In order to learn to
be a woman, we must start with the One who made her.
With today’s edge of technology and information, many people
have been given the opportunity to study – till the extent of gaining a degree
or master cert. With the abundance of knowledge, there’s also ideology that
calls for equality. Often time we hear that there must be EQUALITY between man
and woman. Around the world, women are fighting for EQUALITY standards. Women
wanted to be treated the SAME as men. Do
we really understand the implication
of this?
We are designed differently from men. Our physical,
psychology and mental faculty are all wired differently. Had we forgotten to
embrace ourselves as women rather than just an individual?
To me is a wonderful thing to be a woman under God – to
know, first of all, that we were made
(“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male
and female he created them.”) and then we were made for something (“The rib which the Lord God had taken from the
man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”) –Elisabeth Elliot-
This was the original idea. This is what woman was for.
Woman, you and I are called to be WOMAN. I totally agree with this statement: The fact that I am
a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact I am a
Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God’s
idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and
all He wants me to be.
For the Christian woman, whether she is married or single, there is the call to serve. (Well, you
may disagree with me). God created us, that we have a need to serve others, provide
tenderness and compassion at all times. This is no TRAP by God. It’s the
opposite actually. He had summoned us to live life to the only and true
freedom. However, woman defines her liberation as doing what she
wants, or not doing what she doesn’t want, is, in the first place, evading
responsibility. Evasion of responsibility is the mark of immaturity.
It was God who made man to be a man, while a woman to be a
woman. There’s no answer to the question ‘God, why? Why like that?’ He had
created both male and female uniquely. The male to call forth, to lead,
initiate and to rule, and the female to respond, follow, adapt and submit. Even
if we held to the different theory of origin, the physical structure of the
female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon,
to complement and to nourish.
Being in a family with three courageous women had proved
what had been said. Their love for their family speaks out through actions.
These women did not became the woman who is always there serving others,
providing tenderness and compassion at all times, they went through tough times
and learned to embrace to be a woman. Observing them showed me I have long way
to go still. There’s still much to learn. It gives me joy to find peace to
embrace who I am and whose I am. J
Elisabeth wrote, every
normal woman is equipped to be a mother. But, not every woman in the world is
destined to make use of the physical equipment but surely motherhood, in a
deeper sense, is the essence of womanhood. The body of every normal woman
prepares itself repeatedly to receive and to bear. Motherhood requires
self-giving, sacrifice, suffering.
Womanhood is a call. It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it
means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means
in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful
or barren, may participate – the unconditional response exemplified for all
time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to
receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and to care for others. The
strength to answer this call is given us as we look up toward the Love that
first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning
real men and real women. As we conform to that Love’s demands we shall become
more humble, more dependent – on Him and on one another – even (dare I say it?)
more splendid.
May you be blessed with the discovery of who you are.
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