Freedom for Men and Woman
From how we tie ourselves up
When I had my first child, my husband, Philip, took on the role of father quite easily. He loved our oldest son and enjoyed caring for him. He was willing to change diapers, wear our son in the baby carrier, and bottle-feed him. He seemed much more comfortable being a dad than I did being a mom. And every time he offered to help me, I felt an identity battle raging in me.
I was the mom, not him. Shouldn’t I be better at this than him? Shouldn’t I be able to do this on my own? Shouldn’t I know what my baby wanted? I had the equipment to tend to babies; shouldn’t I have some womanly intuition too? Wasn’t that what it meant to be a mom? My identity was suffering as was my idea of what it meant to be a woman.
I think I believed that because women bore the babies and had breasts to nurse that that meant women ought to be better at caring for babies than men, and because Philip was better at babies than me, I was failing as a woman. What on earth did it even mean to be a woman if not to be the leader in caring for the babies?
I now see the lies threaded through my thoughts back then. I had a false idea of what it meant to be a woman. I thought that being a woman meant knowing things about babies and having certain feelings towards babies and doing most of the baby stuff. That is not what it means to be a woman.
A woman who hires a nanny is not less of a woman than one who carries her baby around all day. A childless woman is not less of a woman than one with many children. A woman who goes to work while her husband takes care of the baby is not less of a woman than a mom who stays home with the baby. And the wife who is an equal partner with her husband in tending to the baby is not less of a woman than a wife who does it all herself.
Sometimes I wonder if men fall prey to believing similar lies about things they are not singularly equipped to do. Sometimes I wonder if, because of how Paul’s New Testament writings have been handled, men have fallen prey to thinking that to be a good man, men have to be the spiritual decision makers without a woman making those decisions with them. Do some men believe they’re failures as men if they don’t have the inclination to lead or if some women lead better than them? Do some men think they are less of a man if they invite a woman to lead with them or follow a woman’s spiritual leadership? How sad! Such men would suffer the consequences of such a confusion.
Such thoughts create cages around us, locking us in and locking out those who are willing to help.
To define men as those who have to lead without women beside them, and to define women as those who have to care for babies without men beside us is to define ourselves as those who must reject the good ally God created for our physical and spiritual families. This is very sad indeed. Especially because Adam was not pronounced good by God until the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh was made, and they became one flesh together to work God’s garden.
I can sympathize with those who are stuck in cages though. For some time now, my ideas of motherhood have imprisoned me. I had certain beliefs about what a mom was supposed to do and because I wasn’t good at those things, I thought I was failing as a mom. I even had a repeating day-mare about being locked and tied up in a room with no one able to free me.
Praise God He placed some dear people in my life to point out the lie I was believing. God’s idea of motherhood for me is still being unfolded and revealed to me bit by bit as I fix my eyes on Jesus instead of some ideal image of womanhood. I think that’s part of the difficulty. We want an image to follow, but Jesus says, “Follow me.” He is constantly breaking our images of goodness and replacing them with himself.
God is doing a new thing. The old is gone, the new is coming. God makes every person unique. We do not need to use our ideals of men and women to decide what God calls us to do today. When we remain open to God’s ways, we find He is able to do even more than we ever thought possible of men or women. Women can accept help from men and still be women. Men can accept help from women and still be men. We can be united in the home and the church in doing what God calls us to do.
Yesterday God called me to lay down the law with my kids even though I wanted to run away. Today, God called me to do laundry and listen to my son sound out the words, “met," “got,” and “the.” Oh yes, and one more thing. God called me to write this blog today too.
All praise to Him for providing for us freedom from our own images of goodness.
Very good!