The Power of a Biblical Woman: Trust and Independence

For many people what I am going to blog about today will be considered highly controversial. There was a time in my life when I would have believed this to be so. When I was younger and before I became the mature Christian woman that I now am, I would have become angry and, perhaps, confrontational with someone of my age who spoke to me on this idea. I get it now, so I thought that I would write about now and put it into terms that the younger me would have understood better and might have considered before completely dismissing it.

I was not raised in a home to be this type of woman—a submissive woman. I was raised in the church to be a Christian, but in the churches that my family attended, I do not recall ever studying about the Biblical woman or the Biblical wife. Because of being adopted at the age of five, I already had an immense sense of independence. I did not like being told how to act or how to think by anyone other than my parents, and even with them I was skeptical.

My first five years was not a pleasant time. I did not trust people to have my interest in mind. It took me a considerable amount of time to trust my adoptive parents. I trusted my father first. He was easier because of his outgoing and loving personality. He spent time with me, reading to me, playing games, and riding bikes. My mother took more time. She was the disciplinarian and was not as affectionate. I was an adult before I realized that she was that way because she came from people who were that way, even though my grandparents were amazing people who I adored. But as is with many mothers and daughters, we butted heads a lot. My mother did not spend as much time with me doing things with me, so I did not feel a connection to her. She was always cleaning, cooking, or doing something that seemed to be more important than me (at least it seemed to me in my child mind).

My mother was fiercely independent. She did what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted. Now that doesn’t mean that she took advantage of my dad because she didn’t really. He got upset with her when she spent too much money. Boy, when they fought over money, it was bad. They fought like a foxes in a hen house.  Where that became a problem for me was when they would bring me into their arguments. That has a way of destroying a child’s trust in their parents. Children should be able to confide in their parents and not have their words used against them or against one parent or the other. It shows immaturity in the parents. Other than this, though, my parents had a nice, respectful relationship; though, I rarely saw them be affectionate with one another.

Although it took me time to trust my mother, I came to admire her for her independence, intelligence, and tenacity. My mother went to work full time when I was in junior high school, working as the manager of a retail store. Before that time, she had always worked part-time when my father needed her in his store during inventory, moonlight madness sales and other times when he needed her and she worked for a brief period of time at our church. I watched her open that store on day one and make it successful. She knew how to design the displays and arrange the merchandise to be pleasing and fit everything in the space. She understood the mathematics and accounting, the technology, the Human Resources, the customer service needs, the shipping and receiving requirements, and then she would come home and cook dinner for us. I was astounded and awed by her. I wanted to be just like her. (But not in retail!)

My father was a staunch supporter of a college education. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics. Both of his sisters had college degrees and were teachers. When I was about eleven, he began going to the public library and checking out books on various careers and bringing them home to me. At first I was not so keen on this. I wasn’t against it because I didn’t want to have to read the books, but because of the careers he kept bringing home—teachers, nurses, secretary. They were all careers that were generally thought of as “girl” jobs. At the time I was all about Nancy Drew. I wanted to be Nancy Drew and I was not interested in hearing about nurses and teachers. He would frequently say to me, “Deanne, no daughter of mine is going to have to depend on a man to take care of her. You need to be able to take care yourself because you never know what could happen.” I did not understand why he would say that at the time. Of course, I do now after having gone through a divorce, but also because I have had several friends who have lost husbands to unexpected deaths. He was right to prepare me for this, but he also should have prepared me to be a Biblical wife.

When I went to college, I was determined that I was going into International Business. I wanted to be a diplomat. I was going to major in Business with a minor in French and then I was going to graduate school of some kind. It was great until I took my first accounting class. I hated it. I couldn’t imagine a more boring class in my life. Then I took economics. It was worse. I had the most horrid professor. I was lucky to get out the class with a D. I had never made a D in my life. That same semester I had Calculus for business majors. I was not strong in math. At mid-term I went to my dad and told him that I was not doing great and that I was concerned about my grade. On the day of the final, I started the exam and looked it over. I couldn’t do it and I started crying. The prof came over and rubbed my back. She told me the find the first one I knew how to do. She said, “others will start to come back to you. Just keep doing the ones you know. The rest will come back to you.” She was right. I finished the course with a C. It was the worst semester of my whole college career. So, I had to sit down with myself and regroup. I changed my major from Business to Political Science. I still had the same goal, just a different way to get there.

It wasn’t long after this that I reconnected with the young man who would become my husband. I only wish that we had been better prepared for marriage. If we had, maybe we might not have done it, or maybe we might have done better and not made the mistakes we made and not have destroyed our relationship. At any rate, it did not last because neither of he was an abusive alcoholic and I made the choice to raise our child away from that environment.

When we married, we believed that the key to a good relationship was to make everything 50/50. That sounds good, right? That means both of you put in your opinion 50/50. However, this is not the way God established marriage to be. Although God took the rib from Adam’s side, God did not make Eve to at the side of Adam; he established Eve to under the protection of Adam in the same way the church is under the authority of Christ. “Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV) This doesn’t mean that men can dismiss the opinions of their wives, or that they get to abuse their wives; this not what it means to submit. The word “submission” is a misunderstood word and often abused word by feminists as a means to harass men. The following verses on Ephesians men are instructed to love their wives as Christ loves his church and as he loves himself. If a man loves himself, then that means he’s not going to yell at himself; he’s not going to slap himself around; and he’s not going to bully himself. This not what it means to be a Biblical husband.

In my second marriage, I have a traditional, Biblical marriage. I submit to my husband. What does this mean? All it really means is that if he wants me to do something, I generally do it unless there is some good reason for me not to and then I am going to explain that to him and he is going to consider whether I should or shouldn’t do it. Upon that consideration of my reasoning, he decides and I proceed accordingly. Because I love and respect him, I will do as he says. Someone who might not understand submission might ask, “But what if your reasoning was sound? Why should you do as he says?” To them I would respond, “A family cannot have 2 bosses. He is our ultimate boss in the same way a business has one manager. I am the assistant manager. The manager says ‘no, I need you to do it this way, then you’re going to do it how the manager says.’ It’s no different. Ultimately, if the decision doesn’t work out, then he’s responsible. He takes that on as the head of the family. That is how God intended it to be.” For me, this second time around, I have so much less stress. I’m not constantly worried about situations and I know I can trust him. I have absolutely no reason not to trust my husband to make the right decisions for our family.

There’s also the Proverbs 31 element of being a Biblical woman which many “modern” women protest, but it is a misunderstood chapter. It was written by the mother of King Lemuel. The first 9 verses are said to be advice she gave him about how to rule as a just king.  It is the rest of the chapter that gives many women heartburn because so often it is presented as a list of qualities of Biblical womanhood. However, this part of the chapter wasn’t written for women; it was written to the king and to men. The purpose is to underscore the preeminent nature of man’s responsibility to act wisely in establishing a foundation for women of noble character to arise—man empowers woman to become the person that the Lord designed her to be. If we only see Proverbs 31 as a list of characteristics or actions, then it is a list of works by which we cannot be saved, which would be a false gospel. (See https://saltandlight.sg/devotional/hear-the-sober-truth-proverbs-31-was-not-written-to-women-it-was-written-to-a-man/)

I have to agree that when men love their wives, love the Lord, and live as the Lord has willed them to live, it makes it so much easier for everyone else around them to do the same. That does not mean that life is perfect. We still live in a fallen world and there will be times when things go wrong. There will be disagreements, but when the Lord is at the center of everything you do, you do not have to worry about the types of behaviors you see on the evening news. I would never want to go back to the kind of marriage I had the first time. You cannot have two bosses; someone has to make the final decision. There has to be trust between both partners.

There’s nothing wrong with a division of labor. Each one doing what they are good at and that does not necessarily mean girl things and boy things. If the husband likes to cook, let him cook. If the wife likes yard work, let her do the yard work. Those do not have to be areas of contention, but they have to be agreed upon. However in regard to child rearing, most often mothers are best equipped for this task because God created us for it. Everything about women was created for the purpose of birthing and raising children. There may be some exceptions, but those are rare. Some women fail to understand what this power really is. I recall a time in graduate school when I was in a course called Peace Paradigms. We were given an assignment to do a project on a life altering time in our life. Of course mine was my adoption. I remember some of the projects were really crazy, but one that stood out what a girl who talked about how women were oppressed by being forced to be wives and mothers and forced to do cook and clean for the husbands and children (and I didn’t know how that related to her and any change in her life), I just put my face in hands and rolled my eyes. In my opinion, women can potentially have more power than men if they recognize that potential and take steps to use it. Let me explain, because we have children in our care for approximately eighteen years, we have direct influence over their worldview, beliefs, and behavior for those years. Of course, you want that influence to be positive and uplifting and not that of a cult leader, but a mother, with the right tools, love, and passion can influence a child to become the next president, a surgeon, a missionary, or whatever she believes her child is capable of being and that is exceptionally powerful. I think of mothers like Sonya Carson who raised son Ben to become one of the preeminent neurosurgeons of our time. She could not read, but she made Ben write essays on books he read from the library each week. She is one of millions of mothers who worked hard to provide for her family and to make sure that her children succeeded in school so that they wouldn’t have to worry about their future like she did.

Finally, once I heard a minister say that, in a marriage, if you can prioritize each other as WE, YOU, THOU, you can head off many conflicts—first, think of how the situation affects you as a family; then, how does it affect the others; and last, how does it affect you. I have always thought those were wise words and I think of them often.