I read a post today titled "67 Things I wish I had known at 18." It's 67 short, pithy sayings, ranging from "take your makeup off before bed" to "laugh till you cry, cry till you laugh." Most of it's fairly trite, decent advice of the "inspirational life" vein, but two snippets stood out to me.
The first was "You are destined to be more than just someone’s wife. Act like it."
The second was "There is a man out there who will not make you cry. Wait for him."
On the one hand, I agree that women are more than accessories for their men. I agree that giving your heart to a man who is unworthy and will only break is a bad idea. But--and maybe I'm over-thinking this--there's nothing wrong with being "just" a wife, and being brought to tears is not always bad.
I think with the first statement, I'm reacting as much to hyper-feminism as to the actual statement, to the women who fight against the idea of keeping house, mothering, and being a wife as an end in itself. To those women who want to balance career and family, more power to you! That's a very difficult balance, and I applaud your work.
However there's nothing wrong with being content as "just a wife". My mother is very very proud to be Mrs. Roy. She has a degree in business, she has visions and ideas that far transcend the domestic uses she puts them to. But she's content to use her architectural ideas to design beautiful additions to her home, to use her business skills to manage the money my father earns, to use her teaching abilities to school her children at home. She uses her wisdom outside the home as a counselor, she offers her talents to anyone who asks advice, but her career is her home and her family. From a worldly perspective, she's "just a wife".
From mine, she is the woman of Proverbs 31, looking to the ways of her household, considering and buying fields, delighting her husband. She is the woman whose husband and children praise her in the gates.(And that, by the way, means praising her publicly. For the Israelites, the city gates was where people met to discuss important decisions and politics.)
For the second statement, this is where my innate idealism meets my hard-learned realism. I love the idea of a relationship that never makes me cry. When my former boyfriend and I were dating, his dad advised me that in any relationship, there comes a point at which one or both parties question whether they want this relationship. Sometimes the question grows so strong, the questioner walks away from the relationship. At that point, either they split up, or the other person pursues them and they grow back together stronger than before.
I fought that idea so desperately for several weeks. If you're perfect for each other, if you're happy together, why would you question it?? At the time, I was pretty twitter-pated, and he pursued me with flattering diligence. Why would we question the relationship to the point of one of us walking away?
After much soul-searching, many conversations with friends and family, and many frustrated prayers, I realized something: saying we'll never question the relationship is prideful. Not to mention naive. We are sinful human beings; we are going to upset each other. We are going to wonder "Can I possibly spend fifty odd years with this person, raising children together and growing old together?" To believe otherwise is to deny the reality of our sin nature and to set ourselves up for heartbreak. Even the best and kindest man on earth will not be able to make me perfectly happy all of the time. Only God is perfect, and only God can promise me eternal joy.
And on another note, are tears always bad? I think not. I have cried over my sins. I have cried over my siblings' misdoings. I have wept when forced to confront difficult truths. (I've also cried when I was tired, hungry, grumpy, or when I stubbed my toe, but that's a different story.) The question is not "will my future spouse never make me cry?" but "will my future spouse dry my tears with Biblical truth and Biblical love?"
Anyway. Here's the links to the articles that have sparked all this:
http://totalfratmove.com/67-things-i-wish-i-had-known-at-18-3/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-adam-smith/marriage-isnt-for-you_b_4209837.html
http://triathletewithacollar.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-response-to-marriage-isnt-for-you/
Excellent post, Rachel. I'm glad I have such a wise friend!
ReplyDeleteLove this post :)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you; I don't see your mom as "just a wife," even though the rest of the world may think of it that way. She is definitely a force to be reckoned with all her own! ;)
And as for the statement about finding someone who won't make you cry, I had to just lol. You know what I quickly learned in my first weeks and months of marriage? I cry way too much.
Love you!