like, then so if you're not submitting, it becomes disrespect is what's happening. And so there's a couple of ways. I think there's like two spectrums with this is you have a woman who thinks who genuinely even might be a no at all, genuinely knows more than her husband. So what happens is instead of quietly submitting to what he says, assuming that he has actually thought about it, assuming the best of him, um, she is like going to give 15 alternatives to what he said instead. Or you have the other end of the spectrum where the wife is just lazy and she's not going to get busy about her husband's work. So both of those have to submit it just some of it is tempering down, some of it is a giddy up sort of a situation. Yes. And a husband has to know which his wife falls into to lead her well to lead her well. To lead her wife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is part of knowing the condition of your of your flocks, the principle and proverbs of form a husband as a husband, as a shepherd. To rule well, to lead well to be a good Lord to be a good shepherd. You have to know like this sheep really loves to prance and dance away off into where the wolves live. And I think wives have to be honest with themselves about know yourself as well. And if you, if you genuinely are like, I genuinely don't know which is probably not you true, you just don't want to admit it. Ask your husband to ask him, what would you like me to do? Am I doing a good job in the home? Are there things you would like to see me do more of as your wife? Are there things that you wish I would do differently about enlist them? Are there things that you wish as your wife that I would do differently about dinner, groceries, cleaning the house? I know some people will hear it in this at the end of the year, every year, where they just have a, I actually thought it was a good idea. And I meant to bring it up, but forgot. Where they just, each of them have a, like a questionnaire about the other at the end of the year. And neither feelings are allowed to be hurt. And they just email the response to one another. Oh, man, that's a dangerous game. But the thing is there's two people that I know, not in real life, who have done this. And they both say like, this is a game changer for marriage. It's a good thing. It is not a bad thing. Yeah. But it has to be because most people are like humble enough to be open to hearing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. First question for the email from you, Lexi. Do you think that my biggest weakness is I love too much. Second question. Do you think I'm as handsome as Matthew McConaughey or more handsome? I don't. I think your handsome. Would you say like, I think I know who Matthew McConaughey is. I think I think. So those are the two questions I'd like to answer for me this year. Oh my gosh. I'm just kidding. I have it if you want to do it. It's still my way. Send it my way. Send it my way. Yeah. No, it. This really is a central duty. I think it's obvious, but it's so important that we actually just make eye contact with it and say being a helper means that you're helping someone do something. And you really have to help you. And that means like around it. If I'm my if my kids are helping me put together some Ikea furniture and I say hand me the jlupin jlop dowel to go into the whiskers leg hole. And they hand me the puff and feather. Blue bull dork instead. That's not doing it. I don't know that that doesn't help. If and sometimes you just like, oh, you're helping. But as a wife, you don't want to just be like, you don't learn that's like they're helping you. No, you don't want to be the toddler. They're the little situation. Moeer that's just the little colorful balls that pop up and down as they mowing. I'm helping. This is like me anytime you see me get out a canister of paint. You're like, Oh, good. I guess I'm painting this room now, Lexi. There are many things that I sit tell Lexi you have total. You can do anything. Here's the budget. If it is painting a room, I've learned. Have you heard about I'm either doing it or I'm hiring a man. Have you heard about the time where page painted a room while Ethan was gone? Oh no. And he wanted to see she was like on FaceTime with him. Oh, I don't know. But her method is so I would totally do this. Her method was that she would just tape off a little bit one day and just paint that. No. Next day, I think I think I'm representing this correctly right page. The next day she just tape a little bit. So Ethan wanted to see how she was doing it. And I don't know. I don't remember if she was willing to show him or not. I'm sure it turned out. But she was like, you, you would not be happy with it. Yeah, you know, that's right. You look really like ladies just sometimes need to hear. And the thing is like no, very few people are really going to tell you this, ladies. This is what bright hearts all about. Your pastor might not be willing to tell you this. Your husband might be too scared to tell you this, but you just need us. Obey him. Like do what he says and do it. It's not more complicated than that. Do it right away all the way with happy heart. And just see what happens. It may be you're thinking like what I don't think this is the right thing to do. Put that thought out of your mind. Unless he's telling you to sin. Unless he's like go rob this bank for me, helper. Something I had to realize recently. We had a meeting with Pastor Cotton where we were going over some projects. And I think it was him that brought up the whole like don't, don't offer multiple alternatives to your husband when he told you to do something. And I was like, oh, wait a second. I do that a lot of the time. But here's my reasoning. And I think ladies can get wrapped up in this. It's because I'm worried what other people think. So I will often come to you with an issue and I'm like, what do I need to do? Or how do I solve this problem in the house? And you will give me one specific thing to do. And I'm like, yeah, but have you have you thought about how these 10 people are going to perceive that? Let's work through that first. So you haven't actually said it in this way. But this is kind of the gist of how you've been telling me. Maybe maybe I'm wrong. You can correct me here. But I've been having to like just submit Lexi. It doesn't matter what those people think about this because your husband told you what to do. He's already thinking about those things. He's smart. He can figure it out. He's socially aware. He knows what the temptations might be of others. Just listen to him. And if they don't, a lot of the time too for a man, a man has thought about that. But then he's gone. And a woman has overthought about it. He just went, but I don't care. What they think. That's the last time he thinks about it. But for a woman, she's worried about consensus building community. And so she thinks about it 50 more times. Why are you still thinking about that? I literally don't care what that person thinks about this. But I will say, since you have given me more clear directives in a few ways, it has been so comforting to me. To when that thought comes back to my mind of like, don't worry. Submission is a protection. This is a peaceful thing. And it has been so freeing to me to not have to worry about. And even that's a way of like correcting me, even. Yeah, the leading is correcting to a standard, even if you're not actually saying, you're doing this wrong. Or you're sending. You're not always sending. The reason I'm saying that is because I didn't necessarily realize or think about that in terms of disrespect. But it is what is happening is because you don't necessarily want to have to have that same conversation with me five times just because I can't emotionally be mature enough. So I have to be able to just submit and do the thing you don't need to do. And put my big girl pants on and not care so much. And I think sometimes ladies do this because they think that way, what other people are thinking, they often overestimate the amount that people care what you do. Yes. Like if I start thinking about it the other direction, do I care how often so and so has people over for dinner? No, because I've literally never thought about it once. I'm doing my thing. I'm worried about my stuff. Now like I guess if there are some egregious problem like they're a pastor and they literally never have anybody over and they're not hospitable, that's like a requirement of being an elder. But a lot of the time men and women can do this, but women are particularly prone to it. We never think the other way. We think, oh, everyone's thinking this about me, but they never ask themselves, do I look out and analyze every single family in the church in my sphere around this criteria that I've given myself that they're all judging me? And most of the time unless you're like a caddy mean girl, the answer is no. Yeah. I literally never think about it. I would never think that the Smith family is like, less than because they didn't do the thing that I'm just that I'm now pre-judging myself for not doing on the basis of the Smith family thinking about me. And the men are like, we are simple creatures a lot of the time and by design again, because lead and command, you really are, you have to just make one decision. You can't have 50 decisions that you have make. You have to make one, you have to make the decision all the way and then forget about it in a sense. You have to not like, yeah, maybe evaluate did that work or not? Sure. But most of the time if you get locked in like hyper-evaluating every decision you make as a leader, oh my goodness. You're a lot of it's pride. You're just like thinking that everybody cares about you way more than they care about you. Yes. Yes. They actually don't because they are normal human beings. They actually don't. Yes. Okay. I have just one last kind of cluster of things and then we'll wrap this episode up. And they're related. Like the housewife still has this negative stigma in our culture, I mean, of being a waste of talent and potential for a wife. I think everybody agrees on that. But one of the areas where I think this shows up in the Christian world and even in allegedly conservative Christian corners of the world is that we are still set on making women into boss babe leaders of stuff. And when we're doing that even in the Christian world, we are believing that same thing. That it's like a waste of talent for this super talented woman. She could be like the next TPUSA politics conference speaker. She's so talented. It'd be such a waste for her to like, God, give her all these gifts. It'd be such a waste for her just to be housewife and a mother. Why do we do that? Why is the world so set on this? Why do we fall for it so often? I think this is Marxism. I think it's because we take too much of an economical view of the person. Okay. And so, what we see is how can we turn a profit on that for the maximum amount? And when in reality, like I genuinely had to think about this in terms of teaching and leading Titus II stuff more. Yeah. Of my daughter was old enough. that I had to be like, you know what? The Lord gave me these interests for Daphne and Winnie and Penelope. And that's it. And I have to be okay with that. But if I'm constantly thinking of like, and it is true, there are times that I do still help in that capacity. It's not, I do that often. But I think that's part of it is our modern view of personhood because of Marxism that we should be, and men and women are both the same so if men can do it for the masses, women should be able to do it too. And that, I mean, what flows down from that is feminism. - Yeah. - So because it's a egalitarianism. So it's just all is kind of wrapped up in that. And I mean, it goes back to the Chesterton quote, "I want to be a domestic queen for the domestic princesses in my home, not for everyone else." Because that really is honestly less efficient for your mission, for me helping you with your mission. If I am always teaching their daughters, but not my daughters. - Yeah, it has to come in the right order. - Yep. - And with the right priority. And this is really, really important on the right subjects. So there is such a vast difference between, even, and I think we think about this all the time. We've talked about this all the time over the years. Even something like BrightHearth, which we do every two weeks, we sit down and record this podcast. And Lexi has written a book in "Nap Times" in "Corner's of Life" and that kind of thing. And we talk about this all the time because it's actually so easy to go, oh, you know what, maybe, maybe, and this is what I think one of the pathways to temptation becomes is like where you go, oh, man, what if we put it on the, what if we put it on a book tour? What if we did a conference circuit? What if we did all this stuff? And it's so easy to get out of order. There is a reason that even this thing, BrightHearth, it's ordered exactly the way it is and not the way it's not. What do we talk about? We talk about the productive Christian household. And there are some things that we do talk about that are beyond what Lexi would talk about, but that's because I'm talking about them. I'm here, I'm her husband, I'm a man, I'm a pastor, I do other stuff too, right? But pretty much for the most part, 99.8%, what Lexi is doing even on BrightHearth is, what does Titus too say that an older woman with some experience should be talking about to the younger woman? Loving your husband, loving your kids, submitting to him, working hard in the home, it's that cluster of stuff. That's what we talk about on BrightHearth. And structurally, even there are things that we would not have not done and we'll never do with BrightHearth. Like for example, we're not gonna do a big conference tour where Lexi's like traveling around to talk even to other ladies about this stuff. It's just not gonna happen. It's never gonna be that at all. Like there's no chance whatsoever, even in our conference annually, people are like, is Lexi gonna do a breakout or whatnot and we're always like, no, because she's Brian's helper. Brian cannot do the conference if his wife is doing other stuff. - Yeah, I never know. Even as a right now, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to the conference. - If she can come to a lot, that is the literal reality. But it's like, it's so easy to lose focus on that and get lost. Even something like BrightHearth, you take leveraging some of the technological aspects of podcasting and things like that. In a world where there are just not that many older women that are mature and like literally one of the experiences we've had over and over again in ministry is that the older Christians, a lot of them are some of the least mature and also some of the most set in the very counterproductive ways. So they're like, they will give actively harmful advice to people. And there's a reason that the world is the way it is and it's because two, three generations have made terrible decisions when it comes to mailness, femaleness, to household things like that. So in that void and vacuum, we're like, okay, let's make this resource, BrightHearth, it's gonna be for our church, it's gonna help ladies in our church, it will help Lexi to answer questions as an older woman in our church that lots of women are asking and that's great so she can still be my helper and also help some of the ladies in our church. And then lo and behold, it finds a lot of people who are helped by it, many, many people around the nation. Great, but Lexi is still not an e-girl online influencer boss babe lady and never will be and we quit if before letting any of that happen. It is funny, sometimes we still get boss-baved by allegedly conservative women, boss-baving Lexi about doing BrightHearth and it cracks me up because I'm like, why isn't your husband bringing this up? Why are you boss-baving another lady online about some aspect of BrightHearth that they think is like crossing the line when it comes to this? But we have a clean conscience when it comes to this kind of thing, but I want even listeners of BrightHearth to be like keep your eye on the ball. And I really do genuinely hope that listening to us here wouldn't be any different than just having dinner with us and listening to us talk. - No, we're literally sitting down and having conversations that we would really like to have anyway, me and you. - Yeah. - Chatting about a lot of this stuff. It is a- - And I mean that in the sense that I'm not, I'm not gonna take over theological question at the dinner table or even in a counseling session because still, I mean, there's many times that I'm like, I mean, I can answer your basic questions about that, you need to go to the elders. Like that is crossing into my- - Ask your husband, ask an elder. There you go. That's the answer. It's one of those two things is gonna be the thing that Lexi's gonna tell you to do on night. On most of that kind of stuff because our focus is tightest to older women, teach the younger women to do these things. That's what we're gonna talk about. That's what we're going to focus about. And the reason that in this day and age that I think it's helpful is because Lexi, genuinely has been doing this for a long time. People are like, well, you guys are both young. And I'm like, yeah, trust me, we know. I think Lexi found my first white hair in my beard yesterday. - Mm-hmm. - It's there. She claims, I don't know. I'm still youthful and vigorous, I think, but- - You are very vigorous. But you're aging hands on me. - I'm, I'm, thank you. I needed that. (laughing) - You know, but we're closing it on 15 years of marriage. We've got seven kids. All of those 15 years spent in the same church and community doing the same things over and over again. And we've learned a bunch over the years doing this stuff. And it, we're like other people need to know this stuff. And no one's telling them. - And so in other times of history, we would be at the end of our lives, unfortunately. For better or for worse. - Yeah, like. - So some of this is relative. - I would have died and Lexi would have remarried like twice or, you know, like, or the other way around. It's just how it is. - Yeah, no, this is not any. No. (laughing) - Yeah, so it's, we hope that this is helpful to you, but even this, keep your eye on the ball. Lexi's my helper. She's my helper. She's, she's not your helper. She's my helper. She's not, and there are a million ways that even we've learned to try to get this exact thing right. And I can tell you that it's very good when you get it right. Like when you get this right, it's so amazing. There's so much good fruit. I don't think Lexi is like wildly dissatisfied and just really longing that she had a corporate career. - No. - And like just really pining. - I mean, even when I had to go into the office a couple of weeks ago, and then afterwards I was done, and I was just knitting on your couch and your office and air walked and laughing. He's like, yep. (laughing) You're knitting now. - She's just knitting. We joked that one day we're gonna do like a Christmas special with all the podcasts we do, but literally the ladies are just gonna be sitting in the background knitting, 'cause that's all that's actually doing. - I was actually thinking, if he loved me, he would get me a mic stand, because I could knit while podcasting. - The problem though is that I've seen how much focus it takes. - No, not on like, not on all my projects, just certain ones. That's why I have multiple projects. - The reality is I can't conceive of being able to do it while thinking about anything else. And so I've universalized that to other people. - That's not true at all. - No, there are certain things I could very easily knit. - Okay, I gotta get Lexia mic stand, so that she can knit while bright, hard thing. Okay, we're gonna talk more about in other episodes about some other aspects of this. One aspect that will probably spend a whole episode talking about with the woman in the helper aspect is, how does she relate to the economy? How does she relate to money? How does she relate to the productive Christian household? Because the answer isn't that she doesn't relate to it. The answer isn't that like the scriptural prohibition is that if ever anything she does brings a dollar into the home that she is an apostate, that's actually not true. So we're gonna talk about that. And some of the ditches, because there's probably a million that come to mind right away, side hustles taking a woman away from her primary duties. But as her husband's helper and her husband having very clear productive and economic tasks, there are very, and historic ways in which women have, as helpers, related to the economy of the home. I think John Moody's talked a lot about this in helpful ways. So there'll be a whole episode on that. We're going to do a whole episode on husbands and how to make more money, because this is such a key area that needs to be figured out right now in the world, given inflation and these issues like Christian men, we just need to be leading and figuring out how to broaden the economic pie of Christians in righteous ways. They can serve our people. And I think many men are in positions where they, with the right input and counsel, they could do it. And so we're gonna do an episode on that. I'll probably talk more in that episode, but I hope that one will be helpful. And then we'll do at least one more. Probably the next one though. We're gonna talk about the spirit that the man and the woman need to bring to their vocations from maximal fruitfulness. And really both of those other conversations, they won't work unless you do this right. So there we're gonna talk all about what it means to have a growth mindset, an agency, and grit and determination and all these kind of anti-laziness traits that Christians really need to take hold of. But that's gonna be it for this episode, guys. Thanks for listening. As a reminder, Lexi will be talking about the art and science of saying no to many things so that she can say yes to being her husband's helper in the kitchen episode. So if you like this work that we do here at BrightHearth, then you can help chip in and continue to make it possible. By doing that, supporting the great Christian businesses that sponsor the episodes of this show. And but that said, we're blessed you guys and we'll catch you next time on BrightHearth. 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