The Strength of Submission

I am amused at the irony of the situation. I nagged my husband into buying this condo then hated living here. My children make incredible messes, complete with tearing down curtains and smearing yogurt on walls, I am pregnant, and somehow I am supposed to show, sell, and move my house on my own while my husband is on tour. Phone calls with my husband are lacklustre and I have a horrible suspicion that he is starting to resent me.

I lay on the sofa in a bog of despair and scroll Instagram. A book called The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood appears on my timeline. The book holds the discourses of Mary and Jesus to a mystic in the 1980s, to create a religious order for mothers in the quiet of their homes. It has a magnetic draw and I buy a used copy online.

A couple days later it arrives in the mail, very tattered but in tact. It feels alive in my hands. I read for hours, unable to put down the magnetic voice speaking to me from the pages. I am taught that my penances as a mother can aid in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the salvation of the world. I am taught that suffering is to be embraced, not fought. My children are to be the greatest joy of my life and also my penitential way of salvation.

I know that this religious order and its rule of life is how I make God the centre, as I had promised in the hospital.

I read further and my modernism jerks in astonishment as Mother Mary speaks of obeying your husband as long as it agrees with faith and morals. She says that she herself obeyed St. Joseph. I turn to the Bible again and find it is the created order in the first chapters of Genesis and that it is exhorted seven times in the New Testament. The man sacrifices for his wife. The woman submits to her husband.

The Queen of Heaven, who commands the angels, submitted to her earthly husband. Realisation flowers inside of me. Obedience is not weakness. True weakness is giving in to the constant push to control.

As I begin to obey something unexpected happens: I relax. I feel protected in my husband’s shelter.

It is the veil once again. I am the mother of children, with a sacred duty to create a domestic church wherein my children can embark on the road to Heaven. It is no small task. I need the protection and provision of my husbands to create peace and purpose in my home.

Meanwhile my husband grows happier and his care and sacrifice for the family becomes even greater than before. I watch our marriage transform into something tangibly sacred.