We all have those projects that need to get done as a part of our home maintenance. How do you handle them? Do you make a list for your husband? Do you nag, whine, and complain until it **finally** gets done? Or do you figure out how to do it yourself?
I think that the church has done us women a disservice in some ways. We are taught to be submissive to our husband. And I agree, we need to. But submissiveness does not mean that we are to solely depend on him to do everything. We seem to have some thought that certain tasks are for women and others are for men. Why? Where did these ideas come from?
For some, I am sure the tasks are divided because that's the way our parents did it. For others, tasks are divided as part of the whole courtship and marriage negotiation process, e.g. you take care of the inside of the house, he takes care of the outside, etc. Yet, have you ever considered whether or not you can do some of those things on the list? Especially those things that never seem to get done and you feel like you have been waiting forever.
Here are a couple of examples from just this past month from my own life. We have two new fruit trees: an apple tree and a pear tree. We planted two apple trees last year, but one died over the winter. We replaced it with the pear tree this spring. The other apple tree survived, but only through the grace of God. The poor thing's trunk was pretty much stripped of most of its bark. So this year, we agreed to protect the trunks with the white plastic tubes made for this purpose. Weeks went by and my husband had made several trips to the store to buy them - but kept forgetting. We had our first few snowfalls and still the trunks were not protected. Rather than nag my husband, I chose to buy them myself when I went to the store. And then they sat by the door for another week or so. We were blessed with some warm weather that melted all our snow, so I went ahead and measured the trunks, trimmed the plastic tubes, and put them around the trees. All by my self. Now, obviously, I could have asked my husband - again. And again. We had several discussions about it. Or, I could just take care of it my self. After all, it wasn't too complicated or expensive. Just one more task that is now done.
As a side note, my husband came home from work a few days later and asked when had I put the tubes on the tree? He was going to do it but forgot. I just smiled and said don't worry about, it was no big deal. In other words, I was happy that it was done and my husband was pleasantly surprised that it was done. A win-win scenario for me.
The second example was not so easy for me. We have had a leaking bathroom for a little while now. Leaking as in every time someone showered, my back foyer and downstairs bathroom experienced a flood of rain. My husband reviewed the situation and determined that we needed to recaulk the tub. About a week later, he even found a tube of caulk in our home repair supplies. And the caulk made it upstairs, where it sat. For more than a week. He even set a day to do it, since you need to let it cure for 12 hours. But it didn't get done.
Again, I could have nagged, whined, or complained. Or I could access "YouTube University" and see how hard it could be. It seemed easy enough to me. Remove the old caulk. Clean the surface extremely well. Put on the new caulk.
Well, I did not anticipate that the wall would disintegrate with the removal of the caulk. So here I stood with the caulk removed from around the tub and a wall that was crumbled to a meshy frame. Not what I had anticipated. Again, I had a choice. I could leave it for my husband to take care of when he got home after working a full ten hour day. Or I could try to fix it myself.
I loaded the kids in the car and we went to the hardware store. I bought some more caulk since the tube we had was not enough to finish the job. And the sales clerk helped me come up with a solution to fix the disintegrated wall - without renovating the entire bathroom. I even picked up some extra caulking materials for the base of the tub. By the time my husband came home from work, the tub and surrounding area was pretty much caulked, repaired, and as water proof as I could make it.
My husband was happy with the results. It has now become one more project done, albeit temporarily since there is an entire bathroom renovation on the list. But we can live with it for now. And all it cost was my time and a few supplies.
My point is that the Proverbs 31 woman appears to be fairly self-reliant. We do not read of her asking her husband to do anything for her. If we are going to be emulating the Proverbs 31 woman, then we too should learn to be a bit more self-reliant. What's the worst that can happen?
Sure, you might botch the project. Oops, lesson learned. Your husband might even have to take over and finish it - be a hero helping a damsel in distress sort of thing. I don't know why, but my husband actually likes it when he can fix something I have been having trouble with. You might discover bigger problems than you anticipated. You may learn a new skill or find something that you like. I really don't see a downside, unless you do something that costs thousands of dollars.
I recommend that you start small - work on the low cost, low impact projects that have been driving you crazy. Patching a few holes. Painting a room. Replacing a cracked faceplate. Replacing light bulbs. Instead of looking at your list from a priority perspective, look at it from a level of experience needed perspective and see what you can do. I promise you will benefit in more ways than you think. Besides, learning something new is always a better choice than nagging - at least in my experience it has been.
Be blessed.
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