Mamaw Never Grumbled About Picking Up Papaw's Socks

Why I am grateful my husband doesn’t have to worry about the small things

My husband has some annoying habits. (I do as well, but conveniently, I am the one writing this post.) He leaves his shoes— often more than one pair—right inside the front door when he enters. the house. When he leaves, he pulls a chair from the nearby kitchen table, sits, and swaps from his indoor slides to those waiting shoes… and leaves. The chair (and the discarded indoor shoes) stay exactly where he shed them. Nearly every cleaning item or tool he uses stays where he set it down when the job was finished. And I can’t tell you how many piles he’s outgrown. I create a hidden space for him to deposit his various “I might need this,” receipts and such, and eventually, it becomes unmanageable, so he moves on, cultivating a new, more recent hidey hole for whatever random screw or letter or gift certificate he will someday want to find.

Stated like this, the man sounds like a walking nightmare, a disaster of a husband slung around my neck like a millstone. Yet this is anything but the case. Those habits? The things that might suck the joy from a homemaker? I treasure them.

Early on in my marriage, I found myself grumbling to Mamaw about my husband’s habits. I had just had our second baby, and my husband was working 50+ hours per week on top of pursuing graduate studies. An old sewing table near our front door had become the spot where all the things went to die— or at least live in a purgatory I couldn’t decode. The decorative glass bowl I had placed there to hold his keys had become a nest of papers and trinkets that spilled onto the table itself, ruining my happy little curated corner. Did I risk pruning the pile and possibly tossing something useful? Did I ask him to become more tidy? I had already turned to my fellow younger wives, and they shared similar tales tinged with frustration: beard trimmings in the sink, toilet seats left up in the night, snoring, walking by full trash cans. Every one of my friends could recount a fight that sprang from these things left undone, and I realized I, too, was nearing my boiling over point. I poured out my woe to Mamaw, knowing she’d help me reclaim my entryway table— hopefully without an argument.

“You’ve done a good job, baby,” Mamaw told me, a smile on her face.

I was confused. “A good job ignoring it? But I’m not, Mamaw! It’s driving me crazy!” I admitted.

“I know,” she answered. “But see here. You’ve made this man feel so safe in leaving his whole life in your hands that he only has to worry about the big picture things. He goes to work and does his job to take care of you and those youngins’ every day without a worry. He knows that silly bowl of papers don’t need to bother him. He trusts you.”

Now, I admit that I didn’t see then how my husband’s habit of tossing receipt after receipt into my antique carnival glass dish translated to trust in me. But 25 years on, the Lord has given me the perspective that allows such things to be made clearer.

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.

The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. —Proverbs 31:10-12

My husband is a creative. He is not tidy. He is also the most godly man I know. He seeks to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with the Lord at all time. (Micah 6:8) He is fiercely protective of me as his wife, and of our children. He loves the Gospel, and has sacrificed much to make the Name of Jesus heard in places where his voice was the first to say it. He is a hard worker, is loyal to a fault, and if that proverbial situation arose where he was called on to sacrifice his life for another, I would be mourning my husband— because there would be no choice to be made in his mind.

All of this— and once upon a time, I got testy about receipts and shoes and a tiny screwdriver left on the table where he’d repaired his glasses?

I know, I know. Feminism shouts, “You shouldn’t have to pick up after him! He’s a selfish misogynist!” Egalitarianism screams, “Who is he to burden you with more work when you’re already doing so much?” The Gospel replies:

rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.—Ephesians 6:7-8

and also:

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.—Galatians 5:13

Friends, I don’t have to pick up after my husband. I get to.

My husband’s piles are not a weight I am forced to carry. His habits are not an addition to my labors. Part of my purpose— part of my privilege— is walking alongside this man and building him up, helping him to be more and more available to serve his purpose in the Lord. By cultivating a space where he doesn’t need to focus on the small things, I free him to bring the fullness of his focus and talents into the work he was created to do. It is not beneath me to serve my husband. It is not a loathsome thing to have a husband who needs my help in ways both large and small. Those are unbiblical assertions that have crept into the church and the hearts of believers and need to be checked against the authority of God’s Word!

Papaw died 18 months before Mamaw, and for nearly a year before that, he lived in a care facility that specialized in serving Alzheimer’s patients who had become aggressive as their disease progressed. It was a heartbreaking to visit and see his empty recliner, the still tractor under the shed, his workbench gathering dust. It was more heartbreaking still to see Mamaw cast about, looking for ways to fill the hours she’d spent a lifetime using in service to her community, her family and oh, yes— that man she loved. On my last visit before he passed, Mamaw and I went to visit every day, like we always did. I was newly pregnant with my fifth son, who would bear his name and be just six weeks old as I held him beside his namesake’s newly dug grave. It was a hard, hard visit. Papaw didn’t recognize me— me, his beloved Baby, who had treasured beyond words. He was heavily sedated by necessity, the edge of his agitation sheared off chemically in an attempt to keep both him and others safe. As I sat beside him, stroking his hand and asking for stories about Trigger, his favorite horse, I noticed Mamaw shuffling through the room, something dangling from her hand.

It was his socks.

“Mamaw,” I said gently, “They’ll get those.”

“Oh, I know,” she answered. “But I don’t get to anymore, and I miss it.”

Yes, there were tears right then and there. There are tears again as I write this. Why? Because our souls know that our rights stop where our hearts begin. Jesus laid down his life for us, friends. All He asks of us is to stoop low enough to retrieve a pair of socks. The socks of a man who works tirelessly for us. The socks of a man who loves our babies. The socks of a man who carries weight we cannot see.

Just a pair of socks. A pile of paper. A chair that needs to be pushed back in.

Die to self with me today, sister. Remember that in serving our fallible husbands, we serve Christ Himself. And remember that this, too, shall pass. And when it does, we will long for the days when the clutter sat by the front door.

In Christ,

Heather