What a blessed Friday it is, friends! Challah bread is rising, and clothes are drying. I’ve already taken a peek at my garden. We have had so much rain here. I’m not complaining, but the bit of sunshine expected next week will be much appreciated by my household.
This morning I found a few moments to curl up on my bed and read the next two chapters of our Let Me Be a Woman study. Reading about my calling as a woman is so encouraging. It helps me to focus my attention on being the wife and mother that I have been called to be by my Heavenly Father.
“Do the women’s liberationists want to be liberated from being women? No, they would say, they want to be liberated from society’s stereotypes of what women are supposed to be.” p. 49 In our day and age, what do women hope to become “liberated” from? Elisabeth contends that women hope to be liberated from the conditioning we have been subjected to when it comes to gender roles. Hmm, but have we been “conditioned” to be the submissive gender, or is there something more to it?
Elisabeth believes it to be strange that male dominance has been universal if it’s purely social conditioning, and I completely agree with her. A simple look at history clearly shows that men have held the positions of highest stature. The differences between men and women are not only physical, but emotional as well.
She writes, “It was God who made us different, and He did it on purpose. Recent scientific research is illuminating, and as has happened before, corroborates ancient truth which mankind has always recognized. God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate, and rule and the female to respond, follow, adapt, submit. Even if we held to a different theory of origin, the physical structure of the female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon, to complement, to nourish.
Yes, this. This over and over again. We cannot let the world tell us that we are the “same” as men, and can do anything they can do, and do it better at that. This is a lie from the enemy. There is much joy to be found when we step into our intended roles as women. Our spiritual, emotional, and physical states all attest to our womanhood.
Later she writes, “Every normal women is equipped to be a mother. Certainly not every woman in the world is destined to make use of the physical equipment but surely motherhood, in a deeper sense, is the essence of womanhood. The body of every normal woman prepares itself repeatedly to receive and to bear. Motherhood requires self-giving, sacrifice, suffering. It is a going down into death in order to give life.”
In the next short chapter, Elisabeth contends that the souls of women are intrinsically feminine. Just as the wind, weather, and tide fulfill His Word, there is a word fro us as well. In Psalm 144:12, we are told “May our daughters be like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace.” This is the call of womanhood. To uphold and support.
She writes, According as a pillar is cut and shaped to fit into a particular place and carry a specified weight, it is by that cutting and shaping differentiated and limited. It is the very differentiation and limitation that the pillar has to offer. So with us. We’ve been cut to a certain size and shape to fulfill a certain function. It is this, not that. It is a woman’s offering, not a man’s, that we have to give.“
Let’s concentrate on what the Lord intends for us to be, instead of focusing on the tasks and calling intended for men. There is such beauty in the feminine calling, ladies!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend with your families. Lord willing, I will be back here next Friday to discuss the next few chapters.
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