Feminine 101

When I was a wizened teenager, I remember sitting in my youth leader’s home on a wrap-around sectional surrounded by other teens. My youth leader, a short, middle-aged woman with reading glasses and a deep desire to know the LORD, read us a Christmas storybook about an angel who loved to sing. The angel, despite her soft, too-quiet voice, finally got her chance. After years of faithful, obedient practice, she was given the opportunity to sing at the grand event of her choice. She read the divine bulletin board with its gilded postings (great world events like royal coronations and weddings). At the bottom of the bulletin board almost as an afterthought, was a hastily-scrawled note card that simply read “Singing to the sheep–Bethlehem.” This was her big shot! But she found herself drawn to the sheep and their sweet simplicity. If not her, then who? Who would sing to them? 

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When my youth leader finished the story, she turned to us asking who among us would sing to the sheep. We all eyed one another dubiously. Even then, I knew my pride would goad me on to more glamorous things, so when she said she thought I would do it, I rather disrespectfully scoffed. Clearly she didn’t know me very well. Or so I thought. You will note a recurring theme of older people speaking wisdom into my life.

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Fast forward more than a decade. I was a young wife and mother. Mr. Right and I broke ties with our church (a difference of theology so nothing too scandalous) and left a ministry we had helped build. It was tough. I have always loved to sing. In that church and in our ministry, I had the privilege of singing in front of a crowd nearly every week. That was all gone.

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Even beyond that, I began to wrestle with what the bible says about womanhood. I poured over the scriptures. Genesis details the creation of Adam, formed from dust and brought to life by the breath of God directly. And Eve? She was taken from Adam like an afterthought. The epistles state numerous times that women aren’t to teach or be in authority over men in church, something I couldn’t easily dismiss as a purely cultural difference. Timothy says that women will be saved through child-bearing. Peter comes right out and says that women are the “weaker vessel.” Frankly, it didn’t seem fair. 

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And in the middle of it, there I was trying to suss out my place in it all. Just what was I supposed to be? 

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One night, I was tucking my eldest daughter–a mere toddler at the time–into bed under her butterfly quilt. We followed the same routine: bathroom, pajamas, book, prayer, song. Every night was the same. That night, I was reaching the end. She had selected a hymn for me to sing and I started in softly. As I the notes carried the short distance between myself and her, it occurred to me that this was very different from singing on stage in front of a crowd. No glamor. No prestige. No admiring crowds. Only tiny ears to hear. Very different, indeed. 

It’s more like singing to sheep. 

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I smiled as I crooned, not interrupting a sleepy girl’s song. But inside, the sweetness of what my youth leader had seen filled me to the brim. The following days and weeks, became a succession of revelations as the pieces clicked into place. None rang more purely true than this: Being a wife, being a mother, is a call of God. The aptly named Mr. Right had said so on a number of different occasions. And maybe, you’re nodding along thinking yeah, you’re right. You have no idea! Let’s explore, shall we? 

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Mr. Right is married to me, not anyone else. Me. He’s my husband. He was given to me and I to him. Our children? They were given to us. Not to you, not to anyone else. And who gives such treasures, but God alone? The Epistle of James tells us that every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights in whom there is no shifting or variation. He didn’t make a mistake, God didn’t stutter when He called you. Are you married? It’s a call of God. Are you a mother? It’s a call of God. Are you a grandmother? It’s a call of God.

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That sounds very nice and is all well and good and stuff. But who cares? Why does it matter? Well, it means that every basket of laundry washed, dried, and folded, every dirty diaper changed, every time you fold your husband or children into a hug, every single meal, and every little snack, all of those profoundly mundane tasks performed under the banner of marriage or motherhood, are in answer to a call of God on your life. 

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And if He asked you to do it, then it must be important. 

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Far from wrestling with the apparent imbalance of a woman’s role, I have come to realize that God’s call, whatever it may be, is a glorious thing. If you were called to scrub toilets, do it with all your might! Shall the vessel say to potter, “Why did you make me thus?” Of course not! This vessel may be weak, but it was made by Almighty God and what He does, is done with purpose. 

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Remember Eve? The afterthought? If God had not intended her, why spend so much time explaining and demonstrating that in all the animals there was not a fitting companion for man, that it was not good for Adam to be alone? In fact, so noteworthy is Adam’s loneliness that it is the first thing in history to be labeled as anything other than good. Particular effort is made to demonstrate the importance of a helper, far too much if Eve was just a hastily-stitched patch. Instead, Genesis 2 sends a resounding message that a man, of himself, is incomplete. Eve was part of God’s perfect plan all along. Her kindness, her virtue, and sensibility and most importantly, her love were all necessary for him. She was no more an afterthought than was singing to the sheep in Bethlehem. 

And we all know how that turned out.

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