By Edward C. Lee
As I sit at my computer writing this, the hour is late. I have missed three different deadlines, my son won’t go to sleep and my wife wants to talk after we just spent a great weekend away at a bed and breakfast where I was forbidden from using my computer (life could be worse – smile).
It is under this reality of feeling pulled between family and professional responsibility that I am coming to understand a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He is one of those deep brothers that makes your head hurt with big words that he uses at a rhythmic pace that makes it tough or at least painful to keep up with him – like Dr. Cornell West or Eric Dyson when they are in their flow. But one of the things that he said, that I actually understood, has stuck with me over the last few weeks. It was his use of the actual definition of a husband in explaining our responsibility as husbands.
I had never really thought much about what the dictionary definition of a husband is, and I am not so sure many of my male friends have either. Typically, in my every day conversation, I have just thought or referred to a husband as a man that is married to a woman. Which, when used as a noun, is pretty much on target. However, what my friend was reminding me of then, and I am finding profoundly practical at this moment, was that there is also a use of the word husband that is a verb.
In other words being a husband is more than just a title but it also requires specific actions. As the dictionary explains it, the word husband is the result of combining of the words “house” and “band.”
So by definition, even when I am tired, frustrated, unfulfilled or busy, my job is to band, bind and tie, the house together. So the pressing need to complete my business responsibilities is going to have to lose out momentarily to the needs of my wife and son, because right now my presence is needed to tie this family together.
A house-band, distinctly different from a man only labeled as a husband carries out three primary actions – by definition: Steward, Manager and Cultivator.
He acts as a steward. A husband acts out of a sense of responsibility to “take care of” or “oversee” the needs of his wife. It is a recognition of the need to be the one that holds the job of arranging the household structure in a way that leads to the betterment of his wife.
He acts as a manager. A husband does not dictate, nor seek to control. Rather he engages his wife in ways that get the best out of her. At times that is through silence, other times that is through compassion, but at all times a husband manages in patience and love. As I said in a previous posting, a husband and father must know the people that are under his care to effectively manage them.
He acts as a cultivator. A husband prepares his wife to develop into her fullest potential. By definition cultivating refers to breaking up the ground and preparing it to bring forth a crop. In my marriage I am not trying to produce corn or vegetables but as a husband I want to prepare and position my wife into all she is intended to be. I hear an offensive tone in there. But let me clarify, I am not saying in arrogance that I make my wife or deserve the credit for her accomplishments or strengths. I am, however, saying that just as she is striving to make me a better man, as a husband, I am concerned about her growth in every facet of life. As a cultivator I am redefining myself to be about making my wife’s life better and stronger, not weaker and emptier through the carrying out of my own ambitions and agendas without regard to the needs of my wife.
Understanding the three primary aspects of the definition of a house-band moves me away from a life focussed only on me and make me more concerned about taking care of, managing and cultivating the best of my wife. I suspect that most of us as husbands have thought about these things in general terms. But as I have been thinking in more concrete terms of my role as a husband I have seen areas where I have not lived up to the definition completely. So I am redefining, my actions toward my family so that I am not just a noun with a title but as a verb – a man of action for my wife and family.
How about you BMWK – as either a husband or wife, what is your definition of a husband?
Edward is an ordained minister, host of the blog elevateyourmarriage.com, and author of two first of their kind marriage books, Husbands, Wives, God: Introducing the Marriages of the Bible to Your Marriage and his new book, Husbands, Wives, God – Weekly Devotions: 52 Weeks of Relationship Enriching Devotions. Follow Edward on his blog or on Facebook at Husbands, Wives, God.