The Modern Martha Wife: Anxious, Distracted, and Out of Order

Do you love Jesus, love your family, and still feel anxious, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and like you’re constantly carrying the weight of everyone else’s world?

In this episode, we’re diving into the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10—not to shame busy wives, but to uncover what Jesus was actually addressing. Martha wasn’t rebuked for serving. She was anxious, troubled, and distracted by many things.

We’ll unpack what it looks like to be a “modern Martha wife,” how good responsibilities can become disordered priorities, and why right order always begins at the feet of Jesus.

This episode lays the foundation for a new series on abiding, counterfeit peace, and what it means to flourish as a surrendered, Spirit-led wife.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage to God's way here. And we're kicking off a new series today about the modern Martha wife, the one who's anxious, distracted, and overall just out of order. Um, and this used to be me. And these wives are not lazy. They're not wives who don't love Jesus. So they don't, it's not that they don't care about their marriage, home, or kids, but these are wives who are doing a lot, caring a lot, trying hard, and still anxious, distracted, overwhelmed, irritable, and not at peace. And so I want to start and root the series in Luke 10 because I think that we've misunderstood Martha. You know, a lot of people will focus on the fact that Martha was serving and she wasn't rebuked for serving. She was rebuked because she was anxious and troubled by many things. And I think that that's where a lot of wives are living. So let's look at Luke 10. And the setup here is Jesus comes into Martha's home, and Martha is serving, she's preparing, hosting, carrying the load, but Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening. And of course, I mean, if just picture yourself in that situation, right? Jesus comes to your home and you're busy preparing a feast for him or getting the house in order or whatever that looks like, and you look over and you see your sister just sitting at his feet, or you see your spouse, you see your husband just sitting at Jesus' feet. You get frustrated and you ask Jesus to tell them to help you, right? I mean, think about this in your marriage. Have you ever been busy preparing something for company coming into town and your husband has a project that he has to do and he's not helping, right? It's a little different, but but Jesus responds, and this is the point I want to make. Jesus responds, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion. So the first point I want to make is Martha's issue wasn't serving, it was being anxious and distracted. He didn't rebuke rebuke Martha for responsibility or for serving. He rebuked the state of her spirit, which was anxious, troubled, distracted, pulled in too many directions. The issue was not effort, right? We love to focus on effort, uh, but the actual issue was right order. She was carrying many things while neglecting the one thing that was necessary. So let's think about this in today, in the modern wife life. What are the many things for a wife today? I'm gonna give you a whole list of these things and see where you fit in or what fits in to your life: kids, house, meals, work, marriage, schedules, errands, finances, notifications, text, social media, shopping, how about pod podcasts, noise, or constant input? You're listening to this right now. Now, it this is the I'm gonna dive into this a little bit more and unpack this a little bit more because all of these things are good, right? What about the pressure to do it all well, or the pressure to look good doing it, or the pressure to fix the marriage, or the pressure to hold everything together? Okay, so I want to paint this picture of what a modern Martha wife looks like with all of those things I just listed in mind. She's someone who loves Jesus, she wants peace, and she wants to be a good wife and mom. She wants to do things right, is often the default carrier of the home. She feels responsible for everyone and everything. She gets frustrated when no one helps. I've been there. She feels unseen, touched out, overstimulated, mentally overloaded. She can't shut her brain off. She doesn't know how to rest without guilt. And she is physically near Jesus, but functionally living far from abiding. Right? She's isn't that interesting? So think about that that picture of Martha and Mary and Jesus in that perspective. Martha was physically near Jesus. He was in the same home, but functionally, she was living far from abiding in him by sitting at his feet. So point number two here is the issue isn't busyness by itself, it's disordered attention and affection. Being busy isn't automatically sin. Serving isn't automatically wrong. I said I was going to kind of tie this in because those are good things that I mentioned earlier. Responsibility isn't the problem. The problem is when many things crowd out the one thing necessary. So when your spirit is ruled by anxiety, urgency, control, distraction, resentment, and performance, when you're physically doing for Jesus, but you're not actually sitting with him, when your home, marriage, and motherhood are being run from overwhelm instead of abiding. Okay, and that's where we see the contrast between Martha and Mary. Martha was moving and doing and caring and irritated and anxious and distracted, trying to manage everyone else and everything else. Well, Mary was sitting, she was listening, she was receiving, she was choosing the better portion, and she was rightly ordered in that moment. So I want you to notice this important nuance here that Mary is not the wife who does nothing, right? Mary is the picture of a wife who understands. She has this understanding of presence before performance, of communion before control, of abiding before activity, of right order before outward fruit. Do you see it's being plugged into that source, being filled by those living waters that then overflow onto everything else? That's the important nuance, and that is why I talk about right order so much, because you can do the same things, good things, but if you do them out of order, anxiety and being distracted by many things is a result. So this is the core question I want you to ruminate on this whole series is what are you reaching for when you feel overwhelmed, anxious, disappointed, lonely, overstimulated, or frustrated? What are you asking that thing to do for you that only Jesus can do? Are you asking it to calm you, to distract you, to comfort you, to numb you, to make you feel in control, or to help you not feel? Because the modern Martha wife usually doesn't just stay busy, she starts reseeding for counterfeits for peace, for comfort, for relief, and for fruit. Things that calm her for a moment, but never actually heal her. And so that's where we're gonna go next. But I want you to listen to these and let these points land here that you are not weak because you feel overwhelmed, but you may be deeply out of order, you may not need another productivity system, you may not actually need another break, you may not even need another marriage tip, and that's good because that's not what this is about. You may need to come back to the feet of Jesus and let him show you what the many things have been doing to your soul. So, episode two is going to be about counterfeit peace, and we're gonna focus on what wives reach for instead of Jesus, what taking the edge off is really doing, and why the issue isn't always the object, but what it's functioning as. Because Martha's problem didn't end with being busy, and neither does ours. So I will see you, my friend, in the next episode.

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Bye.