Victim or Victorious

Woman was created from the rib of man.
She was not made from his head to be above him,
nor was she made from his feet to be trampled on.
She was created out of his side to equal him,
under his arm to be protected by him
and near his heart to be loved.

This little vignette has been around for years and it always leaves me with a quizzical expression on my face.  Despite having a slightly romantic ring to it (which caters to my girlie heart) I can’t help but notice when you camp on the perspective of “she” — she reads as having a slightly needy (needy in a negative light of telling her husband how to be a husband) quality.  In light of the reference to creation it appears that man wasn’t given a partner and co-heir in equality for the climb of life, but rather one more thing that needs his attention:

• Under his arm to be protected by him:  You can’t make your husband protect you by your definition of protection – seeking to get is not giving of yourself.
• Near his heart to be loved:  You can’t make your husband love you by your definition of love – seeking to get is not giving of yourself.

The perspective of this vignette is of a taker and not a giver.  To say that this is why she was created is to say then, this is what he should do for her.  Jesus was a giver OF Himself, not a taker FOR His needs.

What a husband should and does do could be worlds apart in your marriage.  Just like what a wife should and does do could have gaping hole in between.

Emerson Eggerichs calls it, The Rewarded Cycle.  Focus on what you need to give and God will take care of what you get.

The SHE in this Vignette.  There’s an absence of the strength and power that woman was created in.

Rib means power and strength, which is what God used at our creation.  He took it out of man and made a woman.  Behold, the rib!  God used the power and strength (the rib tsala) found in the man to create a lifesaver for him. (the woman – ezer kenegdo).  A help when all else is gone!  God specifically describes only one other being as an ezer … Himself! (Ex 18:4; Deut 33:7, 26; Psalm 33:20 – and about 9 more)   Wives are to be a very present and practical help when the bottom falls out of his world.

It’s for this reason that I prefer this version:

Woman was created from the rib of man.

She was not made from his head to think like him,

nor was she made from his feet to walk like him.

She was created from his side of protection to be close and ready,

from under his arm to support him in power and strength,

and near his heart to surround it and defend him.

 

 

I married the “wrong” person

Over at Marriage Gems, Lori has been writing an interesting series that started with her post, We all Married the Wrong Person.  I am really enjoying reading her perspective on this subject.

I touched briefly on this subject back in July in my post titled, Did I Marry the Wrong Guy.

Lori’s most recent posts got me to thinking about focus and phraseology, and the lament of those seeking to be free of ‘unhappy’ marriages — I married the wrong person.

Why is it phrased that the other person is the … wrong person.  Is it, perhaps because it shows the perspective of where the blame is sought to be directed.  This is a small observation and somewhat quizzical; yet, very telling.

I’ll use my own marriage as the example.  If Darrell and I are hitting that sweet spot in our marriage less and less as the years go by, I could naturally conclude, “I think I married the wrong person.”   By process of elimination that makes me the right person.

Merely semantics?   I’m not so sure.  Isn’t the spouse that is seeking to exit the marriage the one that finds the other spouse to be, the wrong one?  If a wife is so sure that her marriage isn’t working because her husband is the wrong one, (the one at fault) doesn’t that mean that her scrutiny finds him to be the one with the problems (aka – all the sin)?  While simultaneously viewing herself as problemless (aka – no sin, or very little).

I’m sure Captain Hook from Peter Pan would even find this to be, bad form.

And Hook is right.  It’s an unbalanced assessment.  It is because of a wife’s strength in an area that she can see the weakness of her husband.  What she’s actually doing is comparing weakness to strength.  In order for it to be fair, about whether a person is the wrong one or not, we need to compare weakness with weakness and strength to strength.  Then we will be able to see things a little more clearly; more fairly.

Equal comparison will force me to take my high powered precision focus and center it back where it belongs, on my own weaknesses.  This will help change the negative question that seeks to destroy my marriage, to a positive affirmation of empowerment:

From:  Did I marry the wrong person?

To:  Lord, help me to be the right person.

We must learn to regard people

less in light of what they do or omit to do;

and more in the light of what they suffer.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~

corrected vision

I’ll be honest, when I first met Sarah I thought she was mindless and weak.  Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master …  And you are now her true daughters if … I didn’t want to be her daughter; I liked being a daughter of the feminist movement and much preferred the mantra, “I am woman hear me roar!”  I thought this made me powerful and strong; I didn’t know that these very attributes had already been infused into the core of who I was as a woman, and that I was feeding them fuel, from the world … and not God.

Sarah embodied the opposite of everything I was, and knew about being a wife.  There appeared to be an uncrossable chasm between us and when I read verses like the one above, the chasm widened as my inner woman squirmed, “he’s not the boss of me … he can run his 50% and I’ll run my 50%.”  Now that’s equality in marriage.

And so began God’s battle with me, to straighten me out and show me that the 50/50 split was not His view of marriage … it was the world’s.  He slipped a little burr in the middle of my back.  This burr had a name:  it was called marriage.  It also had a face:  it was Darrell’s.  This burr stuck to my skin and as I wrestled and fought with God, for 14 years, it rubbed my back raw.

All my crying out to God seemed to fall on deaf ears.  I wanted Darrell to listen to me.  I wanted to do things my way; it seemed that he made most, if not all, of the decisions.  I had ideas and solutions about how to run our family; but it was always so conflicted between us whenever we tried to talk about things or solve problems; and it just kept getting worse.

Weeks turned into months and then into years, and every passing day I became more and more contentious about NOT seeing any circumstances or solutions …  Darrell’s way

…and the burr just kept slicing away.

I had created a war zone in our home, and a hardened-heart within myself.

Finally, in a woman-child pout, I screamed at God, “fine, I just won’t have an opinion about anything; is that what YOU want?”  God responded with silence.  A deafening silence.  I had been in our kitchen doing dishes and slamming cupboards and the silence stopped me dead when I realized what I had said through gritted teeth, and Who I had said it to.  I fell to my knees, not so much in repentance of my somewhat calloused heart, or  adoration of God, but in a slump of emotional fatigue and confusion and started to cry.  “Why did You give me a brain if You didn’t want me to use it?  There will be nothing left of me,” I sobbed to my Father.  Then I heard God’s voice, “Yes, there will be nothing left of you, and that is the point.”  He paused (I think, to let that sink in a bit) then continued, “My Spirit can’t work in you, with you in the way.”

That was the beginning of the end of me.  It was that day on my kitchen floor with a tear stained face and a badly bruised pride, that I saw the first glimmer of understanding and freedom that comes with the death of self.  God showed me that because I had been so focused on getting my own way, what I thought I deserved, and my own “rights” that I had clouded the insight and change of what He wanted to do in me.  It wasn’t about obeying Darrell because he was always right or me not using my mind; it was about God using my husband through our marriage to shape me into who He had created me to be.  I had been so focused on the natural, the earthly situations, that I couldn‘t see the bigger picture of what I needed to learn and what was important … the supernatural.  I had turned our marriage into a “he/she“ issue and pitted myself against my husband and was living in the fruit of what a 50/50 marriage really was.

I was reaping what I had sown.

Marriage cannot work this way.  A home divided against itself will not stand. (Mk 3:25).  I had to be 100% for the marriage; not fighting for my 50% of the marriage.

This is what I hadn’t liked about Sarah.  She was 100% for her marriage.  Looking at her through my 50/50 vision, her way seemed totally wimpy and unacceptable to me.  But as I began to view her through God’s lenses, I saw a whole different view of marriage; and a brand new part of God’s personality started to emerge for me!

If anyone would have asked me if I was 100% for my marriage; I believed and would have answered, yes.  But clearly my words and actions didn’t connect.

Something to think about

Does what you say reflect what you believe … in your relationship with your husband?

Does what you do reflect what you say … towards your husband?

Or is there a disconnect like I found that I had.