This morning I went online to check the weather and was informed that today is International Women’s Day. I honestly have no idea what that day is nor do I have any interest in finding out what it is. I celebrate very few holidays and acknowledge even less. This day will be no different.
Or so I thought.
While trying to type in the weather website I wanted I noticed that the search engine I was on had a video up for today. I clicked on it out of...curiosity, I guess...and wound up wishing I hadn't.
Most of the video was in languages that I didn't understand, so I had no idea what they were saying but it was easy enough to piece together that the video was about all the world centered things women wanted to do from the actions in the video. What I saw nowhere in the video was any hint of women that wanted to be wives or mothers. I will admit that it's possible...not real likely...that somewhere in the languages I didn't understand that there was a woman that said she wanted to be a wife. I do know one woman was pregnant and from the way she rubbed her stomach I'm guessing she was talking about her baby but I don't know what she said. So maybe...maybe...she was speaking of how much she wanted to be a mother. I don't hold out much hope of that though based off the tone of the rest of the video.
At the bottom of the page for that search engine there was a short message telling people to use a hash tag and a certain sentence to celebrate this day. I very seriously considered doing just that, using social media, to say that, as a woman, someday I want to be the woman the Lord created me to be. I want to be a wife that loves and supports her husband. I want to be a wife that submits to her husband as to the Lord. I want to be my husband's helpmeet the way Scripture says I should be. I don't want to be a wife that goes off to work every morning, leading a life that separates me from my husband and puts me in a position where I would have to do what everyone except my husband tells me to do. I don't want my life so separated from my husband's that we could spend days apart and barely notice the other's absence. I want to be a mother that is there to love and care for her children. I want them to know I;'m home, that I'm there for them, even when they wish I wasn't. I want to be there to make cinnamon rolls with them when they want them. I want to teach them the gospel through my actions and words, planting seeds because they see that mommy lives out Scripture.
But that isn't what our mixed up, convoluted, sin seeking world wants to hear. What I want to be goes against the very reason for this...holiday. What I want would be laughed at and scoffed at and there are women that I'm sure would say that I want the very thing that women have been fighting against for decades, centuries. Although I must admit that I have thought many times in my life of how those very women have ruined the world for the rest of us women, women that want nothing more than to be wives and mothers.
I remember once, in my late teens, a woman asked me what I wanted in life. I told her I wanted to be a wife and mother. I recall that very woman telling me that was fine and then asking me what I wanted to DO with my life. I told her I wanted to be a wife and mother. The woman continued to look at me and then she told me again...that's fine but what are you going to go to college to do? What are you going to be besides a wife and mother. I told her...
I want to be a wife and mother.
There was nothing else for me. That was what I wanted then. It's what I want now. It's all I need to be. My life is complete because I have my husband. I'm happy because I have a husband that loves and needs me and children that the Lord has given us to love and raise.
I seem to recall the conversation with the woman that questioned what I wanted to be continuing even after I told her multiple times that I wanted to be a wife and mother. She told me something to the effect of...you can be a wife and a mother and still get a college degree. You can be a wife and mother and still work full time. You can be a wife and mother and still have a career. But what she never did understand was that I couldn't be a wife and mother and do any of those things because that wasn't the kind of wife or mother I wanted to be.
But it's a perfect example of what our world see's as the role of wife and mother today. By society's standards being a wife is of less importance than being a career woman. Being a mother is only good if it's what the woman wants and it doesn't get in the way of her life, of her career. Even marriage is good only so long as it doesn't get in the way of her life or career.
Quite a few years ago there was a man that worked at our local library. He lived in our state and his wife lived in another state. They were married. But the wife didn't want to live with her husband because he would get in the way of her career. So they lived apart, each leading their own lives and they visited each other every few months.
Welcome to being a woman in our modern world.
We are conditioned to think...from birth it seems...that we must want the careers of this world, that we must have and do everything that men have and do. I can remember growing up with the thought process that women are somehow superior to men, that we can have and do all that they can have and do and yet we can have and do more than they can because we are women.
In high school I had a female teacher announce to my history class one day...'Girls, when you're on a date, open your own car door. You'll get out of the car faster that way.' She went on to tell us that we shouldn't wait for a boy to open any door for us, that we had hands for a reason and that we should prefer to open our own doors. Should I mention that this teachers was unmarried and that she never married during all the years I knew her?
Should I wonder why?
Not because she thought girls should open their own doors but because she had the thought process to make her teach a room full of students, male and female, that that was how things should be. How did that make the boys that held doors open for us girls feel? There were some boys in that class that would stand and hold a door open until every girl in the room went through it. And worse than how it made those boys feel...what seeds did she plant in the heads of those young people that day?
But that is the very mentality that leads us to have a day where a video portraying women and all their 'goals' or 'dreams' are displayed. Some of those things displayed were straight out sin and yet they were put in that video as if it was something to be sought after and attained. As if it should somehow be looked forward to attaining and that the world should cheer for these females seeking after sin.
But why not? It's what this modern world encourages.
And those of us that seek to be women the way Scripture says we should be, those of us that want only to be our husband's helpmeet in life, those of us that want to be stay at home wives and mothers are looked down on because we don't chase those 'lofty' goals the world says we should seek to attain.
No thank you. I don't want anything to do with those goals or the world's ideas of what a woman should be.
I much prefer to follow Scripture, to love my husband, to submit to him in everything as to the Lord, and to raise our children to hear the gospel and to see it lived out before them.
I prefer to be the woman the Lord made me to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment