Changing

About a month ago, the mother of one of my students shared with me something that I feel is going to change my life.

I have been teaching her pre-teen daughter for about 2 years now, and just started teaching her early elementary aged son this winter. They are a sweet homeschooling family and I have enjoyed getting to know them over the last few years. Ever since I have known them both the mother and the daughter always wear skirts or dresses. I have never asked them about this practice; I knew homeschoolers that were that conservative when I was growing up, so I assumed that they were part of that segment of the homeschooling population.

One day about a month ago, this mother saw that I had a copy of A Wife After God's Own Heart  by Elizabeth George on my desk. I had just purchased it for when I finished the study I was working on, so I had not started it yet. She commented on it and said she had really appreciated that book when she read it a few years ago. Then she said, "You know what really changed our relationship for the better? I gave my husband back the pants in our family." She laughed, then said, "Literally!" She went on to tell me about how she is such a dominant personality that wearing a dress or a skirt each day is a literal reminder for her that she is to be a helper to her husband rather than being in charge. "It seemed like a very extreme change, but for me and for our family, it was worth it." She told me that it is not just that reminder to keep her personality in check that has blessed her family, but that her husband became more affectionate with her, treated her even more like a lady than he had before, and that she feels more feminine when she is in a skirt or a dress. In turn, she works hard to not nitpick her husband, to think before she says everything on her mind, and to approach her husband with respect rather than accusations.

What spoke to me about her story, was how she made this change for herself-- it was not something that her husband asked of her, or that her church suggested, or anything like that. She was working on the part of her personality that she felt held her back in her relationships with God, her husband and her family, and she made a step that she felt would genuinely work for her, and it did. Drastic, yes, but it definitely yielded the results she wanted, plus some.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to have a place to hash out the various parts of my life that I try to balance. I have two growing active boys with their own individual needs, my husband who is working a crazy overnight schedule so that he can go back to college but still help to provide for our family, my desire to be the homemaker for our family, my business and taking care of myself.

I am working to make changes in myself and some of them may be drastic, but my prayers are that they will be the right things to bless my family, my husband, myself, and my relationship with God. I am a Work in Progress.