Mommy Homework: Love Dares for Your Sons

A few of years ago my son asked me why I would butter his dad’s bread and yet he had to do his own.

My answer to that was that I was dad’s wife!!

My sons decision to have a wife was made in that instant! He too wanted a wife who would butter his bread. My son was about 8 at the time!!

This became a family joke, but it also had a serious side……………..

Each time there was bread to be buttered we thought and talked about his wife and often held her up in prayer.

One day he asked me “what if my wife won’t butter my bread?” This lead to a conversation about reasons why his wife many not want to or be able to butter his bread.
Like having a different ethnic background, a Pakistani wife for instance might want to give him chapattis instead which need no buttering - so we prayed that if his wife to be came from a family who followed a different religion both her and her family would be saved.
Or having a physical impairment which lead us to pray for the health, well being and protection from accidents of his future wife. It also lead on to a conversation about taking up the strain of doing things which your spouse was unable to do and the attitude you should have to doing it - with a servants heart and not with a “martyr’s” moan.

One day my oldest daughter had come for dinner and the “bread thing” came up. She was quite disgusted that I was bringing up such a “chauvinist”.
We then explained to her that although a wife may choose to do many things in order to be a helpmeet to her husband his role was much harder….
As marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church a husband has to be prepared to lay down his life for his wife.
Not many husbands lay down there lives all in one go, but being a good husband is a matter of laying down your life one moment at a time………..

My son has learned that he can start loving his wife before he ever meets her and as a sign of that love at Easter last year at the age of 11 he put on a silver ring and took a vow of purity. One day when he replaces it with a wedding ring he can give the silver ring to his wife as a reminder of the love he has had for her ever since he first decided he wanted a wife and started to pray for her.

There are many things I want him to know about how to treat his wife, but I know that if he holds her up in prayer then the Lord can teach him far more than I ever could.

P.S.
I have prayed for her along with him but I have also prayed for myself……That when the one who is to be his helpmeet comes along I will be given the grace to let him go - so that he may leave us and cleave to her as the Lord intends!

We do not know who she will be but we have the confidence that God has made her as the perfect partner for my son.