I ran across this older picture of Mallie. So yeah, maybe as we read through Proverbs 31 we'll hang out in the "clothes herself with fine linens" section.

“Unless God gives you the unique gift of singleness, the Bible says ‘it is a good thing’ for you to get married and have a family. Raise your hand if you hope to be a wife and mother one day”, I asked my little girls, down to the two-year-old.

And then I read….

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.” Proverbs 31:10-12

That’s packed full of good stuff! “Who can find her?” She was rare then and rare now. An “excellent wife” isn’t just born. I want my girls to know that raising children and being a wife is a monumental task. One that will require all their energies, all their hearts and all their attention. It will utilize all their gifts and creativity. It will take enormous wisdom and fortitude. It is a full time job. That is, to be an “excellent” wife. A “virtuous” wife. It’s a job for which they must begin now to prepare.

We must do the counter-cultural job of teaching our girls, from a young age, that they are likely entering upon the job of a lifetime–a job that will change the world if they embrace it. We must be willing to bear the criticism (ironic, isn’t it?) and teach them to as well. We must learn to give an answer in truth and in love.

It always stumps me that the job of helping a husband, running an efficient home and raising the next generation has been ridiculed into a tiny corner until it is hardly recognized as a “job” anymore. Marriages, the ministry of home, children-turning-adults…how could any other pursuit be more worth our following?

That part doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me, and saddens me, is that Christians followed suit. We know better. And until we reclaim the home as a place in which soldiers are raised, marriages become a reflection of the gospel, and the family gains enough strength to reach beyond itself and lend a life-saving hand to the lost, we will continue to wonder why the church is impotent and our society ravished.

Yes, it takes time to undo generations of effects that pull some from home. But we have to have a “true north” starting point. We have to recognize truth before we can follow it.

It is our one mission, dear Church, to glorify Him with our lives. It is our mission to stop bending the knee to a humanistic god. It is our mission to raise children who will carry the Light of Christ, the Hope of the world, into the next generation.

Let’s do it.

I received this email from my inbox last week and it pierced my heart…

“Dear Kelly,

I wanted to write to encourage you to keep speaking on the hard topics–I wish someone had told me.

I went the typical routine–high school–”what are you going do now”–college–then pursuing my “good job” because that’s what you do and besides, you need to be able to take care of yourself.

I get married in my early twenties, we made good money and we spent it well:  nice house, new furniture, two new cars, vacations, etc.

When my first baby came along, I was blown away by my love for her. And not once had I thought about (or been told) that given the lifestyle we had acquired, I would be forced to go back to work when she was just a few months old.  It floored me.

But surprisingly, no one else seemed to think it odd that I was struggling.  It’s what everyone did.  Of course we were obligated to find best day care and that would make all the difference, and then I could carry on, guilt-free, fulfilling my duty as a wife who made half the income.  But when I handed my tiny baby over into the hands of someone I barely new, I might as well have given her my heart too.

Here’s the one thing I can’t get past: if feminism is so “liberating”, why did I feel so enslaved, without a choice, (emphasis mine) bound to a decision I didn’t want to make?  The choice was being a mother who could take care of and nurture this beautiful gift God had given me, or handing her over to a complete stranger and go back to my “liberating job”, because I’m a woman and I can do what I want to do.

What kind of choice is that? “You can have it all?” No you can’t.  And it’s cruel to even suggest it.

I know not all women will feel this way, and from my experience, it’s because the whole movement itself was intended to callous a mother’s heart toward her children and family so she would be more aggressive in the man’s world.  They knew unless she was brainwashed to think that motherhood was just a side job and anyone else could do as good as she could, women would never “roar and conquer” in the man’s world.

And I’ll go ahead and add that I think the whole idea was Satan’s in the first place…what a clever way to destroy families than to get Mom out of the home?

But some of us kept our tender love in tact and have lived to regret that not one woman cared enough to tell me that the pursuit of motherhood was worthy of my entire devotion.”

Heart-broken,

Leah

 

“The self-proclaimed feminist authors claim that feminism has made a mess of male/female relationships. “Feminism teaches women that they are equal to men, but when it comes to love, romance, attraction, and chemistry – men don’t fall in love with a woman because she is an equal. Men fall in love with women who are their compliment: feminine, loving and appreciative.”

Gotta love it!  Turns out the Bible is right after all, we just have different motives for following its principles.

Read the rest of Man Whisperer vs. True Woman

Don’t forget to come back and tell me what you think!

Many women still desperately want to believe that feminism is only about total freedom of choice.  That it’s only about valuing all vocations and making sure no one is abused.  No doubt, many women who call themselves feminist do sincerely hold to these claims. But the movement itself doesn’t even pretend about its agenda.  It is not about choice.

One only need listen to its proponents to hear its agenda:

Gloria Feldt, leading feminist activist and former CEO of Planned Parenthood, was interviewed by the NY Times, clearly stating the truth about feminism.  Why are feminist still defending what is being openly taught?

“It should be acceptable criticism to point out that, although everyone has the right to make their own life decisions, choosing to “opt out” reinforces stereotypes about women’s priorities that we’ve been working for decades to shatter, so just cut it out. And, the “individual choice” women have to become stay-at-home moms becomes precarious when they try to return to the workplace and find their earning power and options reduced. If we could see child-rearing as a necessary task and not an identity, and if we could collectively recognize that facilitating it benefits us all, we would go much further in guaranteeing women’s choices than we do when we are expected to uncritically celebrate every individual’s decisions.” From Where is the Female Steve Jobs

In case you missed it, here’s what Feldt is saying:

“Technically women have a choice but if you make the choice to be a stay at home mom you destroy everything feminism has worked to gain so we must criticize (and that should be acceptable) the women who choose to stay home with their children.  Oh, and raising children is just a task that anyone can do.”

Perhaps you get tired of my talking about feminism.  Perhaps you don’t realize how important it is that we understand its true colors and recognize its dangers to the family and ultimately to all of us.  I get really impatient with the defense of feminism and the accusations that I’m simply “uninformed” when there is such blatant evidence of the feminist agenda splattered across the NT Times and everywhere else you care to look.

There is no reason to get upset at those of us who oppose the true agenda behind feminism.  It is precisely because I desire to defend women and children and families that I fight so vehemently against it!  I know the typical replies: “Because of feminism women can vote and women can work and women can do such and such.” Let it be said that I don’t propose that nothing good has come out of the feminist agenda.  But the harm far outweighs the benefits (I for one don’t get excited about “my right to vote”.  I had a right before women’s suffrage.  The right to stay in my cozy house while my one-flesh husband casted our house vote )

I don’t have to be a feminist to recognize the incredible value of women.  I don’t have to be a feminist to feel empowered.  I was crafted by the Master Creator with the ultimate gifts and abilities to make the world a better place.  As feminists continue to destroy the blessedness of home, let us weep for their destruction and never stop proclaiming the truth that God’s blueprint for family is the only hope for salvaging society.

“In the early sixties, a landmark book, “The Feminine Mystique,” burst onto the scene. It claimed that women were NOT happy as housewives—at least they shouldn’t be happy in that role!  Those women who were content as wives and moms simply hadn’t had their eyes opened to the extent of their oppression. Men had duped them to believe that a June Cleaver-type of existence was worthwhile and satisfying, when, in fact, such a role was subservient, and demeaning. As this feminist message spread, women in the sixties and seventies began to vilify Billingsley’s June Cleaver ideal….

Whether a woman ought to pursue an education, career, or have a job outside of the home is not at question here. The question in my mind is, ‘Do we as a society believe that family is so important that we uphold caring for home and children as the best and most important job a woman might ever have?’ “

Read “Grieving June Cleaver” by Mary Kassian

My oldest daughter and I went for a grocery outing/Hobby Lobby stop yesterday. It’s always so fun for the two of us to get out and chat together.

As we were headed across the parking lot, a gentleman was walking in our direction. (I feel that his race is important to note–he was black–because of the warm, jovial, southern tone in which he spoke that a typical white man doesn’t normally use…it was simply endearing.) He literally stopped in his tracks, looked at us and said,

“Well, praise the Lord, look how nice you look! Are you sisters? (Yessssss!)”

“No, we’re mother and daughter.”

“Look at those smiles! You look so nice…it’s so wonderful! It’s just wonderful!  God bless y’all!”

It really made me think more about my dress and how much our outward appearance speaks (or should?) about us.  We can’t get it backward though–”white washed exteriors with dead men’s bones within”.  But don’t we “speak” with our outward appearance?

Was it the refreshment of simple feminity displayed? (I’m not pretending to be “all femininity”; I don’t always wear skirts and dresses, but more often than not.)

I don’t know.  I do know that once there were clear and obvious distinctions, that women gloried in their femininity, and that even the most feminine-loving of us have grown up in a culture where it doesn’t seem to matter much and we struggle ourselves over appropriate dress.  Lines have definintely been blurred and the blurring defended so vehemently that even talking about dress gets people all bent out of shape.

Still, it was an interesting experience that made me think.

I leaped off the couch when I heard this report as we watched the incredible rescue, and yelled, “someone give me a pen and paper”. Nobody else really caught the sentence, but it jumped out at me.

“Incredibly, the miners had established a hierarchy among themselves in the 17 days before they were found. The Chilean officials are supporting that hierarchy and leadership, which the NASA team also commended.”

The psychologist went on to say they see similar behavior anytime there is a group of people depending on each other for survival….people on a mission. And get his, one psychologist said, “When the people in the group submit to that hierarchy they do better physically and emotionally.”

Hierarchy in real life is NOT a popular concept.  We have successfully repressed the idea that there is any need for one person to oversee another in any form (except an employer/employee relationship).

But a life crisis reveals something very telling of human nature:  we need order and yes, hierarchy.

The roles that the men played “down under” did not diminish the value of any of them.  I doubt one of them came up from that cave feeling resentful or “second-rate”.  It happened quite naturally.  No one was balking at the idea of hierarchy.

Why do we?

It reminds me of a family!  On a mission, surviving through life’s crises.  Only in a family, God establishes the perfect hierarchy where He is supreme leader.

Just thought it was an interesting observation.

“F emininity was designed to display truths about the Gospel of Christ. An attitude of submission and a whole life-posture of support was created by God to be a living picture of His relationship to His own people. When we choose to live apart from that design, we distort the Gospel-picture and miss the entire point of being a woman!  Womanhood exists to tell us the cosmic truth of the Gospel.” Mary Kassian

“I have two and I’m exhausted”, she said.  “They’re wild.”

Wild.  Her words played back as I drove home.  The lady appeared to be a Christian–I know at least that she attended church regularly.

Lately it seems that  I see too many mothers not enjoying their children.  Some of them say so right out loud.  They scramble to go places, to find activities to entertain them.  It seems impossible to them to just be at home for any length of time with their children, playing, hanging out, soaking them in.

Just being….something, I think maybe children need more than anything.

What is the problem?

I sit frozen at my computer after typing that question. I think of so many things, intertwined, reciprocating, and it’s impossible to make a list.

I think of mothers and fathers who simply lack the wisdom and understanding of basic child-training.  I think of a new wave of parenting among Christians that shames parents for even believing that the Bible teaches they have authority over their children. What do we do with that?

I think of parents too busy to engage in child training if they did understand it; too consumed with other pursuits to roll up their sleeves and perform the arduous task of raising children.

I think of how the birth control mentality we embrace inadvertently distorts our view of children and makes them a burden before they even arrive.

I think of the sheer lack of time parents spend with their children that hinders the natural friendship and affectionate bond that should exist which draws us to enjoy them.

I think of our addiction to entertainment and distraction and how it destroys family relationships.

I think of so many organizations that subtlety pull the already-fragmented family in different directions–physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I think of a century of feminist dogma that convinced us that motherhood was peripheral, at best, and not worth our full attention.

I think of the utter death of the “Christian soldier about my Father’s business” in the 21st century.

And I think of how all these factors become a vicious cycle that reaffirms our decision to stop having children–godly offspring that were intended to “speak with the enemy in the gates”.

I think of apathy among Christians, and a lack of theological depth and a flippant belief system.

What we believe affects how we live.

And if we believe that “it doesn’t really matter–this way or that, whatever works for you” we all end up swirling around in this cesspool of confusion and consequences from rejecting the wisdom of God.

Yep, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stick with “Do You Like Your Children”.

Everything’s connected.  It’s about our whole world view.

That’s my life message.

And we’re going to have to do a lot of rewinding to get to liking our children again.

“I’ve received questions as to what is meant in Titus 2 where Paul talks about God’s Word being blasphemed.  They wondered if working women blaspheme God’s name. First, let me say no; from what I’ve studied in the word of God, a woman who works outside of the home does not blaspheme God’s Word by doing so….

Ladies, this is the Word of God! We may be able to debate the definition of a keeper at home, but we really can’t argue about the fact that being a “homemaker” is in fact included in the list of things young women should be taught to practice. And it seems pretty clear that Paul is saying God’s Word is blasphemed in society when the church rejects or ignores the teachings of Titus 2.”

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