Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for ValerieForeword* Betty Scott Stam - "Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, send me where Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever."
Chapter 1 The God Who Is in Charge* We are not for one moment of our lives at the mercy of chance.
* He saw the pattern of duty that lay before you both and took it to be the will of God, so that the power of his own emotion to weaken his resolve was not a threat.
* "My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
Chapter 2 Not Who Am I? but Whose Am I?* Carlyle observed this tendency and wryly observed, "Vulpine knowingness sits ever at its hopeless task - from a world of knaves to deduce an honesty from their combined action."
* In order to learn what it means to be a woman we must start with the One who made her.
Chapter 3 Where to Hang Your Soul
* "I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible." There's a statement that has nothing whatever to do with my personal opinions or emotions. ... The only thing I am saying about myself is that I submit to these truths. This is where I stand, this is Reality.
* Worship is not feeling. Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship "in spirit and in truth." Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.
* I hang my soul on those strong pegs, those "I believe's." And I am strengthened.
Chapter 4 A Daughter, Not a Son
* We sometimes hear the expression "the accident of sex," as though one's being a man or a woman were a triviality. It is very far from being a triviality. It is our nature. It is the modality under which we lieve all our lives; it is what you and I are called to be - called by God, this God who is in charge. It is our destiny, planned, ordained, fulfilled by an all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving Lord.
* If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look "little" or "big." Amy Carmichael wrote: "There is no great with Thee, there is no small, For Thou art all, and fillest all in all."
Chapter 5 Creation - Woman for Man
* John of Damascus , said, "God is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehesible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility."
* God is the Almighty, the Creator, a God of Order, Harmony, Design.
* Adam needed more than the companionship of the animals or the friendship of a man. He needed a helper, specially designed and prepared to fill that role. It was a woman God gave him, a woman, "meet," fit, suitable, entirely appropriate for him, made of his very bones and flesh.
* You can't make proper use of a thing unless you know what it was made for, whether it is a safety pin or a sailboat. To me it is a wonderul thing to be a woman under God - to know, first of all that we were
made and then that we were made
for something.
* "For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man."
Chapter 6 Jellyfish and Pride* By being a jelly fish the jelly fish glorifies its Creator, for by being a jelly fish it fulfills its Creator's command.
* It was, in fact, the woman, Eve, who saw the opportunity to be something other than she was meant to be - the Serpent convinced her that she could easily be "like God" - and she took the initiative.
* What sort of world might it have been if Even had refused the Serpent's offer and had said to him instead, "Let me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be - Let me be a woman"?
* But the sin was fatal beyond their worst imagination. It was
hubris, a lifting up of the soul in defiance of God, the pride that usurps another's place. It is a damnable kind of pride.
Chapter 7 The Right Kind of Pride* Isak Dinesen,
Out of African - "Pride is faith in the idea that God had when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to God's idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny." - "People who have no pride are not aware of any idea of God in the making of them, and sometimes they make you doubt that there has ever been much of an idea, or else it has been lost, and who shall find it again? They have got to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, and even their own selves, at the quotation of the day."
* Jim Elliot - "Whatever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."
Chapter 8 The Weight of Wings* Perspective makes all the difference in the world. If you catch even a glimpse of the divine design, you will be humbled and awed at least. I believe a true understanding of it will also make you grateful.
* As the bird easily comes to terms with the necessity of bearing wings when it finds that it is, in fact, the wings that bear the bird - up, away from the world, into the sky, into freedom - so the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her special calling - wings, in fact, which bear her up into perfect freedom, into the will of God.
Chapter 9 Single Life - a Gift* What we are is a gift, and like other gifts, chosen by the Giver alone. We are not presented with an array of options: What would you like to be? How tall? What color? What temperature would you prefer? Which parents will you choose as forebears?
* But having now spent more than forty-one years single, I have learned that it is indeed a gift. Not once I would choose. Not one many women would choose. But we do not choose gifts, remember? We are given them by a divine Giver who knows the end from the beginning, and wants above all else to give us the gift of Himself. It is within the sphere of the circumstances He chooses for us - single, married, widowed - that we receive Him. It is there and nowhere else that He makes Himself known to us. It is there we are allowed to serve Him.
* "It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion."
* I waited on God, prayed, searched the Scriptures, corresponded, and, on very widely-spaced occasions, were able to talk about these matters.
* No wonder we were confused, and no wonder that a man of your father's determination should ponder long and earnestly the apparent contradictions in this hard chapter (1 Corinthians 7). He longed for the "better" and "happier" way. He was determined to prove God's strength and grace sufficient to over the ordinary weakness of a man's flesh. He knew his own great attraction for women. He was determined also to serve the Lord without entanglements. But the time came when marriage was from him a clear command, and he knew then that it was a gift, given by the same Giver who gives to soem the special gift of being single. "Let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him," Paul wrote.
* Martin Luther - "Chastity is not in our power, as little as are God's other wonders and graces. But we are all made for marriage as our bodies show and as the Scriptures state in Genesis 2. 'It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.'
"I fancy that human fear and timidity stand in your way. It is said that it takes a bold man to venture to take a wife. What you need above all else, then, is to be encouraged, admonished, urged, incited, and made bold. Why should you delay, my dear and reverend sir, and continue to weigh the matter in your mind? It must, it should, and will happen in any case. Stop thinking about it and go to it right merrily. Your body demands it, God wills it, and drives you to it. There is nothing that you can do about it ... It is best to comply with all our senses as soon as possible and give ourselves to God's Word and work in whatever He wishes us to do."
"Let us not try to fly higher and be better than Abraham, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, and all the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, as well as many holy martyrs and bishops, all of whom knoew that they were created by God as men, were not ashamed to be and be thought men, conducted themselves accordingly, and did not remain alone. Whoever is ashamed of marriage is also ashamed of being a man or being thoughts a man, or else he things that he can make himself better than God made him."
Chapter 10 One Day at a Time* It was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
* To the rude questions often asked single ladies one of my acquaintance answers that she is "single for a perfectly good reason that isn't public property."
* Many of His gifts may be given for only a part of a lifetime.
* The truth is that none of us knows the will of God for his life. I say for
his life - for the promise is "as thou goest step by step I will open up the way before thee." He gives us enough light for today, enough strength for one day at a time, enough manna, our "daily" bread. And the life of faith is a journey from Point A to Point B, from Point B to Point C, ...
* We have perspective that those miserable wanderers (Israelites) didn't have. But it should help us to trust their God. The stages of their journey, dull and eventless as most of them were, were each a necessary part of the movement toward the fulfillment of the promise.
* Single life may be only a stage of a life's journey, but even a stage is a gift. God may replace it with another gift, but the receiver accepts His gifts with thanksgiving.
This gift for
this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be
lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.
