How Wives Aid Their Husbands

Mr. Herbert Armstrong said that he felt his wife was 50% of his ministry. I believe anyone who's been in the full-time ministry would say the same thing about their wife, likewise. However, when you look at a minister's wife, they're not ordained. They don't preach. They don't do Bible studies. They don't do funerals. They don't do weddings. So you ask the question, how could there be 50% of a minister's ministry? Many times they seem to be the invisible 50%. But believe me, they are. And I know in our particular case, Norma has certainly been 50% of my ministry. Many ministers' wives feel like they come out very short and that they don't measure up to what they would like to do. There's a tremendous amount of pressure, tremendous amount of stress, hardship on ministers' wives that they go through that no one really even stops to think about because they have no idea of what they do except keep house.

But generally, a minister's wife is the secretary. She answers the phone a lot of the times. She takes care of the office. She looks after the children. And of course, if you have children at home, she's involved in visiting, running the circuit as far as driving between the church. She has to work on her marriage, like everybody else does. She has concerns about the members, their lives, their problems, their difficulties. Women tend to carry these things a little more even than men do. So it's not like water running off the ducts back. It's something that they think about.

And they share in their husband's ministry, we are a team. It's not a matter of just one person doing something. It's a matter of working together as a team. Sometimes a person may think, well, because they're not out in public, not holding down the job 8 to 5, that they don't have a lot of stress. And that's simply not true.

I think all of us need to learn how valuable our wives are. What a tremendous blessing they are to us, and how much they contribute to us, how much they assist us.

The job of a minister's wife, getting back to that, is a lonely job. When I say lonely, a lot of ministers' wives experience loneliness. Why?

Well, simply because of a lack of real, close, intimate friends. You will find that over the years, a local church area, you have families who are here. Some of you have been here for 30-40 years.

You get to know one another. You've been friends with each other over a long period of time. You're very close, very intimate. You know everything. You've seen each other's children grow up.

But in the ministry, we're always constantly moving. Life is unsettling. There are very few roots that you can put down.

When I say constantly moving, Norm and I, I don't think we're too untypical, but we've had 12 major moves since we've been married.

And within each one of those major moves, we've moved a couple of times.

As I said, life is unsettling. I remember very vividly back in 1983 when our oldest son, Arthur, took off for Ambassador College.

The next day, we took off from Mount Pocono. We were living in Chicago at the time. So he goes to college. We go to Mount Pocono. The next time he came home, there was a house that we were living in he'd never seen before.

So for him to say this was home, it wasn't home to him. He'd never seen it before. He came back the next summer to work, and we were in a different house.

So that wasn't home either. He never came back. He knew after this.

There are a lot of emotional stresses that take place because you're always having to face tragic situations in the ministry.

When I say tragic, there are funerals, there are deaths, there are sicknesses. There are all kinds of problems that come up that have to be dealt with.

And it's not just the man dealing with it. It is, again, a team effort. It's emotionally draining on a woman.

It also tests your mental health because you become a wife, you're a mother, you're an assistant to the minister.

I remember the early years of our marriage, the first three or four years we lived in a car.

You were required to get 20-plus visits a week. That was a requirement.

So you had to be out visiting all the time. In fact, when we first came out in the ministry, the minister said, Make a list. We didn't have computers back then. So we copied the list. He said, Go Visit.

So we started visiting with the people.

We were required to visit all day Sunday, half a day Monday, the other half we were in the office typing up those 20 visits, because at that time, Mr. Meredith required every one of us to type every visit up.

And you had to fill cards out. And page after page after page of what you did, we'd send that in to him. Supposedly he read all of that.

And then you'd visit Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, half a day Friday.

And then you'd come roaring in, try to get ready for the Sabbath, prepare a sermon, and then drive the next day around the circuit, come back Saturday night.

And at that time, there was always baptism counseling, baptism social visits, something going on on Saturday night.

We've talked about it. The first ten years of our lives are sort of a blur. We can't remember anything personal that we did.

We don't remember ever shopping. We don't ever remember going to a movie. We don't remember eating out. We remember visiting.

We remember running the circuit, clubs, things of that nature. But as far as just your own personal life, that simply wasn't there.

Our first circuit where I was pastor was four hours, actually four and a half hours, to go from Wheeling to Charleston.

And at that time, when we finished that circuit up, we had three children, and you'd throw them in the back seat, and off you would go.

We'd have club every other week in Charleston, and that was Saturday evening. It would always run to ten o'clock.

You'd get away from somewhere between ten thirty and eleven, drive home. Just add four and a half hours to that.

And it wasn't uncommon for us to arrive home two thirty to three thirty. It's been as late as four o'clock sometimes, getting home.

And you wonder why I look the way I do, as far as that is concerned. But, you know, she was always there.

For forty-something years, my wife has always run the circuit. The only time she didn't was when she was sick or one of the boys was sick.

Our boys were always required to run the circuit. Until they left home, they went to both churches.

And it wasn't a matter of if they wanted to go to both churches. They just went to both churches.

And that was just the routine that we had. A woman becomes a little more emotionally involved in those things.

And I think as a result of that, over the years, many of our ministers' wives have had physical problems, health problems, as a result of the stress and just being constantly on the go.

But having said that, I think all of us, if you're married, go through difficulties, go through trials, have less than perfect circumstances that you're faced with.

But we're all faced with these type of situations.

And most of us here, who are of a legal age, have either been married at one time, or are still married, or planning to get married.

Generally, you're somewhere in that area.

And I explained a little bit about how NARMA helps me with the work and the job that I do.

But if you ever stop to ask yourself, how does your wife help you? How does she aid you or help you? How does a woman add to her husband's stature?

How many women as wives feel that they fall short of what they should be doing?

A joyous, stable marriage is a precious thing. It's a precious thing between the couple and in God's sight.

It does not happen accidentally. It takes caring. It takes sharing, dedicated work of two people, who deeply want a happy home.

So we want to take a look at that today. How does a wife, how does a woman, aid her husband?

How does she assist him? Let's go back to Genesis 2, verse 18.

Genesis 2, verse 18, where we read that the Lord God said, It's not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

I think the King James Version says, I'll make a help-meet. But here, a helper comparable to him.

So I want you to notice, it says, that it's not good for the man to be alone.

I think most of us realize that that's not the best state.

Now when it says here a helper, the word helper here means, in the Hebrew, an aid, a helper, an aider, or a supporter. That she is there to aid, help, and to support her husband. That's the reason why God made her. That's the reason why God made women the way they are, because they are to be a complement. And as it says here, a helper comparable to him.

The word comparable here means, complementary to him, or compatible to him.

Man is not the great, all-conquering hero, self-sufficient, need of nothing. Rather, we need help badly on many occasions. And we need assistance. And God made a union to be that way. Notice what the New American commentary writes about Genesis 2.18. God has created human life to have fellowship with him, but also to be a social entity, building relationships with other human beings. Man will not live until he loves, gives himself away to another on his own level.

The commissioning of man and woman to rule over the good earth in Genesis 1.28 involves procreation. And only together can they achieve their destiny. This unity, however, is not merely sexual. It involves sharing spiritual, intellectual, emotional dimensions as well. Jewish sentiment notes this. So here is sort of a proverb, a Jewish approach. Whoever has no wife exists without goodness, without a helpmate, without joy, without blessing, without atonement, without well-being, without a full life.

Indeed, such a one reduces the representation of the divine image on earth. So God has created an aide, a helper, an assistant, a supporter. In other words, he's created a woman, and she adds to our lives, man. We need to realize that. Your wife adds to you, and she helps you in areas where you are deficient. Now, the same thing can be said of a man helping his wife. But we're talking here about how women aid men today, so we'll try to focus in that direction. A woman was created to share a man's life, to share a man's love, to respond to him, to encourage him, to help him. She helps to supply what we lack. And as the old saying goes, two halves make a whole, and that's what we have here. One half is a man, one half is a woman. Together they make a whole. Back in Psalm 121 and verse 1, sometimes there are those, especially the feminists in our society, who read what the Bible says about a woman being a helper to her husband, and they take great umbrage against that. That upsets them. But let's notice the same word being used concerning God. Here it says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from which comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. So God is our helper. He helps us. He assists us. He supports us. He aids us when we need help. And in the spiritual realm, we have no doubt that we need help. We recognize it. We realize our deficiencies. We realize how much we need God's Spirit. We need inspiration and guidance. Well, we need it in the physical realm also, and perhaps it's not as easily recognized there. God has made a woman so that her mind, her heart, and her enthusiastic and sharing in the ideas and hopes of the man she loves, that she wants to make him a success. Many things we do, we do twice as well because of the help our wives give us. Twice as effective because we have someone there assisting us, aiding us, helping us. A woman helps to balance a man out. We're not always as balanced as we should be. In fact, when I got married, I was nowhere near being balanced, and I'm still seeking for that equilibrium. But a wife helps to balance her husband and a man his wife likewise. Back in verse 24 of Genesis 2 again, Genesis 2.24, we read, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, shall be joined, or as the margin says, he shall cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So we are to become one flesh. The word cleave here, or join, means to be glued together, to stick together. And so God didn't create marriage for us to go boing in different directions. Well, God says that we should stick together, and we should be glued together, we should be joined together. And in so doing, we become greater in that. So what does your wife bring to your marriage? If you ever stop to ask yourself that question, you're married, here she is. What does she bring to your marriage? Well, women bring many things, but let's go through some of these today. She brings, first of all, a focus on people. She brings a focus on people. Men tend to focus on things. Men tend to focus on activities.

Women focus on relationships and attitudes. They have a different look at things. In Romans 12 and verse 15, we have a scripture here that applies to everyone, but I think it also describes how a woman reacts.

Romans 12 and verse 15, Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Well, this is a command from God. When somebody is blessed, we should rejoice with them. We should be happy and excited. And when they go through something, we should be able to weep.

It's harder for us to do that, isn't it, men? If you've ever been sitting on the couch with your wife and you're watching a movie and it's emotional, and all in one, you look over at your wife and these big tears are coming down her face. You wonder, what's wrong? What's going on here? And she's crying. She's involved in this movie.

You're sitting there like a knot on the log. You may get a little lump, but you're not, certainly, crying. And you begin to realize that she's a little different than you are. A woman tends to go up and down more emotionally. Now, a lot of men look on that as criticism. She's always up and down. You have to realize that God created women. They have a little thing called hormones. Those hormones work in a monthly cycle, and they involve a woman, and they're going to involve her emotions. And so, we as men need to be a little understanding and understand the makeup.

A woman is able to share people's problems, feel as they feel. A woman rejoices in her husband's triumphs, and she weeps with him and his failures. So, she's able to share, when you're blessed, prospering, things are going well, she shares in that. When they're not going well, she has to share in that also.

She's constantly there to bolster you, balance, help in every possible way. I can remember when we came out of Ambassador College. You come out in the field, and you're supposed to be ready to pastor. I'm 22, my wife's 21, and we come out to Pittsburgh. I knew very little about one half of humanity, as the feminine half of humanity, because I'd never been married. Even though I had sisters, they were sort of yucky, and they were there.

They weren't boys. They weren't interested in what I was interested in. But I remember going to one of the first funerals we had. I'm standing there, and I'm sort of dumb. What do I say? I had no idea what to say. How am I going to encourage this person? Well, here's my wife, and she comes up, and she's exuding empathy. She's exuding sympathy, puts her arm around, gives a hug, starts talking.

I'm standing back here. Why can't I do that? Well, why I couldn't do that is I didn't know how to do it. I'd never had grown up with it. I began to learn from her. I began to learn how to relate to other people and realize that I was certainly deficient. Now, all of you can understand that. I grew up around here, and I grew up out on a farm.

I could relate to chickens, pigs, cows, horses, football, sports, but I had difficulty in the other. But I really think without my wife, I would not have learned many of those lessons, and I would not have learned them as quickly and as deeply. I'm sure over a period of years, I may have picked some of them up. Many times, men lack sensitivity to others.

We're not as sensitive as we should be when dealing with others. When men talk, they look over their shoulders. You're talking to this fellow over here. Look over your shoulders. Women face-to-face, heart-to-heart is the way they communicate. Now, let me quote from an article from Michael G. Connor, titled, Understanding the Differences in Men and Women.

It says, women have four times as many brain cells or neurons connecting the right to the left side of the brain. This latter finding provides physical evidence that supports the observation that men rely easily and more heavily on their left brain to solve one problem, one step at a time. Women have more efficient access to both sides of their brains and therefore greater use of their brains. So what that means is that right side, left side, right side, more the emotional left side, more the logic.

Men are over here very logical. And they're taking one thing, one step at a time. And they're analyzing it. Women are over here. And here are men, as it says here that women have four times as many neurons connecting the two sides of brains together. Here's a man, left side, right side, connecting. Here's a woman. See, she's got a lot more pathways across here that are connecting. So therefore, when she begins to think about a situation, the right side is engaged and the left side is engaged.

Now sometimes, I'm not saying all men are this way. Obviously, you speak in generalities. But believe me, there are enough of us who are this way that it certainly does apply. It says women can focus on more than one problem at one time and frequently prefer to solve problems through multiple activities at a time. Nearly every parent has observed how young girls find the conversation of young boys boring. Young boys express confusion, would rather play sports than participate actively in a conversation between five girls who are discussing as many as three subjects at once.

So here's a five-year-old girl, maybe, and she's got her friends, and they start talking. I know they're just talking away. Here's a boy. He's there. What's he want to do? He wants to join in the conversation and talk with them about how he's feeling, about his emotions and what happened to him. No, let's go out and play in the dirt. Let's climb a tree. Let's go play sports. Let's run around the house. Let's do something. That's a boy. He has no idea about talking.

He'd rather be out doing something. So as men, many times we're incomplete, and our wives assist. Our wives hate us in these areas. Also, women bring a special feminine insight into our lives. Mr. Herbert Armstrong said that he felt his wife had special insight and able to read people. Women spend more time analyzing people.

They have an instinct or insight to that. I know my wife does. I can many times walk into a room, walk out, and my wife will say, Did you notice the pink dress that somebody had on? Did they have a pink dress on? Or did you see the shoes? Well, I noticed that there were four walls and there was a floor. I think there was a ceiling. But as far as everything else, it sort of went by me. Well, a lot of times women are able to see things and be very perceptive. They're very sensitive.

They can tell what others are wearing. If people are discouraged or if they're down or if they're caddy, they're very sensitive to those things. Quoting again from the article by Michael G. Connor, he says, Such activities include sports, competition, outdoor activities, sexual activities that are decidedly active and physical. While both men and women can appreciate and engage in these activities, they often have preferential differences.

Women, on the other hand, feel closer and validated through what? Guess what? Communication, talking, and dialogue, and intimate sharing of experience and emotional content and personal perspective. Many men tend to find such sharing and involvement uncomfortable, if not overwhelming.

So for a woman, why is a woman more sensitive? Well, because when she's building relationships, her relationships are built upon knowing the other person, what the other person has gone through, their difficulties or problems. They share things. Men share, you're going to play basketball this week or when's the last time you played golf? You listen to a bunch of men talking. How's the car? What's your job? They're talking about what? Activities? About things? Whereas women, a lot of times you'll see them talking about what they're going through. And so therefore, they express it in that way. God is the creator. He designed us. He created the differences in men and women. And so you find that men and women are different. God intended that. But we are to complement and to help one another, so where we're deficient, the other comes in.

Women are tremendous help when it comes to childbearing. I know that Norma was, and we had our five boys.

Nothing got by her. Any little thing that happened, just like that, bang! She knew exactly what was going on, and she would say, you need to take care of that. And I would say, what? And then you see that? What? Well, then she would explain it to me. Okay, yeah, I guess that did happen. I need to take care of that.

Well, without her there, they would get away with a whole lot that I would never pick up on. Again, many times we would be failures or we would come up short without our wife. And so you find that they aid, they assist us in so many ways.

Women generally have very good insight, very good awareness. Again, quoting from Michael G. Conner's article. It says, men and women approach problems with similar goals, but with different considerations. While men and women can solve problems equally well, their approach and their process are often quite different. For most women, sharing and discussing a problem presents an opportunity to explore, deepen, or strengthen the relationship with the person they're talking with. Women are usually more concerned about how problems are solved than merely solving the problem itself. For women, solving a problem can produce impact where they feel closer and less alone or whether they feel distant or less connected. So when women are talking to themselves, they're talking about problems and they're helping one another, they go away feeling closer to that person because that person has shared himself or herself with them. So the problem of solving a problem can strengthen or weaken a relationship. Most men are less concerned you not feel the same as women about solving a problem. Men approach problems in a very different manner than women. For most men, solving a problem presents an opportunity to demonstrate their confidence, their strength of resolve, their commitment to a relationship.

How the problem is solved is not nearly as important as a solving it effectively and in the best manner. Men have a tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem-solving process. They set aside their feelings, provide the dominant hierarchy, what's agreed upon in advance, and respect it. They are often detached, do not attend well to the quality of the relationship while they're solving a problem. Many times in discussing a situation, you'll find that a wife is not looking for you to solve the problem. She's looking for you to understand what's going on, to understand her, to understand what she's going through. And so, she might talk about this schedule we have here. This is just getting to be too much. So the man before he hears her, he pipes up, I'll show you what we'll do. On this day, this day, and that day, you don't have to help me. I'll do this. He's already got it solved and goes back to reading his paper. That's not what she's wanting. She's wanting him to understand why she's going through this, her feelings and emotions, what it's doing to her, doing to their relationship. I think what men do is they can solve something quickly. It's over. But for a woman, you get into one of these conversations, it might go on an hour. It could go on a half hour or whatever. Well, that takes up time. So I think sometimes men just want to get on with it. And so therefore, they don't take the time. How often do you ask your wife to give you an appraisal? How are you doing? How's the marriage going?

The minister is speaking a lot of times. You'll find that members might flatter a minister when it comes to speaking. Wives don't. Wives don't flatter. Well, you said that same thing over again. You still have this problem. You're doing that.

I haven't told you before about whatever it might be. So you're still working on it. I'm still working on things she mentioned to me years ago. And you find they seem to run in cycles. You think, ha ha, I got that one licked five years down the road. Well, you're doing this again. And so you have to really begin to look at it. We should encourage one another to excel. And you'll find that sometimes our wives will tell us things and nobody else will. Nobody's going to necessarily walk up to you and say, hey, you're doing such and such, quit it. But a husband and wife might be able to, in a diplomatic way, mention those things.

Wives bring beauty and quality also into our lives. They add beauty and quality. What about coordination of clothes, suits, ties, you know, you can name it. We had a student at ABC a while back, and we were in Cincinnati. He always was a wild dresser. He'd come in maybe green pants. He'd have this sports coat that had 50 different colors in it and maybe wear a purple tie or some outlandish tie. Looked like, you know, maybe he tried to shave, but he never looked in a mirror. He missed something, and he comes to church, and he's standing there trying to assist. He needed a wife, somebody who could say, and this has happened in our marriage. You're about to walk out the door, and the pharmacist says, you're not going to wear that, are you?

Wear what? Well, you know, look at that tie, and you're not going to wear that. And I say, no, I just put this on to see how it would look, and I think I'll go back and change. So I've changed more than once before I walked out the door. So, you know, sometimes we need some help. I've always been amazed at her ability to coordinate a room, put things up, make it look nice. If you've ever gone into a bachelor's pad over the years, and visiting with bachelors, you go in there. There are four walls. There's a motorcycle in the middle of the living room. The engine is torn apart. You know, they're working on it. TV here, TV there. And you know it's a bachelor's apartment. You go into a ladies' picture on the wall, doilies here. You know, it's just a totally different atmosphere. Women have an appreciation for that. And sometimes men don't appreciate the fact that they're always moving things, or that they change things up. I used to come home at night. And the couch used to be over there, so I'm walking here because there's no couch there, and I fall over the couch. Because somehow it moved during the day. So you have to be careful that way, but wives add beauty. They add grace to our lives. 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 7. For a man, indeed, ought not to cover his head. He's talking about having long hair like a woman. That's her covering. Since he's in the image and glory of God, but a woman is the glory of the man.

The word there, glory, is doxa, the same word for glory in the resurrection. But it means that she is to be a reflection. She reflects her husband. She adds substance and weight to her man. She is a glory. She can be a reflection on him in a right way. I realize that all the wives want to make sure that in a marriage, that they reflect in a positive way on that marriage. Women should add stature to their husbands. Let's go back to Proverbs 31. Proverbs 31, where it talks about the virtuous woman. Beginning in verse 10. Proverbs 31 verse 10.

That is moral courage. She has a moral courage and strength and leadership. And then as verse 12 says, she does him good and not evil all the days of her life. So wife does her husband good. She adds to him. She helps him. And then in verse 25, Strengthen honor on her clothing. She shall rejoice in time to come. So there is honor to be given to the wife. In Hebrew, the word honor is translated as glory. Seven times. Majesty seven times. Honor five. Beauty four. Cumbliness three. And so on.

And it basically means an ornament, splendor, honor, majesty. So a woman receives honor and splendor and glory and majesty. And when you have a good wife and you have that blessing, God says that we ought to bless, we ought to praise her. As it goes on to say, she opens her mouth with wisdom. On her tongue is the law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household. Her children rise up and call her blessed. Blessed, her husband also. And he praises her. Now we know that in marriages, there are trials and problems we have. No marriage is perfect. And there are trials and problems that we have nothing to do with. They start to come our way. There's a trial if your car breaks down. It would be a trial if you lose your job. There are trials and difficulties that come our way. It's not always a bed of roses. But over the years, as you work together, as you grow, as you mature, you change, you become a different person. You become a little more flexible. You become more balanced. You find that you're not just looking after yourself when you get married. Prior to marriage, who'd you have to worry about? Well, me, myself, and I. That was all. Now you get married, you've got a wife. All the ones you have children. Now you've got children. And so you've got more things to be thinking about. I remember when our first son was born, Arthur, that he had a colic for several months. He would almost on the dot, 11 o'clock every night for 3 o'clock in the morning. He could set your watch by it. And he would just scream. There wasn't anything you could do. You could rock him, hold him, you know, whatever. Norma would normally be sitting up with him, but there would be times when I'd wake up in the middle of the night and she's not in bed. Where is she? And I'd hear this moan and groaning out there. And she's in the rocking chair with Arthur. And there would be times when, you know, she would say, I just can't go. Or I would say, you need to go to bed. And I would rock him. Or there would be times when she had been up all night. And you'd say, well, you need your sleep. I'll get up tonight and change the diaper. Or I'll get the bottle out of the refrigerator, whatever it might be. See, normally we had a problem with that because my wife carried the bottle around with her. And I couldn't normally do that. But, you know, she was able to do so. What you do is you learn to care for one another. You learn to look after the other person's health and who they are. And you find that with children, there are other pressures that come on the marriage. Many mistakes are made by putting the children in front of your mate. Your mate always comes first, children come next, and you've got to have the right priorities.

Men talk about women talking too much. Complain about women talking too much. Let me quote to you from a book. This was written by a sociologist, Deborah Tannen. A book called, You Just Don't Understand Women and Men in Conversations. Tannen's research shows that the difference between the communication styles of men and women go far beyond mere socialization and appear to be inherent in the basic makeup of each sex. Tannen first noticed these differences when studying videotapes another researcher made of best friends asked to have a conversation together. In contrast to the girls, boys were extremely uncomfortable with the request. Girls in all age groups would face each other and immediately begin to talk. Eventually ended up discussing the problem of one girl. Boys, on the other hand, set parallel to each other. Boy, boy. And would jump from topic to topic centered around a time when they would do something together, planning some type of an activity. Tannen observed that for males, conversation is a way that you negotiate your status in the group, keep people from pushing you around. You use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy. Talk is the essence of intimacy. So being best friends means sitting and talking. For boys, activities, doing things together are central. Just sitting and talking is not essential, a part of friendship.

They're friends with boys who do things together. So you do things together, and those are all of your friends.

It's not hard from even these simple observations to see the potential problem when men and women communicate. Women create feelings of closeness by conversing with their friends and lovers.

Men don't use communication in this way, so they can't figure out why women can genuinely talk, talk, talk. All they want to do is talk. A woman wants to be close to her husband, so she wants to share with him. She wants him to share with her. Normally, I've found over the years, I'll grunt and say, Uh-huh, my wife is sharing with me, and I'm sharing very little back. And she'll tell me, you never talk to me, you never share things.

And I say, well, we talk for an hour. Well, I talk for an hour. So she wants to hear what I'm feeling about a particular situation. It says, eventually, many men tune their women out. This ambiguous, ambiguous image of the housewife at the breakfast table, talking to her husband, who has his head buried in the newspaper, comes to mind.

Tannen notes that men are confused by the various ways women use conversation to be intimate with one another. One of these ways, she calls trouble talk. She says, for women, talking about troubles is the essence of connection. I tell you my troubles, you tell me your troubles. And we're close. Men, however, hear trouble talk as a request for advice. So they respond with a solution. When a man offers this kind of information, the woman often feels as if he's trying to diminish her problem or to cut her off. In his eyes, he's being supportive because men don't talk to each other about their troubles unless they really want a solution.

How many men do you know walk up to another man and say, let me tell you the troubles I have, the emotional difficulties that I'm going through. Very seldom will you ever hear that from a man talking about their problems as wallowing in them. The man doesn't realize that his woman was simply trying to establish a certain kind of intimacy with him, and they invite him to reciprocate and share with her. Because of these essential differences and approaches, Tanner says the most common complaint she hears from men about women is that women complain all the time and don't want to do anything about it.

Men misunderstand the ritual nature of women's complaining. They'll bring something up, but they want to talk about it. The man looks on it. She's complaining. She thinks I'm doing this wrong. Why does she always tell me I'm wrong? And there they go. They get into a big argument over that. Well, all of us need to learn how to express ourselves. We need to learn how to understand one another, especially emotions.

Men over the years have tended to suppress their feelings. How many times do you see a little boy growing up and he falls down, skins his knees? And somebody says, you're a boy.

You don't need to cry. You'll be a man. Suck it up. You're out playing football and you get the wind knocked out of you. You're lying there trying to get your wind back. The coach comes along and says, don't be a sissy. You'll get back up and you've got to hit him. And so you have all of these messages. It's society, social trends that tend to augment the way men might be. Why is it when a discussion or an argument happens that women seem to be able to remember every detail? You ever notice that? That woman can remember everything. We've had discussions, and my wife can bring things that happened years ago.

I have no idea what she's talking about. She brings something up. Did we discuss that? Yes, we did. She can remember everything about it. I had someone last week tell me about marriage and how to solve arguments or discussions. Not necessarily arguments, but discussions. He said it's very simple. My wife is always right and I'm wrong. I just admit it. We go on. I'm not sure that's what a woman is looking for. It's not the right way to approach it. Women have an enhanced ability, this again is Connor's comment, to recall memories that have strong emotional components to them. If there's emotion involved, she will remember.

They can also recall events or experiences that have similar emotions in common. So if there are similar things that she's done, that emotions are in, that's very common. Women are very adept at recalling information. Events or experiences in which there is a common emotional theme. Men tend to recall events using strategies that rely on reconstructing the experience in terms of elements, tasks, activities that took place. Profound experiences that are associated with competition or with physical activities are more easily recalled by a man. There appears to be a structural and chemical basis for observed memory difference. Now, a lot of times there will be things that happen. My wife will say, You remember where we bought this? It can be a bowl or a dish. Did we buy that? You ask. Yeah, we bought that. Well, no, I don't. And she, well, you remember it was that little shop at Tafees, back in 19-something. We were there and we bought that. Oh, yeah, I remember being in the shop. But what do men remember? Well, I can remember very well. I can tell you to this day some basketball games I was in in grade school, high school. I can tell you football games. I can tell you the first time I had the breath knocked out of me. I had a slight concussion. I can tell you, first deer I killed, first whitetail, first mule deer. I can tell you about camping trips and so on and so on. But when it comes to, a lot of times, getting into the emotional area or something such as purchasing something, I don't remember that. My wife is very good with that, so we make a good team. She remembers that. I remember other things. And hopefully we can put them together. God's made us different. The woman is compatible with her husband. She adds to him. We do have different ways of looking at things, and that doesn't mean one's better than the other. That just means we're different. And so therefore we can add to each other. As 1 Peter 3.7 tells us, 1 Peter 3 verse 7, we read, Husbands likewise dwell with them with understanding. So as a husband, we're told to understand our wife, to know her, dwell with them with understanding, with intelligence and recognition in the marriage relation. And dwelling means referring to a domestic association, in marriage. And as it says here, giving honor to the wife as the weaker vessel, as being heirs together, the grace of life, your prayers may not be hindered. So there's a problem between you and your wife that's going to hinder your prayers. But notice it says she's the weaker vessel. She is not morally weaker. She is not intellectually weaker. She's not weaker when it comes to emotions and these type of things. A man is stronger physically. You take a 250-pound man with hairy chest and his legs look like cedar trees and his chest looks like it's chiseled out of granite. And he's got a 125-pound wife. She's weaker than he is physically.

God made the man to be generally, I'll say generally, the stronger in that way. But what we realize is God tells the husband to understand his wife. And that we are heirs together to give honor to his wife. The word honor here, again, means to realize that your wife is precious, that she is somebody that you love, that you appreciate. And so you give her honor. You give her respect. A wife is more sensitive and more fragile. I think I've used this example before, but just as a reminder, the example of the butterfly and the buffalo. If you want to compare a woman to a butterfly and a man to a buffalo, maybe it illustrates the difference. A butterfly has very keen sensitivity. It's very sensitive to even the slightest breeze that blows. A little wind comes through and here's a butterfly and all the ones whoop! It gets blown off course. So it's very sensitive to that. It flutters above the ground. It's very aware. You can see the whole picture. You can see beautiful flowers down here. It comes down, it lights on beautiful bushes. It's constantly aware of the changes going on. You tape a rock to its wing and guess what? It falls to the ground. It can injure itself. You want to catch a butterfly, you reach up and, I gotcha! It's dead. You know, you've killed it. You squeezed it. You've got to treat that butterfly very carefully. But a buffalo is a different story. A buffalo could be 1,500 pounds, 2,000. It's rough. It's callous. Wind could be 30 miles an hour. It isn't cared. It doesn't bother it. It doesn't pay any attention to the flowers. It walks over them, steps on them, eats them, kicks boulders around. You chuck a rock at it and it doesn't even know you're around. And, you know, he goes through life, the buffalo, you know, in that way. It's tough. Buffalo is really tough. Well, that might not be the complete example of the difference between a man and a woman, but you do see that a woman is much more sensitive to things, her environment, what's happening around her, and the man tends to be more like the buffalo. The woman is the heart and nerve-sinner of the marriage. She is, you know, what helps to make it tick and to move forward. So every couple that's married is unique, special. We're all incomplete as men in many different ways. Now, I'm not saying we're all incomplete in the same way, but we need help, God says. My wife's 50% that she adds to our marriage might be different than your wife's 50%. As a man, you might love flowers and you might love, you know, that type of thing. Your wife might not, but she adds and aids you in many other ways. Jesus Christ considered his future bride that he was going to marry so important that he died for her. You remember in Ephesians 5, verse 25, we find that he loved us so much that he was willing to die for us. So it's not a matter of the battle of the sexes. It's a matter that we're different. There are differences that God has created in us. We are to complement one another. We're to help one another. We're to assist each other. Your wife, my wife, aids us, helps us, assists us, adds so much to our marriage and to our lives. I truly believe that all ministers' wives are 50% of their ministry as well as their marriage and their life.

So, women, today we've tried to point out the ways that you can help in a marriage. So we honor you. We thank you for your love and your contribution to our lives. Because without you, we would be a sorry mess. But having said that, without you, we would be deficient in so many different areas. So thank you for what you do for us. And each one of us should thank our own wife for what she adds to you to make you more complete.