Fulfillment as a Woman

The blogosphere is weird.  Sometimes I love the din, sometimes I hate it.  I have a feeling many of you have similar reactions (from comments I have read).

Hoping not to be one more clanging gong, and knowing that this post isn’t going to beam me up any brownie points, I wanted to comment today on an article that disturbed me.  Well, perhaps it wasn’t the article that distubed me, but some of the conservative reaction to it.  Here is the article (in Forbes, on careers and married women).  Sometimes the conservative response to something like this is to further polarize, to draw bigger, wider battle lines, to yell louder thinking that will accomplish something (when in reality it serves to deepen the divide…nobody is hearing, everyone is too busy trying to be heard). 

Many men, if I may be so bold, feel threatened by a woman who can think.  My husband has expressed this at times, saying that while it was my active personality and mind that attracted him, it is also something he struggles with at times.  We’ve never had the kind of relatoinship where he can instruct me in the Scriptures, because we are both students of the Book.  (I will add that I do go to him for his opinion on such things, and deeply respect it). 

Some extremists in the conservative camp say this is exactly why a woman shouldn’t persue higher learning, shouldn’t go to college, shouldn’t ever progress in knowlege beyond her husband.  The Forbes article practically said as much: if she does, she will not be satisfied when we ask her to devote herself to  soley being a wife and a mother. 

But that makes me wonder.  If being a wife and mother is so fulfilling, then why are many women not completely satisfied there?  (Or another question: if excercising a woman’s mind will make her discontent with being a wife and mother, then might that tell us that something is wrong either with our perception of being a wife and mother, or perhaps simply with our restriction of women to that role alone)? 

I would agree with many that part of our disatisfaction comes from a culture that has taught us that being at home is not a viable option.

But what happens when you work past that, when you see the homefront as deeply valuable and worth giving one’s life to?  What happens when you see the roles of wife and of mother as incredibly powerful, as a worthy service and calling…but yet you still don’t have that deep down sense of being fully satisfied? 

Is it because you are in sin?  Is it because you are in rebellion?  Is it because you do not yet know God in His fullness?

Or is it because, for some of us, being a wife and mother is a PART of what we were made to do, but not all. 

Do I have to feel 100% satisfied and fulfilled because I choose home?  No.  Because I do not.  I never have.  And yet I love it here, I love my family, I love serving here and God has taught me MUCH, taken me beyond anything I ever thought He could have. 

But I choose this because it is the best thing for my family right NOW.  I don’t have to be 100% fulfilled and joyously content to make this choice.  I wish I was…but I can’t manufacture those feelings.  I know that this is the right thing for me to do with my life NOW. And I do have fun, and I am content, but there is still that fact that it is only 95% of me.  There is a 5% that is hiding somewhere, waiting, in cacoon form or a tomb waiting for His word to bring the dead to life, and I cannot pretend otherwise.

I don’t even like writing or thinking about this subject very much, because it bothers me that I am not 100% content here.  I have stuffed these feelings or so long, becuase I have thought they were sin, rebellion, the enemy.  (Maybe they are?).  But there comes a time in every woman’s life where she has to get real.  Even when it makes her wince to do it.  (And why she feels the need to share some of her deepest wonderings with the blogosphere, only a psychological genius could know).

Bottom line: I do not think that being a wife and mother is what I was made for.  I think it is a MAJOR part of what I was made for.  But it is not all.  It is my vocation now, but I am beginning to have suspicions that perhaps that burning nagging sense (that tells me, “there is more”) deep inside me is because there is more, perhaps God planted it there, and perhaps God is going to bring it out in His chosen time.   

If we tell women that being a wife and mother is all God has for them, that it is their only ministry, that they must feel that deep abiding sense of contentment there, then…aren’t we setting some of them up for failure? 

What if we just get honest, and say that sometimes home isn’t very fulfilling…sometimes it’s the hardest place in the world to be…sometimes it DOES feel like a prison (yes, sometimes the feminists are telling the truth)..but that God can meet us in the home regardless of those things, that God can make it a place we love, that it IS the right choice for some seasons even though it may require sacrificing things that we love, and that it WILL pay off big dividends, and that it is NOT a waste of a life…that living for God’s glory does not always mean doing the things that feel good, or deeply move us.  Sometimes it’s the exact opposite, but what matters is not whether we feel fulfilled, but that His Love is being expressed, His Life is being lived out through us, that He is being seen through us.