Helpmeet to Whom?

A few years ago I got a hold of a copy of the book by Debi Pearl Created to be His Helpmeet. I had heard a great deal about it on blogs and in homeschool groups. I have to confess to not really reading it, but simply skimming through the letters that were sent in and the answers given to them. I didn't directly disagree with anything said, but the book in general put my guard up, so I just set it aside and forgot about it.

This spring we received some boxes of hand-me-downs, though often there is more than clothing included in the boxes we get. There was a box of sewing materials which I gave to my oldest daughter. What I didn't know was that a copy of Mrs. Pearl's book was underneath the material, and my daughter took it upon herself to read it without permission (not only do we have a general rule that the kids are not to read books without our permission, we have a specific reading moratorium on this child because of the consequences of her reading books we had forbidden and the spiritual warfare that ensued). We found out this latest disobedience when she went 'off the reservation' and we found her journal on her bed- a signal that she wanted us to read it. In it she talked about how awful I was as a wife and how she wasn't going to be anything like me when she got married. She was instead going to do what Debi Pearl recommended in her book. So I had to take the time to go back and read the entire book.

Obviously if you have read anything here before you know I am a Bible literalist and agree with what it has to say on every topic- including the submission of wives to their husbands. I am glad to know that so many women are embracing the truth of the family as the Father designed it. I won't even go into the typical "I don't agree with everything the author says" because that is a given with any book aside from the Word. In fact, I don't want to write a review at all since I am busy packing and taking care of moving details. Instead, I found a blog that covers my concerns with the book in detail, so I'll leave this link as my opinion on the whole matter.

I do want to say as a blanket statement that marriage is never one size fits all. I found myself defending my actions to a girl who cannot/will not obey or honor her parents, yet she is already sure that she will be a better wife than I am because she will not 'tell her husband what to do'. And while I don't want to go into detail about what she is referencing (gleaned by laying with her ear to the wall and listening in on our every conversation) I will say with confidence that I do reverence and yield to my husband. What a girl who has never been married cannot understand is that each marriage is unique. If a man is aware enough to know that he is prone to melancholy and he asks his wife to 'snap him out of it' when he begins to doubt his abilities or his faith wavers, she is not only obedient to do so, she is loving! Obviously there is a right and wrong way to approach such a matter, but it is not for anyone else to determine her 'taking initiative' is wrong (whether it be the author of a marriage book or a girl looking for anything on which to judge her mother). I could give several other examples, but the point would still be that as long as a man and woman pattern their marriage after the Word, nobody else on earth has the right to judge that marriage.

Created to be His Helpmeet? Yes. But who has the right to determine what that should look like besides the man to whom I am helper?

PS- I would like to recommend instead The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace. We did a study on this at church and it was much more balanced and helpful.