woman to woman
Growing up and hearing stories about my father were always told with humor and a serious tone. It was the stories that included my mother that I always thought were interesting because it had a savior complex tone. Your daddy was a bad boy but thank God for your mama! She saved him. It was along those lines. This need to make a good woman the savior and the man in need of some nurturing. I remember a couple years ago asking my mom what she thought when people said things like that. She laughed and said, I did not save that man. Jesus did and thank God He did because He saved me through Your father’s leadership. We will follow up with that later.
First I want you to understand a woman’s design. It is found in Genesis 2:18. After God had made man for some time He found it was not good for man to be alone and He makes the man a helper suitable for him. The suitable helper becomes the man’s wife. You following? Here is where it gets tricky. To be a helper means to support, to assist. There is a big difference between helping and mothering. Though mothering holds the characteristics of a helper. She cannot mother a grown man. Her call and duty of nurturing is within the guise to bring up her children. No woman is created to mother a man she’s supposed to commit and submit to. There is a reason a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife— not another mother. Genesis 2:24
I have met many men and realized no matter how much I tried I was still showing up as a savior each time. Call it empathy or stupidity but I heard a writer say: there is a deep distortion for the enemy to weaken the man and falsely empower a savior complex in women. I know today’s world loves throwing the baby out with the bath water. This is not a letter to shame men or shame women. It is a call to find our original design. Our reason for being made in His image. It is a very hard thing for me to take off my cape. One, I’m the eldest. Two, I’ve been a single mom for 13 years. (give me my flowers for both those titles, please) jk. God did not create me to bear His name in those identities. Eldest. Single mother. I guess pain does that. It hardens our hearts. Makes us believe we are the thing our mothers and fathers are. Or the things sin has made us. God is so kind in His nature to give me rest. Rest is remaining in my identity and design. He has showed me my womanhood was never created to be the hero in liberating men from the shackles of immaturity. A created thing can’t save anyone. I cannot mold a grown man, only Jesus can and will.
So, it is like my mom said— thank God He did because He saved me through Your father’s leadership. When a man is submitted to Christ, his family can submit to his leadership. Isn’t that what relationships are made for? To make us more like Christ? It is the gospel that I see when I see my parent’s marriage. It is not the saving of one another but the saving of what Jesus does when He is centered and first.
Then it is so, I never want to mother a man again. I will run from any man that distinguishes needing a diaper change. Call me lazy. Call me high maintenance. Call me crazy. Call me a woman without vision better yet don’t call me at all.
Lord, send Him to me made and complete in You. Lord, guide me as I honor my design as a woman.
woman to woman.
“The next chapter of your life is going to require you to leave that man.”
woman to woman.
“I stopped loving him when I stopped feeling bad for him.”
woman to woman.
“You are not confused, you are just being disobedient. Get up.”
woman to woman.
“You were not made to save him.”
I am writing you love letters from Hilo.
I pray you read this with hope and love. With joy and expectation— knowing Jesus loves you but more importantly He needs you to grow up— in your word reading, praying, believing, hoping, looking for His return.
All my love,
G.
