She makes me feel like a hero
[eltdf_dropcaps type=”normal” color=”” background_color=””]One[/eltdf_dropcaps] prime virtue of a woman is meekness. Here is where her strength lies. Meekness is willingness to submit to another, not because the person being submitted to is worthy of it, but because it is commanded by God. Elisabeth Elliot had these insightful words to say about this subject:
No woman who has not learned to master herself can be trusted to submit willingly to her husband. And that word willingly means that she does not merely resign herself to something she cannot avoid. It means that by an act of her own will she gives herself. With gladness she submits because she understands that voluntary submission is her very strength [emphasis mine]. Because it is the thing asked of her by her Creator, it is the thing that which assures her of fulfilment. It is the task assigned her which, willingly performed, actually strengthens the husband in his weakness.[1]
I would like to write about my wife Buya Ennie Phiri. One of the many virtues she has, which spring from the honest truth that she is ‘a woman who fears the Lord’, is that she is teachable and willing to learn from me as her husband. She does this out of her fear for Christ as her Lord. She has made a very conducive environment for me to teach and lead us in the word. She has encouraged me to study and read so that I can be competent to lead and teach our family in the truth of Scripture.
She shows her interests in asking me questions of things she does not understand in her own private reading of the bible, or from the sermon at church. When we are doing our family time of prayer and study of the scriptures, she is keen on either asking or answering questions regarding what the scriptures are saying. She earnestly prays with me and for me that we may live out the things we read and study in the scriptures. Much as she is a very intelligent woman, she makes me feel like I’m the genius between us.
In her field of expertise, and in things she does best, I run to her for counsel and wisdom. She has indirectly taught me much in life by her virtue of meekness as seen in her submission. Her willingness to learn from me makes me feel like the hero, when actually she is the hero. Have you ever wondered why in Proverbs 31:23 the husband of the virtuous woman is known at the gates (the gate was the centre of town life, where legal business was transacted), when he sits with the elders of the land? Well, like the old saying goes; behind every successful man is his woman. ‘No man succeeds without a good woman behind him’ (Harold Macmillan, 1963).
[1] Let me be a woman, p. 325
By Mas Phiri