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.”

My Personal Vision Statement

Day 1: Design Your Own Personal Vision Statement

To see women healed through my compassion and encouragement that is bold, real and raw, enabling them to find completeness through serving God so that the world will treat them with the kindness and respect they deserve.

Donna Partow, author of our 90-day adventure, "Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be," made a profound observation about today's woman: "More than ever before, a woman of noble (capable, intelligent, virtuous) character is hard to find."

Following the guidelines of how to develop my vision statement, it was no surprise to me that my "ideal world" was full of women who served God, and I would help them be healed through my compassion and encouragement. I've known for some time now that my heart aches for the aching woman.

Having been an aching woman myself, and now realizing my worth through Christ, I long for the day when women can overcome being a victim without losing the values and principles of being a real, genuine woman.

My father-in-law used to work the late-night shift in the hotel industry. This was usually when the drunks off the streets of Chicago would barge in demanding a room. What disgusted him most was the kind of women that would come in, cursing at him, falling all over the men they were with, and revealing more of their bodies than he cared to see. He is an old-fashion kind of guy, and my husband holds those same values.

Unfortunately, at one point in my life I was one of those women my father-in-law loathed. So the question bears asking, "Why is a good woman so hard to find?"

Today's woman is hurting. She has endured much heartache through abuse, unwanted pregnancies, sexual molestation, rejection by her father and sometimes her mother, childhood tauntings, being bullied by other girls. She also suffers greatly at the projections of what an ideal woman looks like. She is continually being badgered with unhealthy, ungodly, undesirable images of what it means to be a "strong" woman. Hollywood depicts today's woman as someone who sleeps around, gets her way through sleeping around, and manipulates those around her with her charm and sexuality. She is also the kind of woman who doesn't need a man anymore, because she can take care of herself. She can have a child without a man, and she can even have a marriage without a man. Today's woman cares more about her selfish desires to succeed and make a name for herself than she does about having a family or dedicating herself wholly to one. She doesn't have time for that kind of nonsense, so if and when she does finally have a family, she slings her kids off to day care and works long, hard hours. She doesn't care about the values that are being force fed onto her children, because she's just grateful someone else is doing all the dirty work for her. Suddenly, though, today's woman is distraught when her teen children are doing drugs, sleeping around, and doing poorly in school. She doesn't get it. She's done the best she can...

Proverbs 31 will prove that she's not doing the best she can, because today's woman throws all those virtues out the window. They are considered to be ancient, old fashioned, outdated, and ridiculously unattainable, so they just don't even try anymore. Women are not trying to be virtuous. They want what they want and they'll do whatever it takes to get it. It doesn't matter if an innocent child will suffer due to this selfishness, or if they decide to maliciously take an unborn child's life so they can continue with their unrealistic, dangerous, and devastating views of what being a woman is really like.

When women want to know why they are mistreated by men, they don't bother looking in the mirror before they leave the house for the bar and ask themselves, "Do I look like a lady who is worthwhile, or do I look like someone who is worthlessly only out for a good time for the night? Am I woman worth the long haul, or am I a woman who needs to be overhauled?"

The world is in desperate need of virtuous women who truly want a husband, a family and to make a real change in our world through love and compassion for others. But today's woman is lacking any effort to love anyone else but themselves.

Again, if you think this is harsh, I'm speaking from my own experience. That woman I just described was me only fifteen years ago. I'd like to say that my outlook changed when I got saved in 1998, but it didn't. I had to go through several more abusive relationships before I finally humbled myself before God and surrendered all of that "stuff." When I did, my outlook on being a woman changed for the better. I no longer need to compare myself to the world's wild and wicked projection of what it means to be a woman, because I know who God calls us to be.

I'll never be perfect, but for the next 90 days with my fellow Proverbs 31 Women, I am going to strive for something even better than I hoped to achieve within myself...and all by the grace of God.