CHAPTER 7ON DEALING WITH REFRACTORY HUSBANDS
HERE is a woman who left a musical career to get married. Her husband promised to let her continue her music at any time she wished. Her marriage is not a happy one, but her husband now refuses to allow her to go on with her career. She is very talented, worked hard to achieve success, and is very unhappy at the thought of giving up her music. She wants to know what is the right thing to do. This is what I wrote her: It seems to me that if I were in such a place, I would certainly take matters into my own hands and resume my music and study. Judging from your letter you have no children and you haven't sufficient outlet for your energies. A person of your disposition cannot live long and keep her health in such a life as you are at present pursuing. It means stagnation and shipwreck. You might just as well put a lark in a cage six inches in diameter, and expect it to thrive. If I were in your place and were still I, and my husband couldn't listen to reason, I would read him a whole-souled riot act. I would tell him that I intended once and for all to take up my musical work again and that I would do my level best to be a good wife to him right along with it all. After that I would shut my mouth and ACT, instead of vacillating, or sitting still and chewing the rag. Of course the husband in that case would kick like a locoed bronco. He would make all sorts of a row until he realized that the die was cast and that there was no use kicking. Then he would adjust himself. He would surely do this if I did my part. In other words, if you follow the promptings of your own heart, and yet do it all in love and kindness toward him; be firm and yet faithful toward him; be free and yet loving; he will soon submit to the inevitable, adjust himself, and begin to be happy in your success. But be sure that your own attitude in the matter is right and that you treat him with loving kindness. If you can do this and do it aright, you will soon find yourself absolutely free in your own consciousness, and you will find your husband and all your circumstances adjusting themselves to help you. It is said the whole world stands aside to make way for the man who knows where he is going. Not only that, but it is true that the whole world springs to help him who knows where he is going. But nobody helps him who sits in a six-inch cage and beats his wings against the bars — with the door wide open. Now I have told you what I would probably do in your place. It is likely I would do this no matter how much I loved my husband. I would do it because I know that no one can live without proper outlet for the God-given energies that are working within him. I would do it in self-preservation, if for nothing else. The thing for you to do is to ask your own spirit what is the right course for you to pursue. Until you get the proper leading be still and listen. When you get the right leading, rise up and act. And after you have once put you hand to the plow never look back. Never permit yourself to question whether you did the right thing or not. After all, it doesn't matter so much what you do, as how you do it. If in your thoughts you are unstable as water — if you look back and then look forward and decide, and then go back on your decisions, and then decide again — if you are vacillating — you will never excel no matter what you do nor what choice you make. Take time to consider, trust the Spirit to tell you what to do, listen to the voice; then go in to win and stick to it. Do it sweetly, calmly, in faith believing in yourself and in God, believing in God in all parties concerned, believing that God will bring peace and readjustment to you and to all those about you. And here is a hint I handed out to another woman whose husband wasn't good and obedient! You and your husband are bound together by invisible nerves and arteries, and your highest thought will certainly find circulation in his being. "The believing wife shall sanctify the husband." The loving and believing wife shall inspire the husband. Every good thought of yours will certainly make its impress in and through him. The key to your problem is the key to your own soul. Find yourself, your oneness with all power, all love, all wisdom, and use your love and power and wisdom for the re-creation and regeneration of your world. Don't you think that if just now you cannot do what you want to do, it is the best thing for you to do with all your will what you can do? If you can't have what you want, then want what you can have, and use it to the best advantage. As to your being on the right path, nobody can decide that but yourself. Find yourself. Let the Spirit of Love guide you. And remember that by whatever you and your husband do together, you are made one. By whatever you do apart, you are divided, separated, divorced. Wherever he cannot or will not pull with you, you must change your tactics and pull with him. Only so can you stay married. Let wisdom, love, and time point the way of agreement in whatsoever you are planning to do. If you think you know more than he does, and you insist on his doing it your way in spite of his judgment and will, then you will surely end in shipwreck. Work together. Pull TOGETHER. Otherwise don't pull. Be still and know. If I were talking to your husband I would say the very same things. It takes two to make a pull- apart. And either one can stop it. But that does not excuse either; it only makes them both responsible.
Let go and trust, knowing that all things work together for good when you work together. This advice refers to the 999 things that start division between husband and wife. Once in a decade or a lifetime there may arise occasion for feminine revolution and marital reorganization. In which case be sure thou art right, then read the riot act with thy might, and lay down the new law with emphasis and dispatch. After which, shut up and live it. Mere man will capitulate, never fear. Unless he has heard you rehearse some nine hundred and ninety-nine times before.
WHEN YOUR HUSBAND DOESN'T AGREE >
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