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

Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie


* Who is it you marry?
* What is marriage?
* What makes marriage work?

Chapter 23 You Marry a Sinner

* Settle it once for all, your husband is a son of Adam. Acceptance of him - of all of him - includes acceptance of his being a sinner. He is a fallen creature, in need of the same kind of redemption all the rest of us are in need of, and liable to all the temptations which are "common to man."

* "Well, dear, we're none of us prize packages. Just look for the essentials and skip the rest!" The prize package we think we've found is likely to contain some surprises, not all of them welcome. What a lot of heartbreak would be avoided if we could concentrate on the essentials and skip the rest. How much more we could relax with one another and enjoy all there is to enjoy.

* "We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us."

* You will be less likely to turn into a nagging wife if you recall continually that it is not only your husband who leaves undone those things which (you think) he ought to do, and does things which (you think) he ought not to do, but that you, too, have erred and strayed like a lost sheep, sinning daily by omission and commission.
The consciousness that we are alike in our need of redemption is a liberating one. For there will be times when you find yourself accusing, criticizing, resenting. You begin, almost without realizing that you are doing it, to make a mental list of offenses, anticipating the day when some straw will break the camel's back and you can recite the whole list, sure to add at the end "and another thing ...!" But you will find yourself disarmed utterly, and your accusing spirit transformed into loving forgiveness the moment you remember that you did, in fact, marry only a sinner, and so did he. It's grace you both need.
'Tis grace hath brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.

* If it doesn't make you sorry to hurt somebody you love, what in the world would ever make you sorry? You do need forgiveness. You do need to forgive. And it is a wonderfully healing thing to confess your sin to the one you've sinned against and to ask for his forgiveness. At times when you are thinking to yourself that it's high time he asked for yours, remember that you are equal in your need of redemption. There's no keeping of score in love.

* Nor is love blind. If fact, the one who truly loves sees clearly the truth about the beloved which is hidden from other eyes. It is perhaps because the beloved makes the very sunshine brighter and the whole world sing that it is not always easy to remember that he is a sinner. But when love becomes an everyday fact that we live with we begin to discover imperfections to which we respond either lovingly or unlovingly.

* Appraisal (by Sara Teasdale)
Never thing she loves him wholly,
Never believe her love is blind,
All his faults are locked securely
In a closet of her mind;
All his indecisions folded
Like old flags that time has faded,
Limp and streaked with rain,
And his cautiousness like garments
Frayed and thin, with many a stain -
Let them be, oh let them be.
There is treasure to outweigh them,
His proud will that sharply stirred,
Climbs as surely as the tide.
Senses strained too taut to sleep,
Gentleness to beast and bird,
Humor flickering hushed and wide,
As the moon on moving water,
And a tenderness too deep
To be gathered in a word.

* So - you marry a sinner. And you love, accept, and forgive that sinner as you yourself expect to be loved, accepted, and forgiven. You know that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and this includes your husband who comes short, also, of some of the glories you expected to find in him. Come to terms with this once and for all and then walk beside him as "heirs together of the grace of life."

Chapter 24 You Marry a Man

* Strange how easy it seems to be for some women to expect their husbands to be women, to act like women, to do what is expected of women. Instead of that they are men, they act like men, they do what is expected of men and thus they do the unexpected. :-)

* It was marriage, or some vague idea of marriage, which provided the fringe benefits they were looking for - a home, children, security, social status. But somehow marriage has also insinuated into their cozy lives this unpredictable, unmanageable, unruly creature called a man. :-) He is likely to be bigger and louder and tougher and hungrier and dirtier than a woman expects ...

* Anything he does which seems to her inexplicable or indefensible she dismisses with "Just like a man!" as though this were a condemnation or at best an excuse instead of a very good reason for thanking God. It is a man she married, after all, and she is lucky if he acts like a man.

* It is probably not only a safer course but much wiser not to tell a man everything that is on your mind, not to press him with hard questions. Leave room for mystery.

* Well, women cry. Many of them don't do it often, of course, but it's a possibility a man should be ready for. Nothing is more baffling to a young husband than his wife's tears - usually at most unexpected moments and for seemingly wholly unexplainable reasons. His anxious questions get nowhere, and her attempts to explain only increase his anxiety. Men ought to be warned that this is likely to occur, and women ought to be warned that it's no use trying to explain. It's just one of the things that prove that men are men and women are women.

* For some reason women have no difficulty imagining a discussion on marriage. Men find it unimaginable.

* But I can't leave this part of the discussion without adding that men cry too. I am not drawing simple dichotomies here, as though all women and no men cry. I know men who weep much more readily than I do. Know your man. Know that there are things that make him different from you. His masculinity will help to explain some of them.

Chapter 25 You Marry a Husband

* For some (women) it is easy to transfer what they expected of fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers or girlfriends to their unfortunate husbands and this is a burden no man can bear.

* If you succumb to the temptation to expect your husband to fulfill all the roles of all the relationships you have had prior to marriage you will learn that this is asking too much. He needs his male friends, you need your female ones, even though your marriage and your home take top priority in your interest.

* All I'm suggesting is that you not be a bore. Some topics will interest your mother more than they will interest your husband. Remember he's a husband!

* Your father used to say that every woman needed three husbands: one to bring home the bacon, one to love her, and one to fix things around the house. :-) It is a lot to expect of one man, and a woman ought not to judge her husband solely on the basis of how good he is with ...

* I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal. Marriage entails sensuality - an appreciation of the body and the senses as distinguished from the intellect - but a woman must also have a certain maternal feeling toward her husband. Not that she babies him. Deep resentment is expressed sometimes by women who feel that their husbands want to be babied. But a wife must want to take care of her husband and to minister to him as gladly as a mother ministers to her child.

* The husband has a corresponding task. The word husband carries the connotation of conserving, caring for, managing, or protecting. A wife needs to allow herself to be cherished. Let him "husband" you.

Chapter 26 You Marry a Person

* As a person, he has a name. Nothing more infallibly reveals your attitude to another person than the name you call him by.

* All I ask is that a couple call each other something. That they show by the way they address each other, in public or in bed, that they recognize a personality.

* One of the most joyful discoveries of life is that in recognizing, affirming, and comforting another person we find ourselves recognized, affirmed, and comforted. It is a dead-end street to set out to know yourself or to "find" yourself or to define "who am I?"

* "It is plain that no man can arrive at the true knowledge of himself without first having contemplated the divine character." - John Calvin, Institutes

* And it is in relation to other people that we ourselves become full persons. "No man is an island." We are called to fellowship with God and we are called to fellowship with each other. Marriage is the most intimate and continuous relationship into which two people may enter, and as such provides the most uninterrupted opportunity for fulfillment of the personality.

* The measure of self-giving is the measure of fulfillment.

* Your husband is known fully only to God, and stands in a sense alone before Him. God said to Abraham, "Walk before Me and be thou perfect." He did not suggest that Abraham could walk before Sarah and be perfect. :-) Ultimately he is God's man. He is free, and you must always reverence this freedom. There are questions you have no right to ask, matters into which you must not probe, and secrets you must be content never to know.
"Hasn't the wife a right to know all?"
No. She cannot take or even ask for what is not given, and there are things a man cannot and ought not to give. The deeps call only to God.

Chapter 27 Forsaking All Others

* Marriage is a choice of one above all others. Each partner promises to forsake all others, and the Bible says that man will leave his father and mother and "cleave" to his wife. Any choice we ever make in life instantly limits us.

* When you decide to marry this particular sinner you have committed yourself to putting up with his particular sins even though you don't have a very clear idea of what they will be. You will begin at once to find them out, and as you do, remind yourself that you married this sinner. You can always look at other sinners and thank God you don't have to live with their varieties of failure, but then what kind of sins would you choose if you could choose which ones to live with? It's a good thing you are not asked. You love this man who happens to be this kind of sinner and you do your best to accept, to forgive, to overlook, to forbear, and, perhaps, in the mercy of God, to help him to overcome.

* "Marry somebody to whom you are willing to adjust." - Mrs. Billy Graham

* If you are a very generous wife, you may perhaps allow that your husband lives up to 80 percent of your expectations. The other 20 percent you may want to change. You may, if you choose, pick away at that 20 perfect for the rest of your married life and you probably will not reduce it by very much. Or you may choose to skip that and simply enjoy the 80 percent that is what you hoped for.

* But life settles down to humdrum.

* ... you married this person. Whatever the inner qualities were that enabled him to do the things he did then are still a part of this person that you go to bed with and eat breakfast with and wrestle over the monthly budget with. He is a person with the same potentials he had when you married him. Your responsibility now is not merely to bat your eyelashes and tell him how wonderful he is (but breathes there a man with soul so dead as not to be cheered by a little of that?) but to appreciate, genuinely and deeply, what he is, to support and encourage and draw out of him those qualities that you originally saw and admired.

* But, I said, "There's one thing I can give you that no woman on earth can outdo me in and that's appreciation." The perspective of widowhood has taught me that.

* "Snoring is the sweetest music in the world. Ask any widow."

* What could be a greater help to a wife than to see her husband as God sees him? God has created him, formed him, redeemed him, he is His. God is bringing him to perfection and is not by any means through with him yet. We are all unfinished, a long way from what we ought to be, but if we can look at ourselves and one another from God's point of view we will know where we ought to be going and in which direction our relationship should move.

* "I've learned that Marcie can give me things Sue could never have given. Sue gave me things Marcie can't give. So I've learned appreciation - for both of them. I appreciate Marcie for exactly what she is, in a way I hadn't the capacity to appreciate Sue."
... It's natural, and the comparison between Marcie and Sue was made not to disparage either, but to appreciate each fully for what she was.

* To the Christian who has prayed for years to be led to the right partner and who believes that the one he marries is indeed God's choice for him, it is reasonable to conclude that the personality given is the one that best complements his own, the one that meets his needs in ways he could not himself have foreseen or chosen. It is the very differences themselves that open our eyes to what we are and, if we pray for the spiritual insight and understanding that Paul prayed for, we see them as God sees them and appreciate the glorious imagination of the Creator who made them.