Mother-in-law stories. Many of us have them, for better or for worse. I’ve got one that might just shock you.
My microwave oven gets cleaned pretty regularly these days, but it has not always been this way. In fact, it used to get pretty horrendously filthy due to my neglect. That is, until my mother-in-law butted-in several years ago and insisted that I keep it clean.
How did she insist upon this, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you.
She had the nerve to notice that the microwave was dirty, and then, often without saying a word, she would clean it for me.
That’s it, folks. The nerve!
She would do this nearly every time she came over to my house. She never nagged me, she just did it. I began to feel bad that she was doing what ought to have been my job. “You don’t have to do that!” I would insist. But she would just smile, shrug, and brush it off—and still clean the microwave.
Mothers-in-law can be stubborn, can’t they?
The only way I could win this one was to actually keep the microwave clean so that she wouldn’t have to clean it.
Initially, her love and my shame mixed together in my heart and mind to start the habit, and over time, I began to appreciate having a clean microwave for myself.
And, as mothers-in-law are wont to notice things, mine took notice, too.
“It’s clean! Well! Good job!”
This kind of thing wasn’t a new habit for her. She’d already been commenting on the state of the bathroom when she’d visit: “Your bathroom is always so clean!”
Persistent with that manipulation, isn’t she?
Never mind that she was usually there when we were hosting our house church, so I had cleaned the bathroom the day before–or even just that morning. She wouldn’t hear those excuses, either. She still insisted that I was doing well.
She’s stubborn, I tell you. Through and through.
—————
I sure hope your mother-in-law is sweet and stubborn in all the same ways as mine. But if she isn’t, instead of playing the comparison game, how about take some notes? I know I am. I have a pretty good idea what kind of mother-in-law I want to be some day. Maybe I can practice being that kind of mentor and friend now…
There’s a place for tough love, to be sure. Sometimes a timely rebuke or even a shaking of the shoulders is necessary. But there are other times in a young woman’s life that the most effective means of Titus-two mentorship come from simply showing up, cleaning something, and praising what she’s doing well.
And if she tries to evade the compliment or prevent you from helping, just smile, shrug, and keep at it. Be stubborn in the best kind of way.
That’s how my mother-in-law convinced me to keep my microwave clean. And I’m thankful that she did.
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I just finished listening to this book and wanted to write a review before I forgot what I’d heard!
My rating: 4 of 5 stars (More like 3.5 rounded up.)
This was a good and edifying read/listen. Wolgemuth brings much-needed exhortation to women–young and old, married or single–to step up and reach out to make the Titus 2 vision of life-on-life discipleship of Christian women a reality.
This is a pretty thorough treatment of Titus 2:3-5 and the broader context of Paul’s letter to Titus, with an emphasis on adorning the gospel and with plenty of examples and support from other passages of scripture as well. It’s written with a very accessible tone and a heart that clearly loves the Lord Jesus and God’s people.
I thought the chapter on slander was particularly good.
I give this book 4 rather than 5 stars for a few reasons, however.
While the treatment is thorough, it is also pretty wordy. It could have been a shorter book.
The two chapters on sobriety and a sound mind/self-control overlapped a lot, and each felt like an opportunity to spring-board into a laundry list of any and all possible ways a woman might be enslaved to something or be lacking in self-control. One warning area was being overly desirous of sex–even in the proper context of marriage. While this might be a problem in some rare? cases, it seems strange to warn against this but not spend much energy in the rest of the book on promoting the enjoyment of this good gift of God as a part of a healthy marriage. Flirtatious behavior was also in the bad column but not mentioned as a healthy and fun part of marriage. Protecting the purity of your marriage involves fueling the home fires. This was almost entirely neglected.
I’m sure these kinds of practical lists (like the chart on self-control) can be helpful to some readers, but I think they may also be stretching far beyond what Paul had in mind in his letter, not to mention they may be unbalanced or biblically incomplete.
The application of a passage should not be confused for the original intent. I think the author could have clarified the meaning of Paul’s words a bit more before diving into the many possible applications that are a step (or a few!) removed from Paul’s obvious meaning.
For example: “not enslaved to much wine” is pretty self-explanatory, but Wolgemuth begins the chapter on this phrase by talking about all of the secondary applications (basically any form of excess or idolatry). She does get around to dealing with drunkenness/drinking, and she does a good job for the most part, but she doesn’t really ever paint a picture of a godly woman who can enjoy a drink on occasion. The only stories we read of are negative experiences with alcohol or of someone who could righteously enjoy alcohol deciding to give it up for the sake of someone else (which is fine–wonderful even!, but still only shows one side of how godly people could handle it). There are also a ton of questions that lead the reader to question whether it is ever ok to drink. I’m actually not against these questions–they can be good to consider. But lacking a positive example, it feels unbalanced and would likely lead some readers to view those who do drink responsibly with suspicion. The weight of the chapter was just far beyond what Paul’s words to Titus had to say. The author did recommend reading other authors who disagree with her on this point, so I really think she attempted to handle this subject carefully and with all good faith. I respect her convictions and intentions– I’m not too far removed from them myself.
Again, on the whole, this is a very good book. It could be beneficial and edifying for individual study or in a discipleship relationship or small group. BUT when it comes to fleshing out the details, young married women (the target audience of Titus 2:4-5) will need older women who have been married for the long haul to speak more deeply into their lives about (among other things) the good gift of sex in marriage and how to enjoy one another and keep that gift alive–through pregnancies, illnesses, rough seasons, etc.
The strength of this book is that Wolgemuth can speak to a broad range of experience for women–including singles. The weakness is that she has only been married for one year at the time of writing this book, at age 58. And Titus 2:4-5 is directly speaking to youngmarried women. Broadening the focus for all kinds of women means watering down what can be given to that target audience. This doesn’t make this a bad book, it just means it probably shouldn’t be the only book a young woman reads on Titus 2. And it underscores the need for real-life mentorship, which Wolgemuth herself rightly emphasizes over and over.
One last note: since I listened to the audio book, I found the chapter organization to be a bit confusing. I expected (and honestly would have preferred for) the chapter topics to follow the order in which they occurred in Titus 2. But they don’t. They are organized a little differently: A Woman Under God (doctrine and reverence), A Woman Under Control (slander, excess, self-control, purity), and A Woman Under Her Roof (home and family relationships). The rather primary encouragement to younger women to love their husbands and children gets put off until part three. Once I looked up the table of contents, I was fine. But for a while there, I was concerned. Hopefully this note helps anyone who plans to listen to the audiobook rather than read a physical copy.
Addendum: Another part of the book that lacked much practical application was the area of homemaking. The chapter was good, but it stayed big-picture and didn’t really get into the nitty-gritty details of keeping home. If you’re looking for a book with a biblical view of home that will also show you how to roll up your sleeves and manage it well, check out Mystie Winckler’s new book: Simplified Organization: Learning to Love What Must Be Done. It is FANTASTIC. (See my review of that book on Amazon.)
Have you read Adorned? What were your thoughts? Have you read any other good books on Titus 2 lately?
I’ve been on a bit of a minimalist kick lately, decluttering my house, my closet, my recipes, my priorities, you name it. While I don’t necessarily hold to minimalism as a whole-life philosophy, I find that it does offer some necessary push-back to our modern tendencies to be “ever expanding,” whether that be in our possessions, resources, opportunities, or social connections.
On that last item, social connections, I recently read an article explaining the theory of what’s called the Dunbar Number. A British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar posited (after some research on primates and combing through human records) that the greatest number of meaningful connections any one person can hold at a given time is about 150.
I have to admit I had quite the confirmation bias response to this article, because not too long ago I was explaining to my husband that I have social limits, and I simply cannot keep up with all-the-people, and I certainly don’t have energy for continually adding to the number of all-the-people to whom I feel some measure of social obligation.
With interest and perhaps some of that confirmation bias running through my veins, I decided I’d see where my current number of connections stood. I pulled out my brain dump notebook and began to write down all of the people with whom I have some meaningful or working connection. I started with family. That easily reached over 30 people. Then it was long-standing friends. You know, the people you may or may not see each year but whom you are committed in some way to maintaining for the long haul: again, over 30. Neighbors came to about 20. Homeschool connections almost 30. Church connections (which is small right now because we’re still new at our local church): about 15. And then I listed those who are a bit more distant but still qualify under this idea of meaningful connection: 60 or more. If you just add up the rounded numbers I’ve listed, that makes 185, more than the Dunbar Number (150). No wonder I feel a bit overwhelmed and like I can’t add any more.
But guess what kinds of people I didn’t add to any of those lists of contacts? For the most part, I didn’t include online-only relationships. There are seven ladies who make the cut because they are part of an online stand-up/accountability group. Other than those ladies, every other person on the list has some real-life, meaningful or workable connection (or has had in the past and therefore they are on the list).
What this little exercise demonstrated for me was twofold: One, there isn’t really any room for me to build or even maintain relationships on social media or other online platforms. No wonder I feel a little overwhelmed trying to keep up. Two, even these connections that I wrote down are pushing the limit, and I need to prioritize.
Now, Dunbar’s theory itself has prioritization built in. He suggests that any one person can have only about 5 people in their inner circle—these are loved ones, your most trusted and closest kind of friends (large families can adjust this number accordingly, IMO). Next up are “good friends,” of which you can maintain about 15 (or just ten more than the 5 closest friends we already mentioned). There are about 50 that can be called “friends” in a meaningful way before our own capacity is stretched enough to make the term “friend” less meaningful (I’m looking at you, Facebook). And then the next jump is up to that limit of 150 meaningful contacts. Beyond that, the study claims we could have face-recognition of up to 1500 people–but not meaningful relationships. I can’t say I’ve taken the time to test the limits on that last one.
Now, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. The Dunbar Number is a theory, not gospel nor scientific law. But it is interesting, isn’t it?
I’ve titled this article “Titus 2 and the Dunbar Number,” so it’s about time I brought this back around. As Christians, we know that the greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And while Jesus insisted that anyone who we find in need of our help can be considered our neighbor (see the parable of the good Samaritan), in today’s times, we tend to be over-exposed to people and needs via the internet and social media, skewing our sense of responsibility away from our nearest neighbors and toward those far from us.
The impact here is both quantitative in that we’re compelled to give emotional energy toward more people than we have capacity for and qualitative in that we’re tempted to prioritize (at least in the moment) people far away from us, for whom we are not most responsible. The issue here isn’t that caring for people far away is bad (it’s good to be concerned for people in different places than we are), it’s just unnatural to have a constant reminder of them and to be pulled away from the people literally right in front of us or across the street. The combination of those quantitative and qualitative elements makes for a rather big challenge, especially if we take seriously the call to “love our neighbor.” We’re left asking Jesus for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?”
This is where Titus 2 comes in. Some people hate this passage because they see it as limiting women to the home, keeping them barefoot and pregnant, etc. But I think we can see it in a different light. Here it is for your consideration:
Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.
Titus 2:3-5
If we are to love God and love people, the first place that we ought to practice that God-honoring people-love is within our own households. What Titus 2 (and a few other passages) implies to me is that this temptation to concern and even distract ourselves with people “out there” isn’t something only modern social media mavens have experienced. Even women in the first century needed the reminder that a love that isn’t fulfilling its duty at home first is a hypocritical love that can lead to the gospel being blasphemed, the good news being spoken of as if it’s bad.
Now before anyone throws stones because they think I’m promoting “the patriarchy,” let me be the first to say that this principle holds true for men as well. It’s why elders are supposed to be good managers of their own households before they are recognized as leaders in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9). It’s why a man that doesn’t provide for his own is called “worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). The call to prioritize the people right in front of us is universal. This responsibility to one’s own household is why singleness is, for some, an effective state to be in for the sake of ministry to others: because the man or woman who isn’t tied down has more time and energy to devote to the Lord, which may include serving others beyond the home in a way that the married person simply can’t (1 Corinthians 7:32-35). But that’s more the exception than the norm for believers. Most of us are called to marry and build families to the glory of God.
So the reminder in Titus 2 to love your husband and love your children and focus on the work that must be done to keep the home running well isn’t slavish or limiting. It’s a sane call to put first things first. The calling toward home and family doesn’t necessarily preclude other callings, but it does take precedence over them.
And, if you think about it, all of this makes sense in light of Dunbar’s thoughts on human social capacity. We each may vary in terms of our social capacity, and some of us may need to cut back while others may need to stretch themselves. But at the end of the day, we all have limits. And we all have to choose how we will use the limited resources we’ve been given.
How about you? Do you feel our modern connected world pulls your attention away from the folks that matter most to you?
We may not need to dump online community and resources altogether, but might it be helpful to imagine what our priorities would look like if those things didn’t exist. Join me for a thought experiment?
If the internet didn’t exist, what would you want your family life to look like? How might you prioritize your husband? Your children? If you are in a different stage of life: your roommate, parents or siblings, or extended family?
If the internet didn’t exist, what would you do to get to know your neighbors? To be a blessing to them?
If the internet didn’t exist, what would you do to get to know the people at your church better? How might you reach out to discover needs and meet them? In your church and your local community?
If the internet didn’t exist to make long distance relationships many-and-easy, who would you 100% want to keep in touch with–even if it meant more effort?
She was probably 15-20 years my senior, with bright eyes and her long brown hair, half pulled back and half resting gently on her standard navy blue shirt and coordinating vest.
She was still helping the customers in front of us when it happened–my antsy five-year-old, who had earlier decided to don gym shorts and cowboy boots, accidentally stepped backward–right on top of my seven-year-old’s sandal-clad foot.
The scream was ear-piercing.
We had already been in the store too long after spending far too long at our previous errand stop. The boys were tired and so was I. And when the wailing persisted for several minutes, I’m sure everyone else’s ears were tired, too. I tried to calm my big boy down without much luck, and the whole situation was so traumatic that the five-year-old started crying because he was so sorry that he had apparently hurt his brother so badly.
It was a meltdown. I looked up at the cashier and said something about missing nap time…not that my boys take naps anymore, but the downtime would have been good for them.
The boys were fairly well calmed down by the time the cashier started ringing up our order.
“I miss shopping with my boys,” she said with a warm smile. “They’re grown and moved away and both married now.”
I paused a moment to consider her words (trying to decide if she’s crazy) before asking, “How old are they now?”
“They’re 24 and 26.”
Two years apart. Just like mine.
“What I wouldn’t give to have them with me again–even on the rough days. I just miss having them with me. And tucking them in at night. You know, all those special times together that you don’t think about much until they’ve grown up and you don’t have them around all the time anymore.”
I don’t usually handle other people’s sentimentality that well, but hers, in this moment, was a gift from God–a redirection of my heart away from the frenetic and frustrated mode that I was in to see the blessing it is simply to have my children near–with the sobering reminder that that nearness won’t last forever.
But she didn’t just make me see. She made me feel.
I think that’s why other people’s emotional moments make me uncomfortable. It forces me to feel something that I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with (because, to be honest, my own emotional moments make me uncomfortable).
But sometimes that can be a very good thing. I may have been most comfortable feeling embarrassment or frustration in that check out line, but she made me feel affection for my kids, turning what could have been a nosedive in my attitude into a total rebound.
“Thank you for sharing that,” I expressed before pushing the cart way, “especially in the midst of a minor meltdown.”
She may not have realized it, but she changed the tone of the rest of our busy afternoon with her kind words and heart-felt nostalgia. This was a little bit of Titus 2 in action, friends. At Walmart.
“Love those boys, mama,” she had communicated in no uncertain terms. “Love them well–even when it’s tough. You will miss them someday.”
Kept and Keeping 