I am woman, look on my loveliness
It's been very long time since I posted; with two young children on the move its hard to find time for anything else but them!
God has just astounded me a little more each day over the last 6 months. I have been a christian for 19 years and I have grown more in the last half a year than I have in the entirety of my previous christian walk. I feel so stupid for resisting the lessons God has been trying to teach me for years until now; if I had have known it would be this awesome I would have let go years ago!
I think the key to the change in my heart is the acceptance of my God given femininity and subsequent access to an entirely new part of God heart and mind. Women in our culture are taught to be go-getters (think about the 'women can do anything' bumper stickers), they are taught to be busy, organised and efficient. I don't believe that is what the female heart is meant to look like, what it is designed for. If you look at the differences between the structure of the male and female body, men are all lines and angles, hard muscle, but women are soft, curvy and inviting. I have spent my whole life with goals and a detailed plan of how I am going to achieve those goals; always planning, always efficient, and always feeling like I am failing myself miserably, but not really understanding how.
I have let go of all those plans and finally (feel God breath an exasperated sigh of relief!) allowed Him to take over completely and lead the journey. The path He has taken me down is enchanting and awe-inspiring in its detail and simplicity. I know that makes no sense but I don't know how to explain it, and I probably will never be able to do the story any justice because my little heart still doesn't understand it completely! It started backwards, God gave a long, long term goal: heaven. The thought of dying genuinely excites me! Don't get me wrong, I love being alive, every day is a joy for me, but if God decided that tomorrow He wanted me home then I'd be a little dissapointed because we are having perfect weather right now and my kids are at a really lovely age, but there is no feeling of fear or anger at the prospect. With that as the long term goal, my outlook on the rest of life seemed to shift. Then God introduced a new goal: midwifery and mission work. But He also said (and if took me a while to hear this) that this is also a reletively long term goal, we are talking 15 - 20 years away (which seems long but it isn't really). That has defined my life further and also made alot of my previous dreams and passions fall into place. My heart and mind make more sense now, in a way I feel like God freed me to be who I am. I love pregnancy, I love babies, I even enjoyed labour, and I have always been fascinated by how it all works (since I was about 5 or 6 years old). I studied science at university and reproductive biology was my favourite subject, so was developmental psychology, but I was so full of my own plans for how my life would go that I completely missed God's plan! Duh!
With my head finally in the right place, He showed me the now. I am a women, I am not like men, nor do I want to be like a man. I don't have schedules or dead-lines, I don't timetable my days within an inch of my life. My husband provides that kind of structure, he gets up and goes to work at the same time every morning and comes home at the same time in the evening. My children have a bed time and a loose nap time and eating structure during the day and we have different activities for different days (Monday is cleaning day, Thursday is baking day, etc), and within that basic but regular and dependable structure, I am fluid, and I and my children are flourishing. So is my husband for that matter. Whilst I need his structure to balance my fluidity, he in turn needs my flexible and relaxed attitude to balance him and bring him calm and rest. Women are God's beauty incarnate, and it is hard to be beautiful when you are harried, and my children and husband need to see my beauty, it is refreshing for them, like sitting by a shady spring. Women are also a picture of God's inviting, open and vulnerable spirit, I can't be softly inviting and vulnerable if I'm working to a series of deadlines, and my husband and children need to know they have a soft place to fall whenever they need it, day or night.
The bonus that I never thought I'd have in all of this is my new understanding of my incredible husband. In accessing and releasing my feminine heart, I can finally see and appreciate his masculinity for what it is. I think that as we are telling women to be men, we are also telling men to be women. We want to harness and control their masculine souls (and I am seriously guilty of that in my marriage). Ben is dangerous, untamed, risky, and the more of a women I become, the more I revel in his maleness and I can see him slowly coming out of himself as he feels that acceptance. There is no formula here (like so many marriage books give you), there is just a female heart, mind and soul needing maleness to balance itself, and the male heart, mind and soul passionately responding to the call! It doesn't feel contrived, it feels comfortable and safe, as well as thrilling all at the same time!
God's design is mind-boggling, we can't even comprehend all of its facets most of the time. It's no wonder we try so hard to tame the plans and designs down, the unknown is a very scary place, especially when its as wild and untamed as most of God's heart is! But the boundless rewards are worth the risk!
God has just astounded me a little more each day over the last 6 months. I have been a christian for 19 years and I have grown more in the last half a year than I have in the entirety of my previous christian walk. I feel so stupid for resisting the lessons God has been trying to teach me for years until now; if I had have known it would be this awesome I would have let go years ago!
I think the key to the change in my heart is the acceptance of my God given femininity and subsequent access to an entirely new part of God heart and mind. Women in our culture are taught to be go-getters (think about the 'women can do anything' bumper stickers), they are taught to be busy, organised and efficient. I don't believe that is what the female heart is meant to look like, what it is designed for. If you look at the differences between the structure of the male and female body, men are all lines and angles, hard muscle, but women are soft, curvy and inviting. I have spent my whole life with goals and a detailed plan of how I am going to achieve those goals; always planning, always efficient, and always feeling like I am failing myself miserably, but not really understanding how.
I have let go of all those plans and finally (feel God breath an exasperated sigh of relief!) allowed Him to take over completely and lead the journey. The path He has taken me down is enchanting and awe-inspiring in its detail and simplicity. I know that makes no sense but I don't know how to explain it, and I probably will never be able to do the story any justice because my little heart still doesn't understand it completely! It started backwards, God gave a long, long term goal: heaven. The thought of dying genuinely excites me! Don't get me wrong, I love being alive, every day is a joy for me, but if God decided that tomorrow He wanted me home then I'd be a little dissapointed because we are having perfect weather right now and my kids are at a really lovely age, but there is no feeling of fear or anger at the prospect. With that as the long term goal, my outlook on the rest of life seemed to shift. Then God introduced a new goal: midwifery and mission work. But He also said (and if took me a while to hear this) that this is also a reletively long term goal, we are talking 15 - 20 years away (which seems long but it isn't really). That has defined my life further and also made alot of my previous dreams and passions fall into place. My heart and mind make more sense now, in a way I feel like God freed me to be who I am. I love pregnancy, I love babies, I even enjoyed labour, and I have always been fascinated by how it all works (since I was about 5 or 6 years old). I studied science at university and reproductive biology was my favourite subject, so was developmental psychology, but I was so full of my own plans for how my life would go that I completely missed God's plan! Duh!
With my head finally in the right place, He showed me the now. I am a women, I am not like men, nor do I want to be like a man. I don't have schedules or dead-lines, I don't timetable my days within an inch of my life. My husband provides that kind of structure, he gets up and goes to work at the same time every morning and comes home at the same time in the evening. My children have a bed time and a loose nap time and eating structure during the day and we have different activities for different days (Monday is cleaning day, Thursday is baking day, etc), and within that basic but regular and dependable structure, I am fluid, and I and my children are flourishing. So is my husband for that matter. Whilst I need his structure to balance my fluidity, he in turn needs my flexible and relaxed attitude to balance him and bring him calm and rest. Women are God's beauty incarnate, and it is hard to be beautiful when you are harried, and my children and husband need to see my beauty, it is refreshing for them, like sitting by a shady spring. Women are also a picture of God's inviting, open and vulnerable spirit, I can't be softly inviting and vulnerable if I'm working to a series of deadlines, and my husband and children need to know they have a soft place to fall whenever they need it, day or night.
The bonus that I never thought I'd have in all of this is my new understanding of my incredible husband. In accessing and releasing my feminine heart, I can finally see and appreciate his masculinity for what it is. I think that as we are telling women to be men, we are also telling men to be women. We want to harness and control their masculine souls (and I am seriously guilty of that in my marriage). Ben is dangerous, untamed, risky, and the more of a women I become, the more I revel in his maleness and I can see him slowly coming out of himself as he feels that acceptance. There is no formula here (like so many marriage books give you), there is just a female heart, mind and soul needing maleness to balance itself, and the male heart, mind and soul passionately responding to the call! It doesn't feel contrived, it feels comfortable and safe, as well as thrilling all at the same time!
God's design is mind-boggling, we can't even comprehend all of its facets most of the time. It's no wonder we try so hard to tame the plans and designs down, the unknown is a very scary place, especially when its as wild and untamed as most of God's heart is! But the boundless rewards are worth the risk!
posted by Snooty Farkleboob at 11:32 PM
2 comments
