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Embracing the Call of Womanhood
“The right to be learned, wise, noble, useful, is woman’s divinely limited sphere; the right to influence and exalt the circle in which she moved; the right to mount the sanctified bema of her own quiet hearthstone; the right to modify and direct her husband’s opinions, if he considered her worthy and competent to guide him; the right to make her children ornaments to their nation, and a crown of glory to their race; the right to advise, to plead, to pray. . . the right to be all that the phrase ‘noble, Christian woman’ means.� This quote from Augusta Jane Evans-Wilson (St. Elmo, 1866), gives us a description that is a far cry from your average list of woman’s rights, but I think it’s one that’s far more freeing. Somehow having a “divinely limited sphere� gives us comfortable boundaries that allow us to move without constriction within them. You know the old story of the school children? Someone looked at a group of kids during recess and how they all hung around the fence surrounding the playground. They then removed the fence entirely, assuming the kids needed “more room� to play. This action had the opposite effect and the children huddled in the very center; a loss of boundaries was also a loss of freedom. I think the “right to be noble and useful� is plenty enough for me.
I got an e-mail from a friend tonight talking about girls who go to college or get into careers in order to discover themselves or make sure they are fulfilling their whole potential. This got me thinking. It seems that somehow in the modern world, the more women fight for their right to be equal to man the more miserable they become. (Now, granted, we are equal in our status before God; we are simply given a different sphere of operation.) The rise of the self-help movement and our growing dissatisfaction with life, as evidenced by many surveys, points out that a majority of women are just not fulfilled in their present lives. As we argue and negotiate for the same piece of the pie that men have, we are just as quickly giving up the piece of the pie God gave us. Our homes and children slip through our fingers as we grasp for what we were not given.
I think the whole discussion starts and ends with the purpose of women. Like that quote on women’s rights said, we have a right to be noble and useful, but not to be self-fulfilled or to have our supposed potential actualized for our own benefit. Our creation and hence our calling ever afterwards is to support and help, not to DO and accomplish on our own. To attempt otherwise is to mess with created order and hence is indicative of Eve’s curse of desiring her husband. What was God’s answer? He will rule over you. No matter how many little paths we try to forge, we come back to the truth of the kids’ song: “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, can’t go around it. . .� The truth stares us in the face and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.
We are WOMEN. Plain and simple. Hence, we live not for ourselves. Our fulfillment, our happiness, our very sanity lies always and only in supporting, in helping, in encouraging, in making our Adams successful. Degrees don’t matter, activities don’t matter, accomplishments don’t matter – nothing matters except us getting rid of the idea that we must perform to be valid. We have got to surrender our “right� to be successful and bend our will to the facts of the situation. We are created. Created beings don’t choose their calling. Being a woman means we are not in charge. If we could all of us get that into our little brains, I think life would be a lot easier.
I love the words of Titus 2:10, where Christians are described as “adorn[ing] the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.� I like to think about this adornment in relation to the doctrine of created order. We are created as women and our behavior as such is a representation of the goodness of that doctrine. When we fight against that creation, we put on a poor show. Women who refuse to act like women (submissive, helpful, serving, living for others and not for themselves) show this doctrine to be a hard, heavy yoke to bear. On the other hand, those who embrace their calling as helpers are a beautiful demonstration of God’s created order for men and women. In addition, submitting to our role as females also is a small piece of the truth of the body of Christ as His bride. We are to wait on our King, to be in cheerful service to Him now and always. When we willingly live for the success of others now, we are fulfilling our call as women and also as faithful Christians, waiting for the return of the Lord.
His yoke is easy and His burden is light. When we learn to embrace the sphere God has placed us in, I think we will find it to be one that gives us wings and enables us to be truly fulfilled. Things used for purposes other than the ones they were made for are almost always frustrated. (Did you ever try eating peas with a knife?) Accepting, loving, and enjoying our “divinely limited sphere� as noble, Christian women will put us in the position of being a beautiful adornment to the doctrine of created order. The only right we are given is the right to follow Christ’s example and lay down our lives for others. But that one right, properly accomplished, is enough to give us true joy and lasting happiness!
Posted by lilypress at November 26, 2005 5:35 AM
