Teaching our daughters

Disclaimer: I’m not exactly sure if I know how to put into words how I feel about the things I have read since this controversy occurred with the Ashley Madison site. Yet, I feel too strongly to not say anything at all. Just to be sure though…I want everyone that reads this to understand I am NOT in any form or fashion taking up for any adulterer or even anyone causing physical or mental abuse in a relationship. I don’t condone staying in a relationship that is such, either.  So at the end, if you don’t agree with anything I’ve said, that’s ok. Just please don’t try to misread or twist my words in any way to sound like I am ok with such sins.

So here goes everything!...

I understand sin in lots of form can be just as hurtful to those around us as it can ourselves. I feel horrible for the wives, children, and other family and friends around the ones who have been outed in this public humiliation. They are only the victims that have been caused an even deeper hurt from the wrong doing, because of the fact that it is so public. Specifically to the Duggar family, I can’t imagine the pain that many of them are facing especially Anna Duggar. I have read plenty about how others say she should or should not feel, what she should or should not do, and what she is or isn’t capable of. I know plenty enough about putting my own foot in my mouth during times where I thought I could say what someone should do, say, or feel. All the time knowing I was only on the outside looking in. With all that being said, that whole aspect and the media-pushed  Duggar part of it is not why I write.  My girls are why I write.

You see through these couple days I have read many articles and social media posts on how people are outraged at the idea of so many men treating so many women badly and from that what they will teach their daughters to be like. There are plenty of thoughts put out there that I agree with. Then there are also things that have been written like teaching our daughters to command power.  To these type things I’m sorry but I just can’t agree. I have prayed and thought and just sincerely moaned over these ideas of making men feel less empowered and our daughters rising up as some sort of power over their husbands and I just can’t see how this can be ok.

I don’t plan to be popular nor make viral blog with this so hold on to your seats but here it goes….Women are the weaker vessel! It is totally ok for a woman to be needy and/or a man to feel needed! EEK! I said it! Let’s just put ALL of our own feelings and opinions, even my own, aside for a moment and break out the true authority on this. God’s Holy Word.

The Bible gives specific details how each role in marriage should be played. The husband has leadership in the home. (Not as dictator, but as Christ leads and loves the church) (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23) Wives are to submit to the authority of her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24) So many times I hear women say, “But what if my husband doesn’t do his part in loving me as Christ loved the church?” To that I say “so does our husband’s disobedience to God’s word give us free-reign to disobey also?”   Anyways. Moving along…

As a woman I’m ok with knowing that my husband sometimes has to open the pickle jar for me. I like when he opens the door for me even though he knows and I know full-well that I am fully capable of opening my own door. I also like taking charge. I like to drive a lawn mower. I like checking my own oil in my car. I have even taken out the garbage a few times. Gasp!!! I am completely my father’s daughter in the fact that he and I both are the type that “know” our way of doing things is always best. (Seriously, it’s been proven, lol!) At the same time though I have many times had a heavy heart for making my husband feel less than significant or capable. I joke about being older and wiser to my husband but also have felt the sting of knowing that I’ve caused him hurt at times by not letting him lead as God says he should. I am growing through my relationship with Jesus and the closer I get to He that controls all, the more I long to be the wife that the Bible tells me I should be. I am his help-mate. I am his rib (the body part of Adam’s that God made Eve out of) I stand beside my husband, not behind him, and most certainly not under him. But I am also NOT going to teach my children that as a woman or wife that I should power over their father just to prove gender equality.

I have been given a wonderful, Godly husband. He truly loves and leads me as Christ does the church. I know that is not the case for everyone out there. I am so undeservingly blessed. I pray that my girls are too. Sure I will teach them to stand up for themselves, not to accept abuse, to be independent, and to be a leader not a follower. Most importantly I will teach them truths from the Bible. The main things I hope they grow to be, like loving, Jesus-filled, kind, and compassionate have nothing to do with demanding respect or authority. If we, as women, don’t care to be treated as unequal, lower, disrespected, or unloved, how is it ok for us to treat anyone else (male or female) as such?

I’ll end on this funny note…

Jerry Clower is one of the funniest people to have ever lived. He told this story about how he offered his chair to a lady in a green room of a talk show who he later discovered was a “woman-liber”. She outright told him to SIT DOWN. He said his ancestors would come up and get him if he didn’t offer his chair like he had been raised to all his life. She refused and sat in the middle of the floor. After asking her which women she planned on liberating he told her let me tell you about me and Mama (his wife). “Me and Mama have been married 26 years. She was my childhood sweetheart; I ain’t never had another date. And Mama sleeps every morning till she gets ready to get up. Now she may have to get up at 8 o’clock to open the door to let the lady in that I got hired to wait on Mama. And when Mama does get up she can fix her own breakfast or have it brought to her. It’ll be Mama’s option whichever she wants. And when Mama does get up and watches them soap operas, she can watch it in three different rooms of the house, laying down, leaning, or propped up. Whichever way she wants to do it. And whenever Mama wants to go to the supermarket, she goes in a brand new gold Lincoln Continental. I says Miss Woman-Liber, Mama don’t want you messin’ with the deal she’s got!!!!”

EXACTLY. I will continue to be the “needy, high-maintenance, fragile” type!!! Don’t mess with the deal I got!!!