Under the Umbrella
A husband is the head of his wife, as Christ is the head and the Savior of the church . . .
Eph. 5:22-24 (CEV)
A few years ago, after hinting for several months, my husband finally informed me that it was time for us to “down-size” and sell our lovely home. We had talked about this time over the years but it had always seemed a long way off. My house! The one I had watched emerge ten years earlier from a muddy hole, the one I had known intimately while it was still a stack of bricks and boards and floor plans, the one with my colors and my style and my quirky touches! My husband had planted beautiful trees and shrubs and annuals that greeted us with exuberance each spring and changed colors month after month. Our grandchildren played hide-and-seek in the cool tall grasses in our yard.
For our first thirty years we had lived where the military and succeeding jobs placed us. This house held our dreams. We had prayed the day it was finished that God would use it as he pleased to bless all who might seek refuge there. For ten years the refrigerator and the rooms were constantly full. Often several meetings would be held there at once. Every child who visited would run upstairs to the place they called “my room” where games and toys and books and videos filled the shelves, and large prints of carousel horses covered the walls.
Sell the house? To me it was like losing my identity, my place, my purpose. My heart was filled with sadness and apprehension. Since I knew I could not, in my heart, agree with this plan I decided to simply obey. Each day I did the tasks that were required that day. I teach wives that obedience is God’s provision for us. He covers our husbands like an umbrella, covering the head. When we obey we are under the cover of His protection. If we disobey we are out from under that covering.
The new condo is comfortable and beautiful. It is a convenient place to live and fits the demands of our current life overseeing the care of our aging parents. In recent months the media has carried the disquieting news of defaults, foreclosures and falling housing prices. I realize how fortunate we were to have sold our house and purchased our new home while the market was still strong and viable. I also realize that if I had been able to prevail upon my husband and convince him to delay this transition for a few more years we would be right in the middle of this unsettling situation. My husband, under God’s protective covering, moved ahead when neither of us wanted to, prompted, no doubt, by the hand of God. I thank him regularly for taking on the awesome job of head of our family and leading us even when to task is not an easy one.
“God is engineering a master plan for good. Only He sees the end from the beginning.”
Elizabeth Elliot
