Let Me Be a Woman (By Elisabeth Elliot) - Part III

Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie

Chapter 16 A Paradoxical Principle

* "If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in" (or, instead of "streets to dwell in" another translation says "paths leading home").
Here, I think, lies the answer to the barrenness of a single life, or of a life that might otherwise be selfish or lonely. It is the answer, I have found, to depression as well. You yourself will be given light in exchange for pouring yourself out for the hungry; you yourself will get guidance, the satisfaction of your longings, and strength, when you "pour yourself out," when you make the satisfaction of somebody else's desire your own concern; you yourself will be a source of refreshment, a builder, a leader into healing and rest at a time when things around you seem to have crumbled.

* St. Ignatius of Loyola prayed, "Teach us, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will. Through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Chapter 17 Masculine and Feminine

* God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate and rule, and the female to respond, follow, adapt, submit. Even if we held to a different theory of origin the physical structure of the female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon, to complement, to nourish.

* Masculinity and femininity defined by Kathy Kristy - "Creation has as one of its fundamental themes the pattern of rule and submission. Power and passivity, ebb and flow, generativity and receptivity are abut a few of the ways that these paired polarities have been described. The Chinese called them yin and yang and made the symbol of their religion a graphic representation of their interaction. Even the physical realm is founded on and held together by the positive and negative attraction of atomic particles. Everywhere the universe displays its division into pairs of interlocking opposites ...
"We know that this order of rule and submission is descended from the nature of God Himself. Within the Godhead there is both the just and legitimate authority of the Father and the willing and joyful submission of the Son. From the union of the Father and the Son proceeds a third personality, the Holy Spirit. He proceeds from them not as a child proceeds from the union of a man and a woman, but rather as the personality of a marriage proceeds from the one flesh which is established from the union of two separate personalities.
"Here, in the reflection of the nature of the Trinity in the institution of marriage is the key to the definition of masculinity and femininity. The image of God could not be fully reflected without the elements of rule, submission, and union."

* Motherhood requires self-giving, sacrifice, suffering. It is going down into death in order to give life, a great human analogy of a great spiritual principle (Paul wrote, "Death worketh in us but life in you"). Womanhood is a call. It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful or barren, may participate - the unconditional response exemplified for all time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and to care for others. The strength to answer this call is given us as we look up toward the Love that created us, remembering that it was that Love that first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning real men and real women. As we conform to that Love's demands we shall become more humble, more dependent - on Him and on one another - and even (dare I say it?) more splendid.

Chapter 18 The Soul Is Feminine

* Psalm 144:12 says, "May our daughters be like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace." Pillars uphold and support. This is a woman's place, and all of us need to know what our place is and to be put in it. The command of God puts us there where we belong. We know our "creatureliness," our dependence. ... Meekness, I believe, is the recognition of that place. ... To be meek is to have a sane and proper estimate of one's place in the scheme of things. It is a sense of proportion.

* "Be it unto me" ought to be the response of every man or woman to that will, and it is in this sense that the soul and the Church have been seen throughout Christian history as female before God for it is the nature of the woman to submit.

Chapter 19 Is Submission Stifling?

* I have been called to be a missionary and to write, but surely there is nothing incompatible with such tasks and acknowledgment of the fundamental fact that woman was made for man. That wasn't my idea, after all - I got it all out of the Book!

* God's service is, as our Prayer Book says, "perfect freedom."

* The lady's idea that mothers do not need a college education floors me. What, she asks, is your college educating women for? Surely it is to draw out (the root meaning of the word educate) the gifts God has given, whatever they may be. Surely I did not send you to college on the assumption that you would not marry. A Christian liberal education will make you a better wife and mother. I'm convinced, if that is God's will for you. If you were called to be a tax collector or a philosopher I should likewise want you to have that kind of education.

Chapter 20 Twenty Questions

1) Is this the man you want to spend the rest of your life with? That's every day of every week of every month of every year from now till one of you dies.
2) Is he:
- punctual or habitually late?
- orderly or disorderly?
- a reader or a TV watcher?
- an outdoor man or an indoor man?
3) Does he:
- like your family?
- treat you as you think a woman ought to be treated?
- have men friends?
- have approximately the same education you have?
- like the kind of food you like to cook?
- come from a home similar to your?
- like your friends?
- like to entertain, and would you be proud to have him as host at the other end of the table?
- laugh at the same jokes you do?
4) Can you agree on:
- sex?
- in-laws?
- children and their training?
- money?
- your respective roles in the family?

* Let me assure you that I've known happy couples of which one is an indoor person and the other an outdoor one, or one punctual and the other late, but it requires particular grace, and it's just as well to consider in advance whether or not you think it's going to be worth it. Later, when you're up against it, remind yourself that it's worth it!

* Agreement in the matters of 4) can only be in principle until you've had the chance to work on them as husband and wife. ... Deep, underlying principles will determine your handling of these things, and you must thoroughly agree on these before you agree to marry a man.

* It is mutual commitment to a common belief that is the only solid base for lasting communion, in marriage or in any other fellowship. Anything less will not stand the test of living.