Some time ago it became my painful duty to listen to a statement from the lips of a young husband and father read from a letter by his wife. She said she felt that since the day of their marriage he had occupied the spotlight, while she had been kept in the shadow. She had had to lay aside the exercise of her nursing profession while devoting herself to the rearing of their child. As the young man read us these things he had a hard time controlling his grief. He said he felt as if an atomic bomb had been dropped into his mental camp. His wife had gone home, and was plying her profession, most likely at the expense of their delightful, promising three-year-old heir.
While groping for appropriate words with which to assuage this young man's sorrow, and trying to help him to a solution of his personal problem, I could but think of the simple account of the creation of Eve, the mother of all living. The Lord had said :
"It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an help meet [appropriate, Spanish Version] for him. . . . And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man."
In line with this age-old account of the origin of woman is that very appropriate adage, "As unto the bow the cord is. so unto the man is woman though she bends him, she obeys him." What would the bow be without the cord, or the cord without the bow? The inference is strong : The Creator from the beginning intended that man and woman should meet life's problems together, the one complementing the other to such an extent that neither would have pre-eminence over the other.
When man returns from his daily toil he requires the solace of a quiet, peaceful home environment, in order to regain his composure and replenish his strength to go out and face the world again. It is difficult to see how this can be possible where the wife and mother, together with the natural bread winner, is out facing the stern realities of life. She is in as great need of solace as is her husband; but neither is in a position to help the other. The existence of children complicates the problem.
Some wives take a very detached attitude toward their husband's work. In a foreign country this may be manifested by a lack of interest in learning the language of the people among whom she is living. This lack, in turn, operates toward isolating her from the society of those around her, and leads to a feeling of frustration. Frustration finally results in a positive dislike of those among whom she and her husband have been called to labor.
Surely, if there is one place on earth where the man and the woman must work together, it is in a foreign country. Without the language the missionary wife cannot enter with her husband into his work, be it in visiting the interested from home to home or in directing the children's division of the Sabbath school or leading out in the Junior Missionary Volunteer Society. She cannot even perform adequately the gracious role of hostess to her husband's friends and callers. Instead of being an "appropriate helper" she becomes to him but a costly ornament of doubtful value, in a foreign land. After a while his friends may conceivably begin to shun his home. At the time of the church elections, when her name is mentioned by someone not in the "know," there is a pained silence until some brave soul suggests someone else—someone's wife who has been willing to pay the price of effective leadership.
At the other extreme there is the overanxious wife who is not willing to let her husband make his own decisions. She hovers over him at social gatherings, and when things do not seem to be going right, "protects" him by sallies of doubtful wit at inopportune moments. She smiles and fawns upon his superiors. She makes herself "useful" in the office where he works, helping him with work which it is his secretary's duty to perform. She continues to do this until his superiors have to take action that only employees are expected to work in the office. Instead of backing him up, she seems to try to go before him and chase the lions out of the way. Needless to say, a wife of this sort can do more to ruin a man's chances than anything in this world.
In Patriarchs and Prophets we read: "Eve was created from a rib taken from the side of Adam, signifying that she was not to control him as the head, nor to be trampled under his feet as an inferior, but to stand by his side as an equal, to be loved and protected by him. A part of man, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, she was his second self ; showing the close union and the affectionate attachment that should exist in this relation."—Page 46.
The marriage relation is sometimes referred to as the family "tie." However, in view of existing social relations, the word becomes an anomaly. Too often the parents seek their own amusement and occupations, and the children, abandoned by their unnatural parents, like Topsy, are allowed to "just grow."
Again, in Your Home and Health, by Ellen G. White, we read: "Neither the husband nor the wife should merge his or her individuality in that of the other. Each has a personal relation to God. . . Neither the husband nor the wife should attempt to exercise over the other an arbitrary control."—Page 30, 31.
God intended the home to be the unit of society. The father is its high priest and king; the mother, its queen and guiding spirit ; the children, its happy subjects. "As goes the home," one has wisely said, "so go the church and the nation."
Happy is the man who realizes that the home is the source of his strength. He is never any stronger or any weaker than he is in his own home. And doubly happy the wife and mother who looks upon the home as her privileged realm, and the children as her special charge from God the Father. Show me a great man, and, even though she be lurking in the shadows of the unknown, I will show you a great woman behind him. It may be his mother, or it may be his wife, his sister, his daughter, a kinswoman, or perhaps his fiancée.
The degree of civilization of a nation is gauged exactly by the position of the woman and the child. The more devoted the woman is to her home, and consequently to her husband and children, the more nearly she meets God's ideal.
Mothers and wives, beware lest in spending your time plying your "profession," even though a high one, you destroy the foundations of your own home through neglect. God give us wives and mothers who count it their highest privilege to be homemakers and character builders for eternity, rather than mere practitioners of lesser "professions!"
