Several blogs I read have lately had posts on female Christian bloggers essentially meddling in other people’s marriages by advising what the wives ought to do or what the husbands ought to do about this or that situation. The gist of those posts has been that it is not the place of the female blogger to advise what other people’s husbands ought to be doing to lead their families.

I wasn’t too sure what to make of those posts. I have read a handful of Christian female bloggers over the years, and I haven’t seen too many situations – actually I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head – where the woman was writing anything that fit the description of trying to lead someone else’s marriage. I mean, there is a difference between explaining what the Bible says about the marital hierarchy to other women and actually advising a man how to lead his family or telling a woman what following her husband’s leadership specifically should look like beyond asking him what to do.  I almost wondered if they were perhaps making a mountain out of a mole hill.

But I just read a post that exactly fits the description of a female Christian blogger inadvertently subverting the headship of another woman’s husband and accidentally sowing discontent and strife in their marriage.

In response to a female reader who wrote her an email asking if the grief she is feeling about wanting more children when her husband says no more is normal, the Thinking Housewife (Mrs. Wood) writes:

You are meant to be a mother. You are meant to say yes.

You and your husband are complicating this issue. Stop trying to make decisions that you are not meant to make […]

Please remind your husband that it is not his obligation to provide a college education to his children or anything else but basics. It is his obligation, however, to have as many children as possible. Try to explain this patiently to him. In 30 or 40 years, when he is old and weak, he will not say, “Why did I have so many children? Gee, I wish they would stop visiting me and taking care of me.” When we meet a person and marvel at his individuality or good qualities, does it ever occur to us to think, “Oh, well thank God, his parents wanted him?” No, we know that whether that person was wanted prior to his conception doesn’t much matter.

For the rest of your marriage, let God decide how many children you will have. Anything else is sinful. Put away the contraception for good. If either of you doesn’t want more children or is afraid of having more, then turn to God.

This is not helpful advice; the woman already knows she wants more children and doesn’t need persuading.  In a general conversation, one that isn’t offering specific advice to a specific woman and her husband, it certainly would be reasonable for Mrs. Wood to discuss what the Bible says about children and what the purpose of marriage is and to review what church teaching says about contraception.   But in this case, what she has inadvertently done is completely subvert the husband in her reader’s marriage. She has taken on the role of leading her female reader,  but that is not her proper role at all.

Perhaps the woman’s husband is in sin in the area of contraception, but the correct response to this woman’s email would have been to tell her that feeling grief about being denied children is a normal response and then offering to pray for her to find peace in God. She might also have advised the woman to go to God in prayer about the situation but to commit to obeying her husband. Certainly the woman in question should feel free to talk with her husband about why she desires more children, but in the end she has to abide by her husband’s decision, not by Mrs. Wood’s.

My post shouldn’t be read as me “calling out” Mrs Wood; she probably didn’t mean to do any harm.  Nevertheless, she has set herself up as the authority over her reader’s husband’s decisions and has reduced the likelihood that the female reader will be able to contentedly follow his leadership even in an area where she may disagree with him and feel real sorrow at his decision.  This is something we (all women) must guard against accidentally doing.

I stand by my assertion that the EU will not allow great Britain to depart so easily. Consider (from CNN Money):

..it will be at least three months before formal talks on the future relationship with the EU can begin […] It will take at least two years for a British exit (Brexit) to be negotiated.

However, I stand corrected that the vote would even be allowed to proceed fairly at all. I expected full scale voter fraud funded by George Soros, but I was proven wrong about that. Nevertheless, voting to leave doesn’t actually mean you’ve left. Let’s see how many years this will drag out.

In all the elation over the vote to leave, this is what I think is the most interesting thing that I have read yet about the Bexit repercussions:

Northern Ireland’s strong Remain vote led Sinn Fein chairman Declan Kearney to call for a referendum on unification with Ireland, an EU member country. Sinn Fein is the largest Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, nationalist Martin McGuinness, said holding such a vote is “a democratic imperative.”

Pro-British First Minister Arlene Foster, meanwhile, said there was “no way” such a vote would result in a united Ireland.

Scotland, too, may be eyeing a split with the U.K. — again. A 2014 referendum on Scottish independence resulted in the country remaining within the United Kingdom.

But now that the U.K. will be leaving the EU, a second referendum may be in the works. Scotland’s voters preferred “Remain” over “Leave,” by 62 percent to 38 percent.

The idea of Irish reunification is fascinating. Who would ever have imagined Great Britain breaking apart along ethnic lines? Of course, that would leave a large number of non-Europeans living in countries that have broken apart along historic ethnic lines. Those people, the so-called “migrants,” came to Britain mostly due to the welfare benefits, not due to any love for ethnic Scots, Irishmen, or Englishmen or British culture and traditions. One wonders: will they repatriate themselves?

…and you can’t just leave it when you are tired of it.

It’s cute the way people around the blogosphere today actually seem to believe that Britain will be allowed to vote its way out of the EU.  This belief surely must be due to the brain-rotting effect of the most insidiously tyrannical form of government ever devised – democracy.  Like little children who believe in Santa Claus, people in a democracy believe in the Magic Vote Fairy who gives them Freedom.

Tell me, how free are people in the EU?

U.K. Political Leader Arrested for Quoting Winston Churchill

Cologne Police Reveal ‘Cover Up’ Of New Year’s Eve Rape Attacks Ordered By Government

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the EU dissolved and Europe set free from the slave-yoke of democracy, with her monarchies restored. But then, I also favor this sentiment…

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, no?

Alas.

Unlike newmarriage, the EU is until-death-do-us-part.

For love-miserly feminists, not even one day can be set aside to praise and appreciate men for anything.

My favorite part is that she responds to all the criticism with a baffled “But I was praising men!”

If that’s praise, who needs to be kicked in the teeth?

Happy Father’s Day! If you’re a dad, I hope you’re having a blessed day with your family.

The girls and I went to Ann Arbor Arms to try to find a gift for Phil that he would actually like and use. This was my first time at Ann Arbor Arms.

When we got there, we were impressed with their beautiful new building. It’s large, with lots of brick, glass, and brushed nickel, with an open, airy layout. Clearly they thought about how to appeal to a wider range of clientele than might normally frequent the grubby little hole-in-the-wall type of gun shops (not that there is anything wrong with those shops, but they might be off putting to some clientele, especially of the female variety).

There was a variety of types of people working there. We chose to approach a friendly-looking young woman and ask her opinion about what to get my husband. We were thinking of purchasing some range time for him as Ann Arbor Arms really invested a great deal in building their ranges and they are considered to be top notch. They even have a special state-of-the-art tactical bay which allows you to train for real-life personal defense scenarios.

The young woman showed us the package specials they were running for Father’s Day, and we chose this one:

Ann Arbor Arms runs quite a few classes for novices up through more advanced shooters, including classes geared toward women. They have a wide range of gear and emergency preparedness supplies, and my husband says their prices on firearms are  excellent. All in all, our experience was very positive and I do recommend this shop highly (I received no compensation or special favors from them; this review is just my honest opinion).

So of course you will notice that the package is for two people. This has led to some discussion as to whom Phil would choose to take with him. Naturally I thought it was my right as his wife to go, but the girls feel that because it’s Father’s Day, not Husband’s Day, one of them should get to go. I guess I can kind of see their point. He hasn’t picked one of us yet, but I suspect he will choose our eldest daughter to go with him.

This made me think of a small debate about females shooting guns that occurred on Dalrock’s blog in the comments section. Several people took the stance that letting one’s wife or daughters shoot is an unfeminine and unacceptable activity. Other people said that women need to be able to defend themselves when they don’t have their husbands or fathers with them. Everyone agreed that the trope of the conservative-feminist kick-ass tough girl who out-shoots all the boys is super annoying.

What it comes down to is that every man has to decide for himself what he thinks is the right thing for his wife and daughters, but he doesn’t have the right to tell another man what is correct for that man’s wife and daughters. The whole point about a man being the head of his household is that he makes the right decisions that are best for his own family. There is nothing in God’s law that prohibits females from learning how to use guns, so it is a matter of each man’s own personal preference. If you don’t want your women to shoot, then don’t let them shoot. If someone else wants his daughters and wife to know how to use a firearm for personal defense or for recreational target shooting, that is none of your concern.

For girls who currently have no man in charge of them, I would definitely advise them to learn how to safely use a firearm. It is not only a fun recreational sport, but also a highly useful skill. Just keep a humble attitude and don’t be a show off about that skill. I have observed that more men than not appreciate women being able to take care of themselves when their husband or father is not present. For us personally, recreational target shooting has been an activity that we enjoy doing both together and separately and (Heaven forbid it should ever happen) in an emergency personal defense situation, Phil likes knowing that I will have his back to the best of my ability if he ever needs me to.

But whatever your personal stance on the shooting sports and their appropriateness for females, I wish any fathers reading this the happiest of days!

Our ducks and geese are about seven weeks old now. They are fully feathered out and could be released onto our large pond, but they won’t be yet.

A few weeks ago Phil removed a rather large snapping turtle from the pond and took it down to the creek and released it.

Snapping turtles will happily eat the feet right off ducks and even eat the whole duck if they’re big enough.  They’ll snap at people too, and have a powerful bite, so I was glad he got it out of there.

However, he later found several more baby snappers in the pond…

…and then a few days ago he saw a huge snapper swimming across the pond.  He tried to catch it with the skimmer net, but the snapper broke it immediately, so he ordered a snapping turtle trap online.  Anybody got a good recipe for turtle soup? 🙂

Then, earlier today, while we were working outside, he suddenly called me over to see something he had caught and put into a bucket at the edge of the pond.

It was a massasauga rattlesnake, the only poisonous snake in Michigan.  Bummer.  He killed the snake and disposed of it.  He felt bad about having to kill it as massasaugas are generally shy and relatively nonaggressive, but we can’t have poisonous snakes living in the pond right by the house (they’re welcome to live out in our marshland so long as they stay there).

I really appreciate my husband handling lurking dangers and scary stuff and killing things that need killing. Fellow blogger Ton used to say that what it means to be a man is the ability to engage in violence, but I think perhaps a more positive way of looking at it is to say that being a man means having the ability to engage in necessary violence to protect one’s own family, animals and property.  But actually I am not really sure you can boil down the essence of masculinity or femininity to just one thing.

But I sure do know the absence of masculinity when I see it.  This description of some journalist getting “a form of PTSD” (lol) from shooting an AR-15 is just cringe-worthy:

Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).  The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don’t know what you’re doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.

If the guy has a wife, I feel awfully bad for her.  It must feel terrible to know your man is not just unable but unwilling to be your protector.  But even worse is when he writes:

…if masculinity is defined by the power to commit violence on a wide scale, I proudly choose femininity. At one time, “being a man” meant standing up for what you believe in — and against injustice. By that definition, we need more real men in power taking on bullies like the NRA, which seeks to bolster the Second Amendment by shutting down opponents’ right to the First.

Dude, you’re not feminine, you’re just a coward.   Or as Pancake Loach said:

Kuntzman should shut his trap […] As a member of the feminine sex, I can testify that we don’t want any shrieking eunuchs like him hiding behind our skirts.

But now that we have had a laugh at his masculinity, let me say what I think the real point of this article was. He was clearly trying to write a shock piece to induce fear in people who have never had any experience with any sort of firearm.  You can tell this because of how disingenuous he is with some of what he writes about his experience. For example:

Even in semi-automatic mode, it is very simple to squeeze off two dozen rounds before you even know what has happened.

 Well, no. Actually, a semi automatic rifle can’t shoot a bunch of rounds before you even know what happened. With a semi automatic firearm, one trigger pull equals one bang. If it shoots two dozen rounds, it’s because you pulled the trigger two dozen times. But people reading the New York Daily News will think ARs are basically  fully automatic machine guns and be terrified enough to support a totally unnecessary ban. Kuntzman’s piece was meant to induce fear in readers because frightened people are easily politically manipulated.