Wives, Let’s Go Ahead and Submit

It’s weird for me to think that this time, six years ago, I was a young 19 yr old who had a pretty firm idea of what I wanted my life to look like. I was moving towards my dream of being a full-time missionary, hopefully overseas one day, and my dream did not include a husband, let alone children. Yet the Lord had already begun the softening process in my heart towards the beautiful covenant of marriage.

In the spring of 2013, before I met Joe, I traveled to India. I had a couple books to read on the many flights as my team and I traveled across that amazing country. On the flight from Dubai to New Delhi, I took out “The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad: the Revelation of Iran’s Nuclear Prophet” by Mark Hitchcock. Looking around me, I saw mostly middle eastern, Muslim men and decided that I should probably read something else. So, I started a book I had put off reading ever since my mom had given it to me almost a year before.

“Let Me Be a Woman”, written by Elisabeth Elliot, always triggered an immediate eye roll from me. One, it had a soft pink cover with the image of a woman’s head with perfectly styled hair. I hate pink. Two, I was a self proclaimed tomboy who prided myself on my independent spirit and zero desire for marriage or a family. A book about biblical femininity, composed of letters written by a mom addressed to her recently engaged daughter, held zero appeal (obviously, since I would rather read a book about an Iranian dictator).

I read the entire book in that flight, and the Lord used Elisabeth Elliot’s words to reveal to my silly soul the TRUTH regarding femininity and marriage – the beginning of a complete transformation that changed the course of my life.

It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity.

Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

I spent most of my teen years proving that I could do all the things my brother and his friends could do. I remember at his 13th birthday party, I arm wrestled his friends and made one of them cry because I wanted to prove a girl was stronger. When I went salmon fishing, I stayed out in the freezing river until I got hypothermia to prove that I was tough enough and didn’t need a break. When my period started, I was so frustrated and angry. I didn’t see the gift of fertility as a blessing, I saw it as a limitation – how unfair that only girls had to deal with all that every.single.month.!

With that attitude firmly entrenched in my heart, the quote above rocked my world. The feminist movement has spent so much effort trying to make way for women to become like men. What a boost to the male ego! You don’t see men attempting to take over roles that women are best equipped for. I think this problem dates back to the fall, ladies.

…your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

Genesis 3:16b

I read in a commentary something that stuck – when the Bible says Eve’s desire will be for her husband, it means her desire shall be for her husband’s position, yet she is to remain under his authority. That longing to step in to a role that isn’t ours has plagued women throughout the ages. Have you seen it in your own marriages? The desire to take the matters into your own hands and jump the gun when it feels like your husband is taking forever to make a decision, or when it seems like his leadership skills are inferior to yours?

On June 14th, 2015, I stood before about 150 people and pledged myself to love, serve, honor and obey Joe Brown. The Lord had accomplished a remarkable work in my heart since the spring of 2013. I was now in awe of the beauty and holiness of the marriage covenant, and eager and excited to step in to my role of wife and, one day, mother. But that desire for my husband’s role gradually crept in and things came to a head about a year in to our marriage.

Joe and I had moved into the house he grew up in. It was packed full of his family’s possessions, which made it very difficult to make our own. I longed for a new place to live, somewhere we could start from scratch and I could decorate and design and make into a home unique to us. I pestered and nagged my husband for weeks. I would spend hours looking at available rentals around town, printing out the ones I liked and placing them where I knew my husband would see them. I couldn’t understand why it was taking him soooooo long to reach the same conclusion as I – that it would be best to find a new place to live, ASAP. I was annoyed that I couldn’t just take matters into my own hands and move forward with my plan.

Finally, after about a month or two of me pressuring him, Joe had enough. He came home from work and I immediately greeted him with the latest rentals I was interested in, and he pushed them away and said he had had enough. I remember my heart pounding as I realized I had a choice to make – either submit to my husband or fight with all my might for my way. I looked at all the saved tabs on our laptop, available places that I wanted to move to, and then I looked at the house we currently were living in. I was so convinced that this place was what was in the way of my happiness and contentment. But I knew that God had given my husband the leadership and to skirt Joe’s authority and push for my way would be to undermine the authority of God Himself.

I cried. Many hot and angry tears. But by God’s grace I submitted and told my husband I wouldn’t bring the matter up again, and I kept my word. It hurt, for sure, but I’m so thankful for that experience! Submission stings, but it brings peace and freedom because you are walking in obedience to the Lord. My disobedient desire to usurp my husband’s role was the real obstacle to my happiness and contentment, because it was coming between my relationship with the Lord.

Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought – that is, with discipline.

Elisabeth Elliot

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.

1 Peter 1:14

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.

John 14:21 (words of Jesus)

What a gift we can give to our families – submission to God through living in contentment and peace in the role God has given us, without coveting the role given to our spouse. It is a beautiful example of Christ and the Church – the model marriage is intended to reflect.

You can’t talk about the idea of equality and the idea of self-giving in the same breath. You can talk about partnership, but it is the partnership of the dance. If two people agree to dance together, they agree to give and take, one to lead and one to follow. This is what dance is. Insistence that both lead means there won’t be any dance.

It is the woman’s delighted yielding to the man’s lead that gives him freedom. It is the man’s willingness to take the lead that gives her freedom. Acceptance of their respective positions frees them both and whirls them into joy.

Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

Originally written and shared by Natalya Brown. Used with permission.

If These Stairs Could Talk

If these stairs could talk, they’d tell you of many things.

The friends and family who visited when we first moved in, sharing in thanks for more space.

The weight carried up and down, things moved from one place to another.

The tears cried on them, many from the kids and many from myself.

The coffee spilled on them, hurriedly wiped up so the white wouldn’t be stained.

The babies carried up to bed, or snuggled in close and brought downstairs to try again.

The moments I’ve sat in the middle, waiting for quiet to come over the bedrooms.

The moments I’ve sat on the bottom, weary, waiting, resting.

The guests running up to use the bathroom, or grab their sneaky babies.

The kids’ friends scampering up and down to play together.

The toys thrown down, the balls thrown up and down and up again.

The times I’ve sat and listened to videos or read texts from dear friends.

The one stair at just the right height to let me sit and watch cars come down our street.

They’re not an idol, these stairs: they’re a reminder.

A means of giving thanks.

Because when I look back at all the memories and daily happenings, I am reminded:

• God provides: for all our needs, all the time

• Our babies are safe and loved

• Our friends and family are welcome and comfortable here

• We live this life fully

We always have enough. We always can extend more, and when we serve out of humility and love for our Lord it never comes back empty. He fills us up. He shows Himself to us and He teaches us what we need to know, when we need to know it. He is so incredibly sufficient!

If these stairs could talk, I think they’d tell of what a great Savior we have. What a hope we have in Him, what care we have from Him.

What a sweet, sweet place to be.

From Fear to Peace: Three Truths to Fight Fear

I sat in my car as monsoon rains poured down on our little island in the East China Sea, while my husband was on the other side of the world, preaching at his mother’s funeral. 

A few years prior, ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) set in, ravaging her young and vibrant body. 

I realized that the memorial service was just underway. Anguish forced its way up my throat and out, in body-shaking sobs. 

Fear and anxiety accompanied my grief. My mother in law’s life was ended not just by ALS, but actually by FALS—Familial ALS. Her father was also taken by it nine years prior. When she was diagnosed, we had the crushing realization that my husband has a 50% chance of having FALS. And if he does, then so do our children.

Currently, there is no treatment, cure, or prevention for ALS. Victims are captive to their bodies, which deteriorate while their minds stay healthy. After three to five years, they die from being unable to breathe or swallow. 

I didn’t just weep for the loss of my sweet mother-in-law, or for the sadness that my husband bore without me. I wept over the “what-ifs”. And I begged the Lord to not let them be so. 

From Grief to Fear

Five years later, the anxiety that arrived the day of her death still threatens to take hold. I can easily spiral into a frenzy of “what-ifs”. 

Grasping for reassurance, I’ve read the scientific research and the stories of other FALS-affected families. I’ve put my kids and husband through diets and regimens in hopes of staving off what can feel inevitable. I’ve wrung my hands and rechecked statistics. We even briefly considered genetic testing. 

Yet deep down I know what Christians need to do when they are afraid. We need to rest in the Lord himself. More than prevention, more than science, more than our best efforts—in the face of what could be, we need a peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:7). And we need a renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2). Both are ours by God’s Spirit if we only seek him and ask. 

The Word of God and the Spirit of God stand ready to equip and empower believers in the battle against fear. Both are living and active. The Holy Spirit resides in us, giving us the strength and grace to fight our fears afresh each day. He also reminds us of truth when we wander into fear (John 14:26), helping us to wield the Word of God, our offensive weapon (Ephesians 6:17). 

From Fear to Peace: Three Truths to Fight Fear

I want to share with you three biblical truths God’s Spirit arms me with when I’m tempted to be afraid.

1. My life is not my own.

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:20)

When I surrendered to the Lord as a freshman in college, these words changed my whole perspective. I awakened to the reality that my life, my body, and my future did not actually belong to me. The Lord created me, and ransomed me with his precious blood; therefore, I belong to him and live for him (1 Peter 1:18-19).

In the years since then, Paul’s words inspired by God’s Spirit have sunk deeper into my soul: “For by him all things were created…through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). My very existence is by God, through God, and for God. I am not untethered, required to conjure up my own meaning, purpose, and future. The Lord has already done that.

For the Lord is the one 

who made the world and everything in it… he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind…having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. (Acts 17:24-27)

God himself determined when and where I would live. The Lord set me here in this very family with these genes, so that I may seek him and perhaps feel my way toward him and find him (Acts 17:27). 

May the the things that cause us to fear lead us to seek the Lord and find him.

2. God will never leave me nor forsake me.

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

The fact that God promised this gives me tremendous courage. My kids and I have memorized Psalm 46. Together we rehearse that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (v.10, emphasis added). I know him who walks with me—that his character is good and trustworthy and sovereign.

And I know what he has already done for me in Christ: He was forsaken on my behalf, hung on a cross in my place, endured wrath from the Father for me. Because we know him and we trust these promises from him, we can face any future. 

Triumph in God’s promise to never leave or forsake you:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

3. Even if…yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

Finally, I find rest from fear in the words of Habakkuk: 

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength… (Habakkuk 3:17-19)  

Even if this dreaded disease visits us again—even if I am forced to walk through this particular valley of the shadow of death, I will rejoice in the Lord. 

We can rejoice precisely because he is the God of our salvation, because he has already given himself over to us. More than the gifts he gives, Jesus, the Giver, is our gift. Nothing—not sickness, not suffering, not loss—can separate us from this gift. 

Behold, All Things Will Be Made New

When I think back on that sad day, when my grief returns and fear threatens to well up within me, God’s Spirit reminds me that my life is not my own, that God will never leave me nor forsake me, and that even if the worst comes, I will be able to take joy in the God of my salvation. 

He is also the God who says, “Behold I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5). God promises to those who have faith in Jesus Christ that, 

“He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

One day soon, and then forever, ALS will be no more. Whatever you may fear—school shootings, car accidents, separation from loved ones, the loss of a child, extended suffering at the end of life—it will not remain. Perfect love will cast it all out. You and I will be with our Lord, and scary diagnoses and suffering will be no more.

Written by Jen Oshman. This article originally appeared here, at Unlocking the Bible. Shared with permission.

An Aching Womb: A Note From a Single Woman

As I picked up the limp, sleeping body of the sweet four-year-old girl, tears began to fill my eyes and I thought, “will this ever be my life?”

Those moments are few and far between for me, which is good, because I’m a nanny and if picking up a child always made me cry I would probably need to find a new career. The most recent occurrences have been while watching four specific kiddos. This has happened twice now, both times when I was putting the little girl to bed. One time she was awake, and another she’d fallen asleep early on the couch. Both times caught me by surprise, especially since in addition to being a nanny, I’ve been an aunt most of my life and serve in the kids ministry at my church, so it’s not like I’m not around kids often enough to be reminded I don’t have any. But there was something about tucking four kids into bed, in the style of house I’d love to own someday, that hit me in the feels. To you mamas, it probably feels extremely ordinary and maybe even a bit of a chore at times. No doubt there are times you look at your peacefully sleeping children and also get teary eyed; grateful, happy tears of love for the little life that’s been entrusted to you, but I’m sure other times you’re just exhausted and would love a break and for someone else to put the children to bed. But for me, someone who has always wanted to be a mom, it sometimes feels like a dream unfulfilled and withheld.

For the past year or so I’ve been wanting to do a Biblical word study on children, because I think we have such a selfish idea of them in this day and age. I look around at my own culture, and even among Christians, there seems to be a very self-centered approach to parenting. The emphasis is on what “we’ want, when “we” want, what “we” can afford, what “we” have the patience for, where “we” want to live, the vacations “we” want to take, the life “we” want to give our children. Children are seen as a blessing, (although the attitude for many seems to be, “as long as you don’t have more than four because that’s just ridiculous and irresponsible.”) but do we really consider them ordained by God and uniquely designed? Have we even entertained the thought of allowing God to determine how large our families grow to be? Or if we should also expand them through adoption? Before you freak out, this isn’t a post about birth-control and I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong if you are taking precautions, or if you aren’t pursuing adoption, but I am serious in posing those questions. Are these things you’ve surrendered to Christ -completely- and sense His peace and leading in your decisions? Or are they based only on your own wants and preferences? In a culture that puts so much value on education and careers and has increasingly diminished the sacrifice and beauty of stay-at-home moms, while turning their nose up at large families, have we begun to believe what the world says about children? Or do we remember and hold to what the Word says?

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.” -Psalm 127:3-5

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” -Mark 9:37

“But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.’” -Luke 18:16

“He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord!” -Psalm 113:9

“So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.” -1 Timothy 5:14

“And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children, he said, ‘Who are these with you?’ Jacob said, ‘The children whom God has graciously given your servant.’” -Genesis 33:5

Psalm 139 highlights the intimacy with which God knows us, long before we are born. Science speaks to our miraculous being, through what we know about DNA and how each child is unique and reflects the specific egg and sperm connection. The same combination of sperm and egg can never repeat. Of course, you have multiples that can form from the same egg and sperm (which is another awesome miracle in of itself!), but aside from identical multiples, each unique set of DNA cannot repeat and an egg only gets one shot per month of teaming up with sperm to begin developing into a human. It’s so fascinating! It’s one of the biggest reasons I’m Pro-Life and why abortion breaks my heart. It’s part of why miscarriage, even at the earliest stages of pregnancy, is devastating. It’s not just a clump of cells that is lost, it’s a unique little person that the family will never get to hold, kiss, smell or know, this side of eternity.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that although my life isn’t going according to my plan, if I am going to have children they will be according to HIS plan; the children He has ordained for me to have. He is the giver of life, knows how many eggs I have in my ovaries, and exactly which ones, if any, will be fertilized. They would be knit together by Him, not me, in His perfect timing. His time frame is so much bigger than mine; He is the author of time. He is over time. I can trust Him with my life, dreams, and certainly my maternal clock.

Remember that when you look into the faces of your own little miracles. Maybe they were unplanned, maybe they didn’t come as soon as you’d hoped, but if they hadn’t come in the precise moment they did you never would’ve had them. Their DNA would’ve been discarded in your monthly cycle. All of the character traits that give them their attributes and personality would not be the exact same had you conceived a different egg, fertilized at a different time.

If you feel like you’re drowning in children, in over your head and questioning why God made you so fertile, remember: children are a blessing and God has been so incredibly gracious to entrust these miracles to your care. It’s hard, it’s overwhelming, it’s a lot - but it’s not too much. God doesn’t make mistakes, children aren’t accidents and His grace is sufficient.

Sometimes I put my hand over my physically and figuratively aching womb and ask God if it will ever hold a child. If this longing that’s been deep inside my bones for as long as I can remember will be fulfilled biologically, only through adoption, or if it was put their by God for a purpose other than my own motherhood. Maybe it was to have the passion to help other families, to nanny well or maybe even someday to have an orphanage. Whatever the long-term purpose, for now this passion is reminding you what a blessing children are and that being a mother is hard, beautiful, creative, biblical, sanctifying, messy, honorable, feminine, sacrificial, weighty, courageous and so worth it. I think we could all stand to be reminded of that.

Written for Strength & Song by Veronica Leguire. Veronica is a full-time nanny and prolife advocate who lives in Toledo, OH.