Sacred Influence (24 page)

Chapter 12: Rich and Pat:
The Magic Question

Helping Your Husband
to Become More Involved at Home

A
lthough Rich and Pat have three children together, for some time they led mostly separate lives. According to Pat, “We did little together except argue about the kids.”

Rich concurs: “Home life was pretty combative.”

Pat once complainingly described Rich as an overinvolved worker during the week and an avid hunter and fisherman on the weekends. What little time remained he spent watching TV or using the computer, making him a relatively uninvolved husband and father. When Pat brought up Rich’s frequent absences on weekends, Rich would say, “Don’t worry, honey. Hunting season is almost over.” He forgot to mention that fishing season was waiting just around the corner!

From Rich’s perspective, life seemed much easier
outside
the home — a view shared by many men. “I probably was overinvolved in work, and when I wasn’t working, I wanted to hunt and fish. Outside of home, there were all sorts of things to succeed at: birds to shoot or issues to solve at work. There’s great satisfaction in getting my limit of trout or ducks, or resolving issues at work. Also, these were
solvable
problems that I could tackle with a certain degree of success; the problems at home didn’t seem all that solvable.”

We men have a tendency to avoid battles that we know we can’t win or that make us feel incompetent. Unfortunately, this means that when we start to feel like we’re in over our heads in our family life, home may become the last place we want to be. The sad result is that we may slowly increase our hours at work and then extend our involvement in recreational hobbies, perhaps not even realizing that we are virtually hiding from our families.

Pat realized what she was up against when she asked her husband to take care of their infant son, Ben, one evening a week so she could get some work done or have some relaxation time without being interrupted. Rich declined with the words, “I’m not really that interested in babies.” By Rich’s reckoning, since he worked all day, the evenings belonged to him, and he shouldn’t have to bother with child-rearing. By the same token, since he worked all week, the weekends were his to relax and recharge. What’s more, since he worked all year, vacations allowed him to pursue hunting and fish-ing or camping. In Rich’s view, watching the kids and taking care of the house were solely Pat’s responsibility.

Meanwhile, Pat saw her job as twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no vacations and little or no help.

Pat blames herself for letting this go on for so long. “I didn’t have negotiating skills or boundaries,” she remembers. “I kept thinking that if I worked harder, it would get better somehow — but it didn’t, and then I’d explode, and that just made things worse. I didn’t know how to confront people in a good way or look for alternatives. For example, I could have hired a babysitter to take the kids to the park while I stayed home. And I should have set better limits on my children, like setting a timer and having a one-hour flat-on-bunk time every day, or having a list of chores to get done and then going to the park. Fortunately, I did start seeing my hours as flexible and Rich’s as inflexible. I decided to start having some fun during the day so I’d feel more rested when Rich came home.”

Shortly after their oldest child turned fifteen, “things began to fall apart. Our house was characterized by arguing, yelling, and business. Our children fell into the classic pattern of rebellious child, overpleasing child, and withdrawn child. Rich was usually gone and didn’t really want to be home — and I had given him every reason not to! I greeted him with a list when he came home, was in a chronically bad mood, and was usually either depressed or angry.”

Pat tried to talk to Rich about becoming interested in family activities (besides hunting and fishing), but Rich responded, “Look, I work hard, I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, and I don’t chase other women. All in all, I’d say I’m a pretty good husband.”

“He did provide well for us,” Pat admits. “In his eyes, that made him a good husband and father. He also went to lots of the kids’ games. He just couldn’t see that he was very cold and distant and that he avoided problems.”

Carving Out a New Path

Eventually Pat realized that, even after years of confrontation and arguing, Rich remained overinvolved at work and relatively absent at home. Now in her early forties, Pat didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with a man who always had his mind somewhere else.

“To be honest,” Pat admits, “I wanted a divorce, but I knew the only biblical grounds for one were if he died or committed adultery or left me. So I prayed that he would die or find someone else.”

Instead,
Pat
found someone else — the Lord, whom she credits with saving her life. “Without God, I would have ended up in jail or the insane asylum.” Pat thought she had always been a Christian because she went to church, but a frustrating experience with her pastor had led her to visit Bethel Church in Richland, Washington, where she encountered a rich, deep, and authentic faith.

At her old church, Christian ity seemed more of a cultural thing; most of the congregation considered those who actually read the Bible as either strange or religious zealots. People just didn’t use phrases like “God spoke to me” or “the Bible says.” Pat started listening to Christian radio, reading the Bible, applying her new pastor’s teaching, reading the works of Dr. James Dobson, and growing spiritually by the hour.

When she started reading about “biblical submission” of wives to husbands, Pat initially felt wary. “That was a radical, new thought for me,” Pat says. “I wasn’t raised that way, and I was more into the women’s liberation philosophy of equality. Furthermore, I felt pretty nervous about submitting to someone who wasn’t reading his Bible. Doing so will either break you or develop your faith in the love and power of God.”

Pat’s church also introduced her to basic Christian virtues, such as being thankful in all circumstances and pursuing love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, and kindness. “I thought I deserved to be cranky; anyone who had to put up with what I had to deal with would do likewise. It was hard to admit that, regardless of circumstances, people can choose their response.”

The Magic Question

Pat began this journey of biblical submission by asking Rich the “magic question.” “Rich,” she said, “what things would you like me to do that I’m not doing?”

Rich’s answer caught Pat completely off guard.

“Somehow I expected him to tell me he would like the house to be cleaner — I could have dealt with that. But he asked me to start preparing meals that the kids would like. I was in shock. I was raised with the notion that there is only one thing worse than a murderer, and that is a picky eater. ‘You got two things to eat: take it or leave it!’ ”

When the kids didn’t enjoy what Pat had made, she’d insist they eat it anyway, creating regular friction and confrontation around the dinner table. Rich just wanted peace. When Rich was a boy, if any of the kids in his family said, “I don’t like this,” they never saw it again. If Pat ever heard that response in her family, she would have been served the same meal, in double portions, for breakfast the next morning!

“I was appalled that Rich let the kids eat dessert if they didn’t like the main course. But over time, he helped me see that there is some wisdom in the fact that people do feel loved when you give them the things they want; and he’s come around to my view, too, that healthy eating and polite table manners also matter.”

Previously, Pat made the kids’ lunches, and that was that. Now, at Rich’s request, she became more aware of what they liked and didn’t like and started customizing their sack lunches. “Before, I had simply ignored what the kids liked. My attitude was, ‘I made it; you eat it.’ ” One of Pat’s daughters liked her sandwiches cut in a fancy way; the other kids didn’t care about such niceties. For the first time, Pat began to regularly accommodate this daughter’s preference, and years later, she felt very glad she had. On a high school retreat, someone asked this daughter to name something that someone had done to make an impact on her life, and she said, “My mom cut my sandwiches like I liked them. It made me feel special and loved.”

“At the time, I thought it was so crazy,” Pat remembers, “but listening to Rich helped me to demonstrate love to my daughter in a way that she could receive it. Also, I remembered as a child that I wanted my sandwiches cut a certain way. It seemed a small thing to ask because it requires no money and almost no time. But my mom refused. I felt stupid and insignificant. Unless I had submitted to my husband, I would have done what my mom had done. I never would have learned to balance practicality with graciousness.”

Pat’s question can transform a marriage. Perhaps you are reading this book because you want to see something change in your husband. It’s always a good exercise in humility, however, to occasionally put the spotlight on yourself. Do you have the spiritual fortitude to put aside your own frustration and disappointment long enough to ask your husband, “What would you like me to do that I’m not doing?”

Notice, Pat didn’t ask this of a perfect husband; she asked it of one with whom she felt very angry, one who seemed to ignore her and the kids.
But she also believed that if change was going to transform her
home
,
it would have to begin with her
.

Let me challenge you to take some time in the next few days to offer that simple, yet potentially marriage-changing, question, “What would you like me to do that I’m not doing?”

“The Last Thing I Wanted Him to Ask”

After getting used to meal changes and seeing some good results, Pat decided to repeat the question. Once again, Rich’s answer astounded her. He replied, “I don’t care if the house is clean; I just want you to be in a good mood when I walk in the door.”

“That was the last thing I wanted him to ask of me,” Pat admits. “I could see how it was theoretically possible, because if all I had to do all day long was to be in a good mood when he walked through the door, I figured I should be able to do that. But complaining, criticizing, and arguing were old, faithful friends. Be in a good mood? That was not me!”

Rich also asked Pat to focus on having more fun with the kids instead of correcting them all the time. Pat’s constant admonitions kept pouring tension into the home, and Rich craved peace.

Beyond these things, Rich felt reluctant to talk about what Pat could do for him, so she thought up a few things on her own. Instead of complaining about Rich’s fishing trips, Pat started going with him. And not just the fishing trips — she’d accompany him to the sporting goods store and even to Rod and Gun Club meetings (“where they eat venison, moose, or bear, and some speaker shares slides of his latest hunt”).

“This was real hard for me because I felt that fishing and hunting was something my husband should give up,” Pat acknowledges. “At first it sort of felt like wanting an alcoholic to give up going to bars, and then going out drinking with him; to me, it felt the same anyway. This was a real idol in his life, and I didn’t want to support it. I
still
think hunting and fishing have a bigger place in his life than they should have, but I finally had to admit, there
is
a difference between fishing and drinking. It wasn’t sinful for me to go fishing with my husband. I had to learn to let God be God and let
him
work on things with Rich.”

After adopting this very difficult transformation, Pat laughs about driving past places now and thinking, “That would be a great place to fish!” “I actually
enjoy
some fishing,” she marvels. “We went to Sun Valley for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and had a great time fly-fishing.”

For both of them, it’s been a long transformation by degrees. “Basically, when I asked Rich what he wanted of me — regarding us — what he wanted sounded most difficult. He just wanted me to be in a good mood, to be more fun, and not to complain about things that don’t get fixed.” Some of those things, Pat now fixes herself. And as for her mood — well, Rich will tell you that she’s a lot more pleasant to live with.

Overwhelming Benefits

Much to Pat’s surprise, when she started focusing on helping Rich instead of fighting and resenting him, he became more involved at home. “Home became a lot more pleasant place to be, so I’m sure that had something to do with it.”

Pat heard two guys on the radio joking about a 1950s home economics textbook that encouraged women to serve their husbands; but that comedic exchange affected Pat in a different way: “Most men, if they’re honest, really would like that in their wives,” she says. And she’s trying to provide some of that service for Rich.

What initiated the first major change in Pat’s marriage? Pat decided to focus on helping Rich. She started having dinner ready when he got home. She went fishing with him instead of complaining about him leaving. She cleared her calendar, cutting out a lot of her outside activities, so that “instead of trying to find fulfill-ment in other things, I could focus my energies on my home and my family.”

Pat doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulty of any of this. “It’s impossibly hard to put so much energy into a home and marriage when you don’t enjoy your home or family. At first, you literally feel like you’re dying. We all crave recognition, power, and honor. Sacrificing and serving seem to move you away from those desires.”