When You Don't Fit the Christian Woman Mold
For years I lived under the heavy weight of what I thought a Christian woman was supposed to be like. The place it caused the most hurt and frustration was in my marriage. The cultural interpretation of the Biblical phrases, “The man is the head of the household” and “Wives must submit to their husbands” held us captive. We watched Christian couples that we loved and respected operate effortlessly in this way and strived to mimic their ways of relating to one another.
The problem was this theology seemed in direct contradiction to our personalities and nature. I am a visionary person with gifts of leadership and a strong will and drive. These attributes that had always been praised in my life before knowing Christ now felt like a burden and a sin as a Christian woman and wife. My husband has a much gentler personality. He is fun-loving, steady, a peacemaker and problem-solver, and is quite content to take each day as it comes.
So naturally we were miserable. I wanted him to take the wheel of our ship, to be the spiritual leader, leading us in regular times of prayer and take responsibility for discipling our family. I wanted him to be the decision maker for our family, to have big dreams of grand adventures and lead us in them. Ok, I didn’t really want him to be these those things, I wanted to be those things, but I believed the Bible told me he was supposed to be and wanting anything else was sin.
So, what we were left with was two people who were not being true to who God made them to be. We were frustrated and resentful. As much as I was trying to repress who I was, I was also demanding Jeremy be someone God never intended him to be. We knew that our personalities complimented each other beautifully, our gifts balanced each other out, but we were not allowed to function that way. Not only did I feel resentful of Jeremy, I also felt resentful of God.
We tried to live this lie until we were both so miserable, we said, “Screw it! We’re going to live true to ourselves and just hide it from the church and our fellow Christians. We can’t keep going like this anymore.”
And then one day I had a pastor say to me, “You will experience true freedom when you give yourself permission to lead in your marriage.” BLASPHEMY, right? Or not?
That day changed so much for us. We began to operate more openly from our strengths and our marriage and lives got so much healthier. We weren’t living in opposition to each other any longer, but rather enjoying life and functioning as two gears, matched perfectly together for a specific purpose.
If you are stuck in the cycle of believing that something is wrong with you, because you don’t fit the traditional mold of a Christian woman, you are not alone. I challenge you to press in, to study the cultural context of the Bible to truly understand what God says about women. To let yourself be honest and real for just a moment and see what rises to the surface. God is not holding out on you. He’s not manipulating you like a cruel puppet master, setting you up at a game you can never win.
He is for you.
He knows and LOVES the truest version of you.
The question is will you let her out?
Love,
Mary Jean