Day 2: Inspiring Confidence

TAG (Time Alone with God)

I used to be in the sex toy party industry as a Passion Parties Consultant. Hey, don’t judge. I was a woman in desperate need of making good money, and that particular direct sales business fulfilled that need.

I eventually realized that what I was doing, regardless of how clean and fun I tried to make the parties, was not in alignment with what God had for my life, so I quit. Since quitting, our financial life has been an amazing struggle, but that’s another story. Anyway, when I started my business, I went full out. I converted our son’s old nursery--which is a nice sized, sunny room right off of our bedroom--into an office. I bought a big, functional desk, and filled the space with Passion Party pictures and inspiring memorabilia to keep me focused.

After quitting, I needed my computer for writing my daily devotionals, freelance writing jobs, agent and publisher research, and so forth. The time I needed to invest in those things wasn’t a possibility since my office was secluded from the rest of the house. That meant when Tavin, our two-year old son, was up and about, I wasn’t able to do any work or writing. So I recently moved the computer downstairs in hopes of getting more accomplished. That left a big empty desk upstairs in a wonderful room full of possibilities.

Since I am pretty faithful about spending time with God in the mornings, I decided yesterday that I would turn that once-nursery and office into a private sanctuary where I could read, pray, and seek God. My husband Jared moved the desk into his studio, and the room was empty, ready for yet another facelift. For some crazy reason, I felt the urge to get it done last night and worked long and hard on arranging it “just so” for the morning.  

Little did I know that today’s assignment in, “Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be,” would have us do exactly what I had done the night before. I was all set.

Confidence

Moving on, let me focus on something that stood out to me in today’s reading. Partow relays, “The reason why the Proverbs 31 woman’s husband could have full confidence in her is because she had full confidence in God.”

The reason why this jumped out at me was because I often find it funny that men are called to be the “head of the house.” If you’ve ever seen the movie, “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding,” you may remember the line when Tula's mom explains: “The man may be the head of the house, but the woman is the neck. She can make it turn any way she wants.” Now this statement is not about what I said yesterday, about manipulation by using our womanly wiles. What Partow declares is that we can turn the man’s head any which way because our trust, our confidence, our hope, our everything…is in God first and foremost.

I know this to be true, because this is how it works in our home. My husband may be the head, but I am the neck. I am connected to him and help make things run smoothly, and when I don’t, the whole body is lifeless. My husband may not get a lot of time to spend with God, so I should! When times are tough, I am the one who is strong and confident in God, and so then is my husband. When I see my husband struggling to find a job, or trying to provide for us, I seek God “in confidence” and my husband trusts me with that. He knows I’m fighting for our family through prayer and scriptures.

There have even been times when Jared has begun to feel defeated during the day at work, and he’ll tell me later that evening that when he felt that way, he’d hear my voice and some of the biblical teachings I’d learned or applied in my prayer life, and he would do the same. He would suddenly feel revived and encouraged, just by knowing I seek God and that my confidence is IN Him alone. My faith, then, helps keep my husband rooted in God, too, thus making the head and neck work in perfect sync, allowing the body to be full of life!

The head can’t move without the neck. If the neck is broken, the head is paralyzed. Remember what Tula’s mom said, and consider yourself the neck to your husband’s head. “Any determined, hardworking woman can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan,” Partow admits. “That’s not a great accomplishment. A woman who is so wise she has figured out how to get the bacon to come to her and has trained her children to be servant-hearted enough to do the frying—now that’s a valuable woman! That’s a woman who will inspire confidence in her husband and everyone else who meets her.”