by Thom Hunter
My preteen son Patrick doesn’t take many things seriously, but occasionally
something grabs hold of him and he just won’t let it go. He will question an
idea or concept until he is satisfied that society isn’t misleading him and that
all is right in his world.
I’m never prepared for his persistence.
“Dad, can we go to the movies today?” he asked as we crawled down the
optimistically named Northwest Expressway. “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll check with Mom
when we get home.” “She’ll say no,” he said. “She’ll say we need to clean our
rooms, or read a book, or play outside. Or… or something else.” The tires on the
van made a couple more rotations. “Dad?” asked Patrick. “Can we get another
hamster?” What a radical idea. We hadn’t had a hamster die on us in weeks.
“Well, maybe,” I answered. “We’ll see what Mom thinks.”
I turned off the radio. “Dad?” came the voice again. “Can we eat out
tonight?” “Probably,” I said. “If Mom doesn’t already have something planned.” I
pushed a cassette tape into the player. “Dad?” Patrick asked. “Is Mom the head
of our house?” Wham! I felt like I was in a ten‐car pileup. My face was turning
red.
My temperature was rising. I was suddenly feeling closed in by the cars
surrounding me. I looked in the rearview mirror. Patrick was perched in the
middle of the seat behind me, an innocent little grin on his face.
“Patrick,” I said, “I am the head of the household. I make the decisions. And
don’t you forget it. Understand?”
“Okay,” he said. “Does that mean we can eat out, go to the movies, and pick
up a new hamster on the way home?”
He’d set me up. And I almost fell for it. He was watering down the parent
partnership, looking for a crack in which to stick a wedge, testing a biblical
concept, and looking for the advantage in the process.
What do pizza, hamsters, and big‐screen fantasy have to do with whether or
not I am fulfilling my role as head of the family? I asked myself that question
as I zeroed in on the bumper in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and avoided
the accident. Fortunately, we were at the expressway’s top speed of seven miles
an hour.
For scoring purposes, we did eat out and go to the movies that night, but we
decided to sell the hamster cage. “We” made those decisions, his mother and I.
This “head of the household” thing is very touchy to me. When I was growing up,
there was never any doubt. Mother was the head of the household. But she had
never intended it to be that way. She was supposed to have had a partner. She
understood the concept of a helpmeet. If my father had been a different kind of
man and hadn’t left us when I was six years old, she would have made a wonderful
complement to him.
“You must be a man,” she would tell me when I was a teenager. “Take the
responsibility; don’t run from the decisions; love your wife; cherish your
children.”
And be the head of the household.
So I always wanted to be the head of the household: ruler over all I
surveyed, supreme commander, father and master of my many loyal subjects. I
carried this dream to the altar and later into the delivery room—five times. My
kingdom went from squalling to crawling to sprawling all around me.
So, if I am the head of the household, why is the head aching and the house
barely holding together? And if I am the head of the household, why do I
sometimes go to bed with dishpan hands and worry that I’ve forgotten to unplug
the iron?
If I am the head of the household, why do I have to barter for time to watch
a football game on television, promising to ride bikes for two hours in exchange
for ten minutes of solitude?
And, if I am the head of the household, why do I have to cut my subjects’
plates of meat after I set the table? And why do I have to clear the table and
pick up mushy mashed potatoes from the floor with my bare hands while everyone
else has dessert they weren’t supposed to get unless they ate all their mashed
potatoes?
And, if I am the head of the household, why do I have to cover five other
bodies before I pull my own blanket up to my own chin; explain away everybody
else’s nightmares before I take on my own; fluff their pillows and tuck their
feet back under the sheets; get them one more drink; and plug in their
night‐lights?
And if I am the head of the household, why do I have to rub my wife’s back
before she can go to sleep?
Why, I ask? Why do I have to do all these things? Because I am the head of
the household, that’s why. If I don’t listen… if I am inconsiderate of others…
if I make decisions without the input of the wife God gave me…if I try to do it
on my own without God, then I may as well forget about being the head of the
household.
That’s what I’ll tell Patrick next trip down the Northwest Expressway. We’ll
have plenty of time.
Looking ahead…
Husband, this week is designed especially for you. (But we still want your
wife to participate!) Like the author of the story above, do you sometimes
struggle with your role as “head of the house”? What exactly does that mean,
anyway? It is a controversial topic in today’s world, but there are biblical
truths on which to base an understanding.
We’ll offer some of these principles this week. For tonight, why don’t you
tell your wife how you define “head of the house”—then ask if she agrees.
- James C Dobson
From
Night Light For Couples, by Dr. James
& Shirley Dobson
Copyright © 2000 by James Dobson, Inc. All rights
reserved.
“Head of the House” by Thom Hunter. Taken from Those Not-So-Still Small
Voices (NavPress). © 1993. Used by permission of the author.
