Joanie’s Story: Learning the Real Meaning of “Helper” in Marriage

“Is it wrong for me to want to work outside my home?”, asked Joanie in tears during her first counseling appointment. She felt guilty for her daydreams about returning to school to finish her teaching credential. She felt herself slipping into depression and wondered if she needed to be on medication. She also felt irritable and was snapping at her children more than usual.

When she brought up the subject with her husband, he insisted that her job was as wife and helper to him and then as a mother to their children. He could not see how she could get everything done around the house and pursue her own selfish ambitions. “After all,” he insisted, “I am the one who pays the bills that allow you to stay home and care for our family. I am not going to pay for you to get an education that will take you away from us. Maybe when the kids are out of the house, you can go back to school.”

Have you ever been in this position? Do you know anyone who has? Joanie’s situation is a familiar one in many Christian families, and yet it is difficult to approach this sensitive issue. Today, using Joanie’s example, we’re going to learn more about the Hebrew word ezer and what it means for your marriage. We’re then going to finish by looking at three specific ways someone can talk about this with their husband.

Learning to Listen to Your Body, Mind, and Heart

When conflicts present as mental or physical health symptoms, we would be wise to listen to these clues that carry a message about what we may be feeling, thinking, and experiencing on an unconscious or subconscious level. For example, Joanie’s guilt, depression, and irritability may be alerting her to conflicts that she is unable to confront within herself and her marriage for fear of the losses they represent. If she is honest about how much she wants to go back to school and work as a teacher, she may lose her husband’s approval and affection. She may be accused of being selfish, or of not loving God, her husband, or her children enough. If she believes that going against her husband is tantamount to disobeying God, she may even experience some hidden anger toward God. This can activate feelings of doubt about the legitimacy of a faith that puts her husband in control of decisions that impact her life in such fundamental ways. I have often seen such thoughts cascade into a crisis of faith.

When a married woman struggles with these kinds of thoughts and feelings, it is critical that she find safe spiritual companions, friends, and counselors with whom she is allowed to express doubts and questions rather than be compelled to either maintain the status quo or make a complete break from her faith or marriage.

Joanie will need some time to sort out the meaning of these conflicts and she will have to learn some tools to engage her husband in redefining what marriage means to them. Let’s start by looking at Scripture together to gain a better understanding of what her marriage could be.

Created in the Image of the Triune God: Expanding the Meaning of Marriage

It can be helpful to expand our understanding of what it means to be a woman created in the image of our triune God. One of the best kept secrets of biblical womanhood is the meaning of the word that Scripture uses in Genesis 2:18 to describe Eve. When God said He would make a “helper” or “helpmate” corresponding to Adam, God did not use a word that meant Eve was to be Adam’s subordinator or domestic servant. Instead, God used an expansive word for helpmate that reveals the kind of intimate companionship that God Himself offers to humankind.

The Hebrew word for helper in this passage, ezer, is the same word used in Exodus 18:4 and Deuteronomy 33:7 to refer to God, the Helper and Deliverer of Israel. Eve was no more secondary to Adam than God was secondary or subordinate to Israel. Jesus also uses the term helper to refer to the Holy Spirit in John 14:26 (parakletos). Being a helper is a powerful, creative, and active person. God created ezer so that humans would not be alone. No wonder that God, through the person of Jesus Christ, is our ezer in His promise to never leave us or forsake us.

Adam and Eve were both created as completely whole individuals, equal and united in God’s original design to reflect the triune and cooperative nature of God. Remember what God said? “Let Us make human beings in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground. Genesis 1:26-28 reminds us that God gave equal authority to both male and female to rule together over the garden creatures, not over one another.

The Beauty of Shared Authority

We were made in the likeness of a triune God who generously shares authority freely between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the purpose of creating, nourishing and perpetuating life. In a marriage that shares authority as God intended, spouses communicate honestly rather than manipulate; they set up healthy boundaries rather than give in; they respect differing opinions and invite one another into mutually satisfying solutions, rather than demand submission.

Joanie’s Next Steps: Three Tips for Creating an Environment for Mutuality in Marriage

Mutuality is the bedrock of intimate relationships. Joanie will need to sort out her beliefs about what God expects of her in relationship to her family. She will need to consider how she and her husband have shared power and control as a couple in the past and what may be possible for them in the future. Joanie can learn to communicate how important her education is to her husband, set any necessary boundaries around his attempts to dismiss or verbally shame her for having a different opinion, and still emphasize her love and respect for what he needs and wants.

Providing Joanie’s husband is willing to do his part, the two of them may be able to discover a new way of decision making that better affirms the needs, opinions, and desires of both, strengthening intimacy and the marital bond.

1. How can Joanie communicate how important her education is to her husband?

Depending upon the trust and safety level, Joanie may be able to tell her husband that she wants to revisit the topic of finishing her education. If she believes he will immediately dismiss the topic or refuse to discuss it, she may want to invite him to lunch and then approach the topic in a public setting. She can begin the conversation by telling him that she has something very important to discuss with him even if he disagrees with her. She might even tell him that her inability to talk about it has contributed to her depression and recent irritability.

2. How does she set necessary boundaries if he attempts to verbally dismiss or shame her when inviting him into this conversation?

Here the boundaries will differ widely based on the emotional safety already present in the relationship. For example, if the marriage can tolerate different and opposing opinions without the fear of verbal attacks, name calling, or criticism, a boundary might be as simple as saying, “Please allow me to finish sharing my thoughts and feelings before interrupting me or giving me your opinion. You will know I am finished when I say I’m done and ready to hear your response.”

If Joanie and her husband have never established boundaries or “Rules for Fair Fighting” in their marriage, she may need to take a firmer approach. For example, if her husband has a habit of shutting down the conversation, she may need to say, “I want to share my heart with you so I will need you to not label me or what I am saying. If you do, I will need to end the conversation and then we can try again later. If you insist on putting me down when I talk about this, it will impact our ability to work through conflict and become closer to one another. I care about you and want to honor both of us so we can grow as individuals and as a couple.”

3. How can Joanie emphasize her love and respect for what he needs and wants?

Counter-intuitively, one of the best ways Joanie can love and respect her husband’s needs and wants is to be clear about her own. If she has this clarity and can support herself, she will likely have the strength to listen respectfully to him. If she does not give herself or her husband the respect of having a different opinion, she will tend to prove her point by insisting that she is right, and her husband is wrong.

Another important way to emphasize love and respect to her husband is to take adequate time to work through any feelings of intense hurt and anger around the topic. Joanie may need to spend time venting these intense feelings through journaling, talking to a close friend, or making an appointment with a counselor before she talks to him. Without proper preparation, she may be tempted to vent raw emotion on her husband. If Joanie finds that she cannot talk to him without resorting to name calling and verbal attack, she may need to set a boundary for herself so she can remain loving and respectful. She can say, “I am sorry, I thought I was ready, but I can’t seem to talk about this without wanting to rage at you for how much this has hurt me over the years. Let’s come back to this later.” It is important that she initiate this conversation again when she is ready.

Finally, it will be necessary for her to actively listen to his hopes and fears for the family, should she move forward with her plans to pursue her education. At this point, they may want to engage a professional to help them work out a mutually agreeable solution if they are still at impasse and have not been able to do that on their own.

In Conclusion

I hope that reading about Joanie’s situation can help shed light on God’s highest intention for women. We are “Ezer,” made in God’s image, and endowed with gifts and talents that are expansive and bring glory to God. There are many and diverse combinations of family life. Some women are most fulfilled using their gifts and talents within their homes while others combine marriage and or family with a career. If you find that you have a desire to develop your talents for a career but lack encouragement from your husband to do so, I hope that these specific steps can help you approach him. Take time to pray, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and remember that you are a beloved daughter of God, with whom the Lord is well-pleased. If you have any additional questions or would like to see a post on anything else mentioned in this blog, shoot me a message!

Resources for Further Study:

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazerro

Changes that Heal by Henry Cloud

Boundaries in Marriage by John Townsend and Henry Cloud

The New Rules of Marriage by Terrence Real

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Cindi J. Martin, LCSW is a licensed Christian psychotherapist who works with women healing from trauma, loss, depression, and anxiety as well as couples recovering from the wounds of sexual addiction. She is also the founder and director of Wellspring Counseling Ministries, which provides resource and referral services with the goal of integrating a strong biblical faith with excellence in clinical practice. Cindi is working on a book and blogs about emotional care, intimacy in relationships, the Bible, and theology at cindijmartinlcsw.com.