Sunday morning I woke up feeling very pregnant and a bit under the weather. So I kissed my husband as he made his way to church and crawled back in bed with my Bible. I spent time enjoying the lack of to-do’s and time in precious prayer.
I let myself be calm just long enough for my attention span to need a babysitter again, so I turned on a A29 podcast for pastor’s wives and began some small housework tasks. These women were talking about the role of a wife and specifically the role of a pastor’s wife. The info wasn’t anything new or unique, it was actually quite practical. And yet my heart was stirred and grateful for these women. Women that I’ve never met. We had a common bond. They spoke about their “menial” tasks and roles as wife, mother, and wife of pastor with such grateful hearts. They truly see the value behind the smallest things they do to love and support. They see it as a great honor.
So often, I see the same roles as so unimportant and even at times do them begrudgingly with my eyes focus on some higher calling. My husband speaks value over my life every day. But Sunday morning I believed the Holy Spirit sweetly and simply convicted my heart to believe His value over me and the words of my husband.
So often our culture confuses role with worth. We value a person based on their certain role based by comparing them to our certain cultural standards (be it power, influence, authority, beauty, control..etc.). Who decided that role and worth are equivalent?
God reminded me that his standards for measuring the worth of His people is utterly different than our norm.
1 John 1:1-2
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now…”
I couldn’t help but go one step further, and, women, I pray you would too. As I had lightbulb moment, standing in my bedroom, arms full of dirty laundry I realized how deep, deep down this whole way we see worth seeps.
I’ll be honest, right now at 7 1/2 months pregnant, it is hard to not be a little freaked out by my own body. I’m watching the scales climb, my skin stretch, and my hips broaden. It can easily become the focus of pregnancy. I’ll be honest, with every “look how big your are” exclamation, I’ve let myself focus on this body’s function and not the valuable worth of what it’s doing. But maybe, this is how I’ve seen it all along.
Years of culture, personal insecurity, the pressures of perfection, body image, sex appeal, sports, calories, comparison, years of gymnastics….etc…etc… You probably know what I’m talking about! All these these have left me seeing my body as something to control. Something I can beat into submission. With no more value than how I can make it look and what I can get out of it.
Now, here it is doing the miraculous. Doing something so much more then looking and being and acting.
And I’m not making it happen. In fact, it’s completely out of my control. And it’s beautiful. And it’s valuable. And it’s miraculous. It’s creating life from love. How much more worth could something have? It’s a demonstration of the Gospel.
Christ took the most humble role to do a most valiant task. He gave us life from His love. He honored us by His grace with ever bit of worth we now have. He is so worthy of worship!
“See what kind of love the Father has given us…”
awhitestoneblog
So often, the menial tasks women perform create stability in their men’s lives. It is so important to foster stability and consistency and a solid foundation, and then go after power and higher goals, and then return to solidify that foundation again.
Even after twenty years of piano instruction, I still do my scales, because our automatic habits are much more powerful and define who we are than our infrequent actions.
Household chores and tending to the kids are part of respecting God, respecting our husbands, respecting our marriages, giving value to our motherhood, and THEN it’s about us.
You think its amazing how your body shapes as you and the baby are growing?! Just wait until its on the downside;). Of course your body will shift some, but it IS amazing how HE can build us to habor such a beautiful thing within us……and then shape us into a new form, a mother:). It gives the potter and clay analogy a whole different spin;).
Your blog post is delightful Kate! You are very beautiful.
Your words remind me of an Oswald Chambers devotional read a few weeks back…”Ministering as opportunity surrounds us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very selectly God’s in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we willl be like iin other surroundings. The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.” Oh, Lord! I really want to honor you with everything I do!
Love this post!!