Juxtapose

I had originally written a very fiery post about the life and times of the Christian woman today. It got a little too personal on my end, so I am revisiting it now while I'm home for the day after a very long week. Today, I'm playing the young and hip and wired twenty-something neo-orthodox Christian wife who is blogging from Panera's free wifi and sipping tea. So very Web 2.0.

Some say that if you don't have a kid within nine months to the day of marriage, you're definitely slacking off in the Christianity department (a view that is both simultaneously nosy and presumptive that every woman is blessed with some incredible fertility). This camp often makes a big deal out of the wrongness of married women having jobs and generating income for their families, even before having children. I know a few of them. They are newly married, stranded at home with one or no children and very little to do, in actuality. They tout Proverbs 31 as their life verses, thinking that their Ultra Stay At Home Mom attitude means that they can't work from home or handle their family finances because that's a man's job. They think they're being Biblical but they're really just being Victorian, being June Cleaver. They've got one kid and a three-room apartment and a once a week young mothers Bible study to go to and that's it for the whole week and they STILL can't get the dishes done because they're too depressed. They wonder why the Proverbs 31 woman sounds so much cooler on paper.

They're bored, because, if they were really being all Proverbs 31'ed out, they'd be doing it like she did - working with her hands from early in the morning, going out into the city to sell her goods and bring home some eggs to go with the bacon. She's not some ultra-feminist powerhouse career chaser, but, you know, she doesn't lounge around at home playing pattycakes all day either. She takes care of her house, does her dishes, and still finds time to stretch out her hands to people who are needy. Women are fooled into believing in an idea of submission and godly housewifery that is nowhere near Biblical. True, there is no equivalent life these days for most people living in suburbia like I do - I have no yard to grow my flax and raise sheep so I can spin their wool into yarn. In that society type, you could have a lot to do and offer your husband by just staying home and taking care of animals and selling goods from home, but most of us don't have that luxury. I try to explain that the idea of women "keeping the home" as a primary occupation is a legitimate one, so long as there is something to actually keep up in the process.

This June Cleaveresque suburban sprawl of depression and lack of purpose spreads out into their marriages, too. Wife stays home all day with not much to do, eagerly awaiting the company of her husband all day, husband comes home after a long day of stress and exercising his brain and needs a few minutes to get in the door and decompress and unwind. Maybe he gives her a kiss at the door and then goes to his computer for half an hour by himself. Maybe he reads the paper for an hour on the couch and doesn't say much while the wife is all buzzing around making supper. Maybe he doesn't want to do anything for a while or doesn't want to immediately be all cuddly. So wife gets all stressed and doesn't get why he doesn't come flying to her like he's been sitting around all day doing nothing but thinking about when he gets home to his wife. But it's because he hasn't, he's been busy working, and he needs a few minutes to shake it off at the door so he can separate work from home. But the women don't get it. They are so drained from being alone all day they can't understand why he isn't the same way.

I am not perfect, and neither is my marriage or my relationship with God, but despite all that, and because of my understanding of the Proverbs 31 business, three to six days a week I get up at my 5:15AM alarm, stumble into the bathroom to put on my scrubs, pile my hair on top of my head, and pull on my winter coat the meet the chilly New England air. All of this just to kiss Mark and my warm bed goodbye for eight or twelve hours of work. I don't feel guilty about it, either. I am twenty-two years old, childless, and I live in a three room apartment that has no need of a 24/7 housekeeper. I am not a lazy person by nature and I feel proud to be working towards our future by saving money and giving money and caring for my little household in the only way I can at this point in my life. As much as I hate to peel off the covers and let my feet hit the floor, leaving behind my cozy home, I know that just as surely as God designed man to be the head of the home, I am doing as Proverbs 31 designed, by leaving behind an idleness justified only by modern traditions of "church culture." For as many books lining the walls of the Christian section of Barnes and Noble that are about "keeping the home," maybe there should be just one telling women to get off their rocking chairs and whiling away their precious time so that they can really serve, really love their husbands, really use their time wisely to serve their households and God. Not career women bent on advancement and leaving their families in the dust, just women not wasting their lives by following an ideal that is not Biblical in the least.

I can only say that I hope I'm some sort of Proverbs 31 woman for the 21st century, some adaptation of the same hard working spirit and dedication to God and family. Perhaps I'm a progressive, but I think it started more with my parents, who were not intent on only advancing the corporate ladder but who also were no slackers. Through the tough times when I was very young, my Mum worked many jobs that were far below her expertise and brains but that allowed her to both be a full-time mom and wife as well as make money during the droughts. She drove a special needs van from here to Boston for years as I sat strapped in my carseat in the front seat. She did construction and renovation with my Dad as I played in a playpen and stuck plastic hammers into my diaper so it would be like the toolbelts I saw her wear. As I got older and gained more brothers and a sister, she worked jobs from home and then somewhere along the way, became a full-time schoolteacher to us. My Mum is a Proverbs 31 woman. Housewife but never with a wasted moment, hand-in-hand with my Dad always. I loved walking into the kitchen and finding Mom stirring a pot of sauce and Dad poking her in the belly, teasing her about not putting oil in her pasta water. Being in bed in our little house before the addition and, through the walls, hearing the muffled sound of my parents talking and laughing about all the goofy things their gawky children did during the day. Being eight years old and waking up early on Saturday morning to sit on the hope chest in their room and be relentlessly teased by them, warmed by the greatness of being a kid and having parents who loved each other and who loved us. Such blessings I'm sure I do not in the least deserve. I have equal memories of a Mom who drove the special needs van early in the morning and knew how to tile a kitchen floor and a Mom who would dance to Second Chapter of Acts and the Grateful Dead records in the living room with me, Drew, and Chaz, back at a time when we were little and they were Andy and Chuckie still. That's the kind of Proverbs 31 I want to be. The version of Proverbs 31 adopted by married women these days is an imitation, a watered-down version of the sweetness that comes from two people working hard together to build a home and finances and love and grow together in Jesus. Thanks, Mum.