Godly Women Are Even Stronger Than Spiderman

As I lie here next to you in our cabin at camp, we are experiencing the calm following the storm of your not being able to go back to the pool after lunch so you can take a nap. I don't have the covers pulled over me and in true Ruby fashion you notice and reach for them, trying to make sure I'm warm enough.

My sadness over celebrating your fourth birthday catches me off guard. These past years with you have been long in some respects, but I'm not quite ready to leave them behind. You have really been my Ruby - a mama's girl through and through. I will miss your tiny frame curled up in my lap, hanging off my leg, plastered against me, reaching up for me. I'll miss hearing those needy cries for "Mama!" in your sweet little voice. Like when, a few months ago, you called for me at 4 AM because your back was itching.

But you're getting bigger - in years anyway- even though the scale doesn't show it much. You're riding your bike without training wheels and scaling 15 foot fences. I know you'll tackle this next phase with even more determination and less need for me, and I think that's what makes me sad. And, to be honest, a little bit fearful. As those feelings surface, God takes me back to our beginning.

Early Lessons Still Carrying Me Through

My pregnancy with you was one of the most fearful times of my life. I was so scared of losing another baby. We were pretty sure we found the problem as to why my body terminated our two previous pregnancies but weren't sure I would respond to the treatment prescribed. So, over and over, I committed you to God's care and rested in wisdom not my own. I cannot count the many roller coaster ultrasounds, NSTs, and other tests we went through with some disconcerting results. Finally, when they decided to take you two weeks early, even the doctors were relieved to get the pregnancy over with and get you into my arms as soon as possible! We had all had enough of your shenanigans! Little did I know they were really just beginning! 

You came out looking so much like your dad, complete with the strawberry blond hair he had as a baby. I didn't want you out of my sight. The nurse bathing you couldn't believe how strong you were - amazingly so since you were just a tiny 6 pounder. And I couldn't believe how angry you were! Most babies are fine with colostrum. But I think you cried the entire 36 hours until you got milk. So much so, your dad tried rolling you into our bathroom at the hospital to give us a break from your screaming. Oh, Ruby! How well acquainted we've become with that angry scream over the years!

You walked early and showed good coordination for a toddler, often motivating your 3-years-older- than-you sister to try new things in order to keep up with you. You have been known to ascend the shopping cart at the grocery store, impressing the cashier as you lift what seems to be twice your body weight in groceries loading the conveyor belt for me. It really wasn't that surprising when two different times this past year in gymnastics your coach told me, "She's going to be really good. She's fearless, she's flexible, she listens, she's coordinated. And she's only three." He encouraged me to help you pursue gymnastics more seriously. Your interest in physical activities coupled with your thrill for adventure has drawn you to the likes of Spiderman, Superman, and Batman. You are always dressing up like a superhero pretending to climb walls, leap buildings, get the mean guys, and "fight, fight, fight." If you aren't in your superhero get-up you'll often be found wearing tennis shoes, a baseball cap, your Buckeyes t-shirt, and jeans. I'll never forget the time you told me you didn't want to go to church if you couldn't wear your beloved tennis shoes!

I'll admit, this past year with you has been another one of growth and learning for me. I thought I knew how to start a little girl down the path of femininity toward biblical womanhood. But that was before I encountered a Ruby. As is your modus operendi, you continue to shake things up for me and keep me returning to those early lessons of committing you to God's care and trusting in wisdom not my own!


Strong Arming the Caricature

As I mentioned here, I used this book as a devotional early on with Stella and now with you. As you've become more verbal you've let me know how much you dislike it. I began to look at it thru your eyes and realize that you do not connect at all with the soft pastel colors and the pearls and lace pictures. And actually the more I looked at them, I realized that the matchy-matchiness kind of annoys me too. I've heard many a woman confuse the character of a godly woman with a certain type of outward appearance and specific personality traits. The pictures in the book are a caricature I want to avoid portraying to you as you set out learning what it really means to be a godly woman. But, what I do love about the book, and what you need to learn from it, is what God wants us to strive to be as women found in the ideal of the woman with the panoply of Christian virtue from Proverbs 31. So, I try to keep the necessary message of Scripture, but every application ends with us flexing our muscles and saying something like, "Godly women are strong women because Jesus was strong for them and helps them...work hard...be dependable...plan ahead...fear the Lord...trust Him with the future." And, much to my chagrin, all of this muscle flexing has been quite convicting to me.


I've been forced to deal with the question if when you look at my life you see a woman who is using her femininity for tough gospel-living? Or do you see a woman preoccupied with flowery beds of ease like the latest recipes, decorating techniques, beauty regimens, TV shows, fashion trends, fitness pursuits, or good, but distracted, priorities? I want you to see me doing hard things for God's glory. I want you to see me doing things that Candice Olson, Giada De Laurentiis, and the average soccer mom across the street can't do. And that's using my womanhood, and the roles and responsibilities that come with it, to draw attention to a God who has called me to go against what the culture (and even Christian culture) says a woman needs to do and should be. Yes, I need to care for my family and create a home for them - and I want to do it creatively and enjoy the tasks - but I don't want that to be the be sum of my womanhood. How much I will have missed the point of God's design if it is!

Why Is This So Important, Anyway?

So what is the point of God's design and why is it paramount for you to learn and for me to model? Because, as John Piper describes here, "True womanhood is a distinctive calling of God to display the glory of His Son in ways that would not be displayed if there were no womanhood...our womanhood was made for the glory of Christ." If showing the greatness of Christ is at stake, it's a very big deal for us to get it right!

One way I can know I'm getting it right is by following the inspired example of women in the Bible.

Take Hannah. Devastated by years of unfulfilled longings and enduring the mockery and taunting of Penina. Yet the persistence of the trials softened her rough edges evidenced by her gracious response to Eli when he accused her of being drunk. There's a strong, persevering woman who allowed a trial to have it's full, God-intended effect. (Listen here for more exposition on the life of Hannah.)

Then there's Esther. Having a beauty regimen was a priority of hers, but more importantly, we remember her because she had guts for God's glory. She risks her life for the sake of God's name and the good of God's people, saying, "If I perish, I perish."

And how can we forget Mary, Jesus' mother? She, the finite, gave birth to the infinite, making her interactions and relationship with her God-man son perplexing, for sure. There were still so many unanswered questions and things she didn't understand about Him and the big picture of God's plan. But she trusted, and amazingly enough, not only submitted to Him herself, but encouraged others to as well. "Do whatever he tells you to do," she instructs the servants in John 2. As a young girl, she had learned that the strength of a woman following God wasn't in demanding her rights, but in surrendering her rights to His way in faith even without seeing the end. "I am the Lord's servant...May your word to me be fulfilled." (Luke 1)

We can also get it right by following the example of women through church history.

I think of Ann Judson, wife of imprisoned missionary to Burma, Adoniram Judson. I thought being pregnant was difficult, but when she was pregnant, "she walked two miles daily to the palace to plead that Judson was not a spy [the charges for which he was being wrongly imprisoned] and that they should have mercy." After their daughter, Maria, was born, "Ann was almost as sick and thin as her [gaunt] husband, but she still pursued him, with her baby, to take care of him as she could. Her milk dried up, and the jailer had mercy on them and actually let Judson take the baby each evening into the village fettered and beg for women to nurse his baby. On November 4, 1825, Judson was suddenly released...The long ordeal was over - seventeen months in prison on the brink of death, with his wife sacrificing herself and her baby to care for him as she could. Ann's health was broken. Eleven months later she died. And six months later their daughter died." Were their lives given in vain? More likely God used a relentless woman, committed to her husband and their gospel labors, to continue the pattern of suffering "for spiritual breakthrough in a dark and unreached place. " (Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, 100-101)

And my heroine, Elisabeth Elliot. Her husband is murdered by a savage people. She and her toddler daughter go live among the murderers because she knows God is powerful enough to change their murderous hearts into God-loving hearts. He isn't getting their worship and she knows He deserves it.

And lastly, we can get it right by looking around us at the godly friends God has given us through the churches of which we've been part.

There's CiCi, our 40-something recently widowed friend with two young kids who tells me, "Erica, through this all, the phrase I often say is, "'Lord, I can't wait to see what You're going to do and how You're going to use it!"' It reminds me Who holds today and tomorrow."

We can watch Liz, wife and mom of 4 kids, who is moving to what would be considered an "unsafe" area in Detroit to reach the neglected and poverty-stricken with the gospel riches they can have in Christ.

And Carol, a missionary our church supports, who just finished an over 3-year battle with a tumor in her jaw which required numerous surgeries with the expected pain, embarassing physical side effects, and a radically restricted diet. Her medical care requires extended separation from those she loves most - her husband and kids. During all of the physical trials, her Dad passes away. This, added with previous difficulties of losing children during pregnancy, trying church circumstances when her husband was a pastor, and a house fire, and you see her life depicting the hymn line "when sorrows like sea billows roll." She barely has enough time to stand before another wave of sorrow comes crashing in. But she knows that through many hardships she must enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22). This is the often the cost of bringing the gospel to the nations and she still says, "Here am I! Send me!" 

True Strength and Super-Power

 So, my dear Ruby, I know you are impressed with the exploits of Spiderman and his friends. But there's a real life, not a make believe one, waiting for you with adventure and toughness that not even the likes of Spidey can sustain. It's the life of being a Christian woman. A strong Christian woman, with all the power that raised Jesus from the dead at work within you and through you! So, receive this power, my strong girl, and use your womanhood to attempt seemingly impossible feats for Jesus - turning not just buildings upside down, but the whole world upside down, for the sake of His name! "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

Receive the Glory for Ten Imperfect, but Blessed, Years

Ten years ago tomorrow, on a rather overcast and chilly late spring/early summer day, you, a 22-year-old second year seminary student and Call Center employee, emaciated from bachelor life, took me, a 26-year-old grad student and Public Housing Manager to be your lawfully wedded wife.

In three short months, we fell in love over reformed theology, missions, the church, and the God of them all. We got engaged in November and married just over six months later (6 months too long, as we've often joked!).

You moved me to metro-Detroit and carried me over the threshold in our first home at Southgate Park Apartments. You had set up "house" and decorated for me and I loved it. Home was where my heart was and that happened to be wherever you were. Never mind the windows were so drafty my hair would blow in the breeze standing inside the apartment. And who cared that the roof was so unreliable it blew off within our first month and a half of marriage, drywall crashing down on your head and water flooding our apartment? It didn't bother us! The long distance dating was over and we were together.

We quickly started into a routine working opposite shifts - me early mornings and you late nights. After that, it wasn't too long before another semester of seminary began and Hebrew studies made our carefree honeymoon days seem like a lifetime before!

And as those weeks passed, it wasn't too long either, before I began to be haunted by Scripture verses about marriage I thought I would easily be able to obey when the time came. But instead, I found myself trying to ignore, dismiss, and explain them away with what I considered to be some legitimate excuses. And frankly, my struggles ticked me off. Although I wouldn't dare verbalize my self-righteousness, I really thought if anyone could pull this wife thing off without a hitch it would be me. I had spent the past five years studying the Bible, counseling myself, reading Jay Adams, and pouring over case studies of how to help people change.

So, God in His wisdom brought you along and made me love as I'd never loved before so He could unravel my self-sufficiency. He placed me in front of the mirror of marriage and with gentle, sovereign care, measured each revelation with divine mercy. Bit by bit He opened my eyes to His rivals being exposed in my idolatrous heart. 

Testing my Submission...to Him

One area of nagging conviction was that I was horribly failing the test of submission. I knew that the true test of submission wasn't when we agreed but when we disagreed. Who isn't happy and easy-going when she's getting her own way? And boy did my idolatrous heart love having its own way! I loved my own thoughts and plans. And I wasn't too into bearing the fruit of patience and self-control to follow your lead when you didn't share equal love for them!

I remember one specific argument in our apartment kitchen. I wasn't backing down. And instead of your backing down and being passive and letting me have my way to keep me "happy," you stood toe to toe with me, literally.

You didn't invoke your role ("I'm the leader here and you have to listen to what I say!") nor did you  have pity on me and label me as an emotional, irrational woman that you had to "manage." You engaged me as someone who was equal to you in worth and had an opinion that mattered. You didn't see your role or position as something to be grasped (sound familiar?) but humbled yourself and patiently tried to work through things. Your example startled my proud heart. And although the matter wasn't resolved on the spot, that argument was a definite turning point in our marriage.

God was revealing in my idolatrous heart that my real struggle wasn't with submission to you but with submission to Him. I didn't want to submit to the fact that He had control over you and I didn't.

Rewriting the End

But God was working all these things together for our good. He helped me see that the Bible wasn't a book for perfect marriages, but was for all marriages that exist on the face of this earth - imperfect ones. And obedience to that book was the answer to working through all the imperfections. He used a timely challenge from Claudia Doran on the sin of idolizing our husbands; whether it be idolizing what we wish our husbands were (if they're "bad" husbands) or what they actually are (if they're "good" husbands). He also used a book I was reading, Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons, about the spectacular wives of missionary Adoniram Judson, who each left him a widower. Nothing tempers your role of a wife as much as realizing how replaceable you really are!

And so I began to look beyond our marriage, realizing that it was not the end God had intended for me. It was a means to the true and rewarding end of enjoying Him and glorifying Him. In searching out ways to enjoy Him and make Him look great through our union, I actually began to find great joy in you too!

Love Grew More Love
 
Thankfully, our good God wasn't done with us yet. Along came an unbelievable delight to our family, sweet Stella Grace. The surprise of our life-changing love for her made us eager to have more children. About a year and half later God gave us another precious baby girl we never got to hold. And then about 6 months after that, a dear baby boy we can't wait to see in heaven.

Once again, my friend and mentor Claudia came to my side. She wept with me, but wisely warned me, "Erica, these losses can tear couples apart. Men and women grieve differently and it can be very hurtful to the other spouse if you don't guard your heart and prepare yourself to work through the struggle together."

God was so gracious to us in the long months that followed. Thankfully, He didn't add to our grief by having us struggle against each other. And although we did grieve in different ways, we both were crushed. I've never seen you cry like you did at our own little memorial we had after our first loss. You posted here about a truth that carried you through that time. I tried clinging to the truth of God's goodness as well, but my anger was welling. God was opening my eyes to another corner of my idolatrous heart. Hadn't I had enough trials I'd worked through in my young life? I thought my quota was met. And the counsel from Scripture that had helped me through those difficulties of the past weren't granting my soul rest this time. My faith in the character of God was shaken to the core and I was skeptical of His care for us.

One morning our paths converged at the coffee pot and I pretty much blurted out, "If Jesus says, '"If you ask your father for a piece of bread what kind of father would he be to give you a stone?"', then why is God giving us a stone?!"

How often I have gone back to the wise words you spoke to me that morning. You reminded me of the hard life in this fallen, sinful world and of a God who righted the wrongs to His own hurt. You brought me to the cross and showed me Jesus' nail scarred hands and told me He tasted our deepest griefs and sorrows to take away the eternal effect of devastating blows like what we were going through.

And God in His mercy opened my eyes to see afresh His goodness to me in Jesus. I've never forgotten it. Or gotten over it since.

The Sands of Time are Sinking

Here we are about five years since that morning conversation at the coffee pot. God is continuing to use our marriage to pry idols from my heart's embrace.  He is changing my heart in the process and inclining it to you in the right ways - so much so that I long to be the first fruit of your ministry (thank you to Linda Minnick for that challenge). I want to be saved from my self-love and learn from you and benefit from your observations on ways I am lagging behind in my walk with Him. Often you talk through what you're learning and in a sense "preach" to me first. I want a pliable heart that responds to His Word through you. I hope that at the end of your ministry, one life you've effected to the praise of His glory will stand above the others as more humbled by free grace, motivated by the gospel, captivated by God's glory in the face of Jesus, and obedient to His Word than the rest...mine!

To many, even after ten years of marriage, we're just starting out. And maybe we are. Maybe we have decades more together to go hard for the sake of the gospel and the spread of His fame. That's what we want. But we don't know the end of our story. We know in the eternal scheme of things, it will be a short one. I hope it will be a glorious one too, though. Not because there's anything uniquely great about either of us. Quite the contrary. But we have a great God who has utterly convinced us of His greatness and His goodness and we want His glory to be magnified because of our lives together. On June 15, 2002, we set out asking God to make a name for Himself in our marriage with Psalm 115:1 being our theme verse. Ten years later, the prayer of our hearts hasn't changed:

"Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,
     for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!" Amen.