After being a parent for the last sixteen years, one thing I would say about parenting is this: It ain’t easy! It is challenging!

Until kids realize that their parents have their best interest at heart, they don’t take “no” for an answer. When they demand something, they try anything to get it.

You know that Bible verse that says, “Pray without ceasing?” Well, kids are very good at asking without ceasing until they get what they want. Every strategy we parents devise to say “no” to their unending request usually falls short and their “witty” and clever ideas will often win over and get us in that moment of “Oh, LORD, I’m confused now. Is yes or no the right answer here?”

So, my Berhan and I usually do our little “parent meeting” in our bedroom to come up with a strategy to know how to handle their endless “I want this” request. So, after we made lots of mistakes, we agreed on something. We agreed to always say yes or no AFTER we alone, without them around us, discuss about the issue. Oh, that strategy was (still is) the one thing that used to get on our kids’ last nerve. (I guess, they are growing out of it now.)

So when they need something, they come and ask me and I will always say, “Well, that is good; let’s wait for your dad to come home and hear what he has to say. If he says it is good, we will go for it.”

Oh, my! That is not something they want to hear. Forget my boys; my daughter pulls her hair out every time she hears me say that. She says, “Why does he have to be the one who always makes a decision? Why don’t you learn to be independent?”

Little did she know that-that is the very spirit I’m fighting against every day, a spirit that says to me, “Be independent of your husband and God!”

And, when they go and ask my Berhan, he also says, “You know what, let’s see what your mom says about it and if she approves it, we will do it.”

When he responds to them like that, my daughter, who is the spoke-person to the Banko’s cubs, always says to him something like, “Remember? You are the head of this house. You don’t need anybody’s approval; you can decide all by yourself. Don’t you?”

Yeah, it sounds like she is asking him to be “a man!” But he is smarter than that. He doesn’t fall for it.

So recently she wanted to convince me of something. You have no idea how smart and clever this girl is.

Knowing that most of her past “techniques” were expiring, she came up with a strong one. So she said to me: “Mom, dad might be a head of this house; but do you know that you are the neck of this house? The head can only turn to a direction the neck is willing to turn. If the neck turns to the right side, the head turns to the same direction. It can’t refuse.”

Hmm, I’m sure she heard this concept from one of the Focus on the Family or Family Life Today radio shows. I heard it too but I never thought about it that way until she connected the dots.

The Bible says that husbands are the heads over their wives and wives have to submit to their husbands’ leadership because they are the heads and their wives are their “bodies”– (Ephesians 5).

That means, if my Berhan is the head and I’m the rest of the body, I am the neck too. Hooray!

Well, not so fast!

The only way the neck is going to be praised by God for doing “a good job” of being a neck is if it knows where and when to turn.

If the compass of the “neck” is messed up, it affects the movement of the head too. For example, if you strain your neck, your head will be stuck. Even if the head wants to turn, it can’t turn and it will have frequent headaches. Flexible neck causes no headache.

The Bible says this: “Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be WON OVER without words by the behavior of their wives” 1 Peter 3:1

Submission! I don’t like it and it ain’t easy thing to do. However, when I let myself soaked in the Word of God, I find it easy to be submissive to my husband.

That means, the best “exercise” a neck needs to do every day for it to be flexible is to sock itself in the “Word” so that not only it submits to the headship and leadership of the head but also it turns to the right direction and takes the head along with it, to the same and rightful direction. Wow! Did you hear that? That is what I call submission with a hidden and powerful agenda called “INFLUENCE!” ///