Monday, February 12, 2007

COME ONE, COME ALL

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I'd love to get to know you. May you find God's grace sufficient to meet your needs. SelahV

Thursday, January 25, 2007

WOMAN OF MEANING


What is a woman today? Wife? Mother? Lawyer? Doctor? Teacher? Want to venture a guess?
What role are we to play in the Kingdom? How are we to assume our role? For what purpose did God create woman?

I look at my five granddaughters and my one daughter and wonder. Where is our world leading them? Where is the church leading them? I can remember a time when my father thought I should be a teacher. When I got married at the tender age of seventeen, he was so very disappointed in me. He never really got over that, either. Still talks about it today. I laugh.
I see women becoming people of notoriety which would never have been a thought in most women's minds when I was a child. As a teen, the subjects in school were geared toward women becoming secretaries or teachers. Most thought of being wives. Oh, there is the few liberal-thinking, progressive women of yore that forged the way for we women to do more than tat, quilt, can beans, garden, wash diapers and hang laundry on the line.
But I wonder how progressive we have really become. We have our fine pot-scrubbing dishwashers, our miracle-one-minute microwaves, our complete dinner in a tray, our babysitting Dish-satellite home entertainment centers, our wrinkle free clothes. In fact, fashion houses make material with wrinkles so we don't have to even worry whether our dresses are free of crimps at all.

We probably have more time-saving devices in this century than we have time to use them. In fact, I think that is the problem with being a woman today. We have no time. No time to reflect. No time to meditate upon the Word of God. No time to play with our children. No energy left for our husbands because we've spent the whole day pushing those time-saving devices and programing our lives to fit into a culture that demands women be more than women. Much more. We are to be men, too.

I have some lady friends who I admire so much. They are stay-at-home women. They have educations. They have skills. They have gifts. And they have talents. But they use them in service to the Lord and others. Their greatest joy in life is in being women of virtue. Known for hospitality. Encouragement. And servanthood to others. They are the backbone of society; they are volunteers. They have the greatest marriages. Their husbands respect them--sacrifice for them and validate their worth.

What is the place for a woman today? Home with the children? Homeschooling? Volunteering at schools? Driving kids on fieldtrips? Reading books to toddlers instead of plopping in a Veggie-Tale movie? Answering endless whys? Baking homemade bread? Being a helpmate to their spouse?

Or are we subject to society's whims? Is a woman's place no longer in the home but in the world of labor? Are woman to dominate the workforce and make equal pay for equal work? Are they to be the CEO's, the Deans, the Senators, the Speakers of the House, the Secretaries of Defense, the Presidents of the United States? The first woman who? Is that a woman's place?

I've been confused over this issue as long as I've known I was a female. Being raised with four brothers and a dominating, domineering father in a world of women in search of more than what my stepmother was, has caused multiple conflicts in my mind. Rising from childhood to womanhood in a time of Women's Liberation added to my confusion. Media, society and psychologists demanded a better way for women and women who wanted to stay home were shunned as insignificant bon-bon popping slobs. Not to mention ignorant. Then finally, women began leaving the workforce and going back to being homemakers. Homemaking became noble again. But the confusion is still there. The finger-pointing is still there. The guilt is still there.

I am a woman of meaning. I love being a wife, a mother, a grandmother and friend. I don't like the competition of trying to be more in the world than what I was created to be. That's just the way I am. And anyone is entitled to disagree with me. It doesn't bother me a bit. I'm next to certain that you won't lose a wink of sleep over my opinions.
I really don't think it's as important to know what it means to be a woman as being a woman with meaning. What do you think? What does being a woman mean to you? [copyrighted,selahv,2007]