In chapter 1, Mrs. Pearl explains how we are God's gift to our husbands. We have been created for the sole purpose of being a helper suitable (since Mrs. Pearl uses the KJV, she uses the term "help meet") to our husbands.

Page 21:

If you are a wife, you were created to fill a need, and in that capacity you are a "good thing," a helper suited to the needs of a man. This is how God created you and it is your purpose for existing. You are, by nature, equipped in every way to be your man's helper. You are inferior to none as long as you function within your created nature, for no man can do your job, and no man is complete without his wife. You were created to make him complete, not to seek personal fulfillment parallel to him.

So true!

Page 22:

When you are a help meet to your husband, you are a helper to Christ, for God commissioned man for a purpose and gave him a woman to assist in fulfilling that divine calling. When you honor your husband, you honor God. When you obey your husband, you obey God. The degree to which you reverence your husband is the degree to which you reverence your Creator. As we serve our husbands, we serve God. But in the same way, when you dishonor your husband, you dishonor God.

This passage is almost good. Shouldn't be be treating EVERYONE this way? Shouldn't we be serving others in general? Our husbands are included in that, of course if we honor/serve them we are honoring/serving God.

I'm not entirely sure how she is using the word "obey" here, but I cannot make the blanket statement that she did: When you obey your husband, you obey God. In many cases, yes that will be the case, but just because my husband tells me to do something doesn't mean it's automatically OK and that God approves of me doing it. I will speak more about this in a later chapter, however.

Again from page 22:

Regardless of who you are or what your talents may be, God's will is that you be a suitable helper to your husband.

Page 23:

To covet his role of leadership is to covet something that will not make God, you, or him happy. It is not a question of whether or not you can do a better job than he; it is a matter of doing what you were "designed" to do.

Again, so true!

I especially liked this, again from page 23:

The role of being a perfectly fit helper does not make one inferior to the leader.

I think many times the submission message gets skewed to mean that the woman is inferior to a man, but that is so not true! They are of equal value and worth. They are both necessary. They just have different roles.

I did the word study that she recommended on page 25. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I realized that a virtuous, wise, prudent, etc. wife is a STRONG WOMAN. She has strength of character. She strives for moral excellence. She is capable. She is humble, yet she has a backbone.

In reading this chapter, honestly nothing that Mrs. Pearl wrote was all that revolutionary to me. I do not struggle with trying to be the leader. My personality is such that I AVOID the leadership role. So that has never been a problem in our marriage. However, I tend to struggle with the "martyr mom" syndrome, rather than serving my family joyfully. I do get frustrated with how I have failed to train my children properly, and that breeds more frustration because I have that much more physical work to do. :-(

All in all, this chapter was a good one. Didn't really make me go, "OH WOW," as it has other people, but it was a good one. More to come.