Don't give yourself grace (let God do it)
Examining bad teachings about Christian motherhood, women's ministries, and the inexplicable confusion over Biblical gender roles
Image: Pixabay
“It’s important to give yourself grace and realize that your house is not going to be perfect. Take care of yourself, enjoy the moment, and don’t worry about those unwashed dishes. You are enough, Mama.”
These words, often echoed throughout women’s ministries in churches across America, have been uttered so many times by so many different people, that until the last year or so, I admit that I was almost numb to the idea that giving myself grace was perhaps the most defined message I’d ever gleaned from a mother-centered church ministry.
When I became a mom, I experienced one of two things:
First, people gave me advice. Unlike TikTok mothers and Instagram influencers, I was not remotely offended by unsolicited advice from veteran parents or elderly matriarchs. I appreciated it because I was absolutely terrified at the prospect of taking care of a baby by myself. I thought it was nice that people took enough of an interest in my life to drop a helpful hint.
Second, I was told repeatedly via Instagram influencers, women’s Bible studies, and by my maternal peers that perfection was not something to strive for. Rather, authenticity, vulnerability, and grace were the key underlying tenants of motherhood that I should strive to achieve. “Be authentic,” I heard. Or perhaps more comically, “Bless this mess, because now that you’re a mom, nothing will ever be clean again.”
I struggled to balance the demands of motherhood with the concessions that women’s ministries appeared to be giving me. This presented a conundrum for me, because I have always considered myself to be a professional person. In every aspect of my life, I strive to be responsive, efficient, and effective.
However, when I would attend a mother’s Bible study, for example, I would be given a surprising olive branch:
Relax. Unwind. Accept the crazy chaos. Don’t try to be a perfect mom. Your husband would/should love you no matter what your house looks like. Motherhood is hard, so don’t be afraid to give yourself some grace because YOU, Mama, are ENOUGH.
The inherent message of cutting yourself some slack is not bad – in fact, for a girl like me, I often need to be told to sit down and chill out, because I tend to overdo things. Yet, I have noticed a chilling and disturbing side effect of watering down the Gospel message for women’s ministries to a few simple lines: Give yourself some grace.
For roughly three years, I found myself inexplicably irritated and frustrated by women’s ministries – whether the ministry was mom-centered or simply woman-oriented, I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt restless and bored attending these types of events.
And then, I realized.
I wasn’t being challenged. I wasn’t be really being taught. I wasn’t being equipped.
I was broadly being told to give myself enough self-care and grace to leave those dirty dishes in the sink.
While this is not an explicitly toxic message in and of itself – it becomes toxic when that is the only message you tend to hear as a mother or as a woman. In fact, I am going to make the argument here today that women – particularly mothers – are more depressed and unfulfilled in the church than they have ever been in the history of Christendom because of the caricature of Biblical womanhood that is presented in most church ministries in the U.S.
As women, we are not being equipped to fulfill the Biblical role that God intended for us to have as helpers, not hindrances.
Permission to loaf
The issue with most women’s ministries is that they don’t challenge women to rise to a standard of excellence. Rather, they tend, instead, to function as glorified group therapy sessions, where women blithely sip coffee and tell each other that it’s okay to ignore the laundry sitting on the floor.
It’s not okay! It happens, yes. But it’s not okay.
I struggle with getting laundry done – I get it. If you know me well, you know that I positively HATE doing laundry, but please: don’t enable my problem. Don’t lie to me and tell me that it’s fine that I haven’t gotten the laundry done, and that my poor husband has no clean socks on Monday morning as he’s running out the door to go to work.
Challenge me to rise to a standard of excellence. Challenge me to keep my home neat and clean and functional.
Perfect? No. But excellent? Yes.
This is going to rub people the wrong way, and I’m fine with that. Frankly, I expect women to be offended when they read this. Heck, it offends me, because it forces me to confront my own deficiencies as a mother and a wife. But I should never, ever be made to feel that complacency is an option.
Don’t take my word for it, though. The Bible has plenty to say about what a godly wife should look like, and because the Word of God is unilaterally authoritative, we can and must take it as the objective standard of wifely behavior.
Proverbs 31 describes an excellent wife as one whose husband trusts her. She “works with willing hands” and she “rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household.”
She considers a field and buys it;
with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
She dresses herself with strength
and makes her arms strong.
She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor
and reaches out her hands to the needy. (Proverbs 31:16-20)
I’m not going to mince words here. There is nothing in the Bible about women needing permission to give themselves grace so they can ignore the household chores – or whatever it is they think they want to do instead.
Sound harsh? Again, don’t take my word for it. The Bible doesn’t preach the message of giving yourself grace at all. In fact, the very phrase itself is extra-Biblical. The Bible speaks of grace in the context of the grace that has been extended to us from God.
We receive salvation through sola gratia, or grace alone. Graciousness is an attribute of God, as a matter of fact (2. Corinthians 9:8, 2 Tim. 1:9, Titus 2:11-1).
The term “give yourself some grace” is secular. It refers to self-forgiveness and self-compassion, which is a very unbiblical idea. That is not to say that we should be OCD-obsessed perfectionists who engage in open self-deprecation or self-hatred. Not by any means. But the problem with the idea that we can give ourselves grace in the context of a church ministry flies in the face of the freely given grace of God, which allows us to have eternal salvation.
Notice how secular grace and godly grace are in direct conflict with each other. Secular grace demands that we love ourselves more, while godly grace demands that we love our Creator more.
One of these paths leads to depression, and the other one leads to freedom.
Christian church culture is cultivating softcore feminist marshmallows
Genesis 2 tells us, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”
Everything integral to the purpose of womanhood is contained in this single verse. Like it or hate it, women were created to help. We were created to work alongside our male counterparts, and anytime you water down that role, you will have confusion and destruction.
And, although this will be an unpopular thing to say, helping our husbands is about more than staying home and playing patty-cake with the baby. It’s also about more than washing dishes and doing laundry.
Those tasks seem mundane, sure. Cooking doesn’t seem like a great pastime to some. I get it. Most of us find it an Olympic marathon to keep the house swept, or perhaps we feel that it’s too overwhelming to invite someone over for coffee because we don’t want to go the extra mile to clean the house!
But, taken as a whole, a woman should strive for excellence in all that she does, just as her husband should, also. Whether you are a woman who works outside the home or stays home with the kids, you are called to run a race with endurance.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
This means no excuses, and trust me, having been involved in women’s ministries for the past ten or so years, I’ve heard them all:
“I know I should keep my house clean, but I’m just not good at it. I’ve accepted it.”
“I stay home with the baby all day. How can anyone expect me to cook dinner and do the laundry, too? I need some me time. I deserve it.”
“Mama, you are enough. Don’t pressure yourself to do too much.”
We are all human, and we all struggle with our own deficiencies in our unique areas. But we cannot dupe ourselves into believing that our shortcomings are something to be celebrated or elevated. I personally see that this trend has severely damaged the emotional well-being of many women today.
It seems to me that authenticity and vulnerability have eclipsed the importance of character, maturity, and self-discipline.
Why are we promoting this holistic, New Age idea that my comfort and security is more important than the people around us? Why are we encouraging women to create a safe space around their emotional aura?
Put on your big-girl pants and respond to that text message. Return the email. Answer the phone. Wash the dishes. Be a grown-up and show up on time.
Are you tired? Take a moment, brew some coffee, and keep fighting.
No more excuses. No more justifying listless, idle behavior.
Proverbs 31:27 reminds us that an excellent wife “watches over the affairs of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.”
Why are we promoting, as a Christian culture, the emotional dumbing down of our women? Women should be warriors. Lionesses. Organizers. Conquerors. Thrifty. Wise. We should be fighters. We should be gentle in our correction but steadfastly firm and resolute in our stances on morality.
I feel, personally, that I have been a duped in the past by the milquetoast, mushy, feel-good shadow gospel of women’s ministries in the U.S.
I am not enough.
It is not okay to justify my slovenly housekeeping skills for the sake of self-compassion.
It is not okay for me to accept anything less than my complete dedication to shoot for excellence in all that I do. I am called by God to give it everything I’ve got, and if anyone is telling me otherwise, they are deluding both themselves and me.
I cannot, and I will not, entertain that notion any longer.
I look around me and I see a generation of women who are desperately clinging to the vapid self-help pep talks of Christian leaders and hoping that it will inspire them to clean their toilets on Saturday morning.
It’s not going to work. The Bible alone provides the blueprint for effective and fulfilling feminine behavior – and there is nothing misogynistic about it. Wives are called to work side-by-side with their husbands in harmony and complementarianism.
Sadly, one of the reasons why women are so unhappy today is because they believe several lies about their modern roles as the female in their households, and because many jobs once completed solely by women have been taken away from them.
A cultural devolution
In Rebekah Merkle’s excellent book, “Eve in Exile,” she points out that women, historically, have become less and less happy as society has become increasingly urbanized.
She writes:
Too often we just accept the premise that a homemaker drives carpool, gets the casserole in the oven, and organizes the closets. Once those things are done, we feel like we have ticked all the boxes and now our time is our own. It’s all too easy for us to work in order that we may have leisure, rather than working because we’re convinced that we’re building something phenomenal—and that mindset makes absolutely all the difference in the world. It is the difference between the employee and the boss, the hired help and the entrepreneur, the servant and the free man.
Many of the traditional roles that a woman would have historically filled have been taken from her. We are separated from our food sources, our children are ferried away to school all day (for most of us), and we have every convenience and modern comfort at our fingertips. Gone are the days of women gleaning fields (a la’ Ruth).
Merkle further writes this:
Say that you were a woman living on a farm at the turn of the last century. You have a lot of kids and not a lot of money. Winter’s coming, and you’ve got to feed them all the way through it. When do you start planning? The split minute you get through the last winter, that’s when. You pull out the seeds you saved from last year’s crop, you start your seeds, you plant your garden (and no, you can’t rent a rototiller, so you probably have to fuss around with a hoe or a horse and plow or something). And don’t forget that if that garden is going to feed the family it’s going to have to be a rather massive—cute container gardening or interesting Pinterest-worthy novelty gardens would not cut it. You tend it all summer, and you harvest. You can, you dry, you preserve. You fill your root cellar and hopefully by midway through autumn you can stand back and survey the fruit of all that labor, grateful that it all came together and secure in the knowledge that you have supplied your family with what they need. Now compare that feeling with grabbing a can of beans at the store and feeling happy that you remembered to do that so there’s some green on your kids’ plates tonight. It’s much easier, yes . . . but not quite the same in terms of satisfaction in a job well done.
A woman tending her home is a monumental task, when done properly. You can either embrace it or run away from it. “God wants women to tend the home—tending the home must therefore be a hugely meaningful task,” Merkle states. She also writes, “I am arguing that a sloppy, lazy, underachieving attitude is not glorifying to God and is not a joyful or fulfilling approach to life.”
Laziness, avoidance, complacency, and an overindulgence of self-compassion leads to depression, restlessness, marital discord, and, ultimately, long-term destruction. When women ignore the higher calling God has given them to run their house with pride and excellence (I love that word, I use it a lot!), they are first depriving their families of a fulfilling home life and second, they are depriving themselves of God-ordained purpose in their lives.
If you are going to be a stay-at-home mom, do so with excellence. Be the best that you can be. Don’t give yourself grace – give yourself a challenge. Strive to meet it every day. You might fall short. That’s okay. But keep trying.
If you are going to be a working mom, do so with compassion and excellence. Balance your time wisely. Take time to tend to the needs of your husband and kids. You will need to prioritize your time differently than the stay-at-home mom, and that’s okay – but do so with diligence, maturity, and spiritually-sought wisdom.
I wish I could tell you how many women I have met or spoken with over the course of my life who have cried frustrated tears because they are hopelessly depressed staying home with their kids. My question is, why? I’m not speaking about postpartum depression here, although that can be a factor in some cases.
The reality is that if women are not fulfilled in their roles as wives and mothers, then something is missing – and that something is likely objective Scriptural truth and focus. Clearly, women’s ministries are generally not equipping women to challenge themselves. In fact, women’s ministries tend to propagate self-love and confusion. You can have all the craft days, coffee bars, boutiques, and Bible studies in the world, but if you don’t challenge your women to be tough and to have purpose, you have will have unprecedented depression, unfettered immaturity, and an entire generation of women who believe that they are adults, but really, they are functioning as catastrophically emotionally stunted teenagers.
Why? Because they’re essentially being taught to follow their own emotions and feelings, and to protect their own needs before they can tend to the rest of their family’s needs.
I’m sorry, but that’s a bad message to send to our women.
Merkle puts it beautifully when she writes, “…Women were created by God to run. To charge at things. To work like crazy.”
They weren’t created to do anything less.
Love, respect, and marriage
There is an argument to be made that much of the confusion around the role of a Biblical woman is centered on the fact that, as an older and wiser generation begins to pass away, a younger and more secularized generation is beginning to assume control over church leadership positions in the U.S.
It goes without saying that education – particularly college education – can have a progressive effect on women who are coming into ministry work. Whether they’re volunteering or paid staff, progressivism is infecting every area of our churches, and women’s ministries have perhaps been on the front lines of the culture war. Seriously, the moral casualties in this skirmish have been shocking.
Keep in mind that “give yourself some grace,” is a secular and highly New Age term, with absolutely no basis in Scriptural teaching.
Where does it come from? A lot of it comes from education. Christians “leaders” and “speakers” propagate this idea endlessly, as well. Whether women are getting hooked on using the Satanic enneagram (read this to understand the ancient, occult roots of this seemingly harmless practice) or devouring very, very bad theological takes in books like “Girl, Wash Your Face,” by Rachel Hollis, there is no end to the morally confusing cannonballs being aimed at today’s women.
Women like me have been in the trenches, trying to dig ourselves out of the emotional squalor, and quite frankly, we’ve been left high and dry when it comes to being equipped on how to be bold, Biblical wives and moms.
The struggle is very real
In a survey I conducted of mothers in November 2022, I found it very interesting that most women who participated in the poll felt that keeping their house ordered and clean was, generally speaking, an uphill battle. I think any woman can identify with this! Whether the women responding were stay-at-home moms or career moms, the most common answer was that it was too “overwhelming” to stay on top of keeping the house clean.
When asked what they believed the role of a housewife should be, one respondent answered the question with a very insightful tidbit of wisdom: “…I believe it is my duty and privilege to make my house a lovely and comforting place for my family to live. That goes beyond just keeping it clean and ordered; I strive to be a pleasant influence over the atmosphere of the house, and train my children to live peaceably with each other and their parents.”
Across all respondents, the women surveyed were in 100 percent agreement that the primary job of a wife and mother was to focus more heavily on loving their family, caring for the needs of the husband, and stewarding what they had been given at home.
Only 2/3 of respondents indicated, interestingly, that hosting friends and family at their home was something they enjoyed doing.
Even more interestingly, when asked what the most overwhelming aspect of modern motherhood was for those surveyed, respondents almost unilaterally indicated that it was the demands that society placed on moms to both have a successful career and work life while focusing 100 percent on their child’s well-being and running the perfect household.
How can women do this when they are pulled in so many different directions?
First of all, the directional confusion is coming from a society that has happily pulled women out of their homes and away from their children since the onset of compulsory education in the U.S.
Things have gone downhill from there.
The focus, unfortunately, has shifted from what happens within the home to simply keeping the home functional. There are many reasons for this. Some of them include:
· Rising prices/inflation. It is nearly impossible to survive in modern America on a single income. Average citizens do not have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mother in the current economic landscape. This forces many women out of the home against their will.
· Women are suffering from a lack of Biblical focus. Remember, the point of this article is to really encourage women strive for excellence in all we do. Perfection will not happen until we go to heaven to be with Jesus. A Biblical, fulfilled wife is centered on the things that matter. A wife can triage the needs of her family – that means having the maturity to know when it is appropriate to clean the house and when it is not. And so on, and so forth! Without the Bible as the primary foundation of your life, it is so easy to get swept up in extra-Biblical ideas of self-help and proclamation that will leave you confused and unfulfilled.
· Women are not receiving the support they need. In my opinion, church does not provide the right kind of support for moms. Like I said, bake sales and coffee bars are fun, but they don’t equip moms with solutions to the real, everyday problems they face. We need more solutions and less emotional diatribes. There is too much focus on “fun,” and not enough focus on “fight.” You can still have the casual hangouts and the cookie-making Christmas parties, sure. But don’t forget about the meat and the potatoes. A diet of dessert alone will leave you sick to your stomach and, ultimately, undernourished.
Women are leading and men are following
One final aspect to consider here is the absence of men’s strong leadership in the church. If you think about it, women are probably much more involved in church ministries than men – from Sunday school to Bible studies, women are often the ones who are organizing, beautifying, teaching, holding babies, and sending out invitations. This is all very good – women, after all, are helpmates to men, as we discussed (Genesis 2).
However, I’ve mentioned before that Kyle Thompson from the “Undaunted Life Podcast” has astutely made the point that men have largely exited the church scene because women have overwhelmingly feminized everything about the entire church experience.
I previously wrote this about Thompson’s observation, too:
“Everything, from the feminized ministry blueprints right down to the sensual, breathy whispering of Hillsong worship music, is distinctly feminine and touchy-feely.”
I am often curious where the men are when it comes to women’s ministries. I’m not saying that men need to be setting doilies on tables for women’s breakfast events, but I wonder: are men asserting their God-given authority and ensuring that the content that women are learning in their Bible studies are Biblical and practically applicable?
In fact, when I think about who the pillars of theological knowledge are in my own church, I think of women. I don’t think of men at all – and that’s not because there aren’t wise men in my church. I’m sure there are. But I certainly have observed that the women seem to be far more vocal about theology/apologetics and so forth.
And unfortunately, because many men feel that the realm of church ministries is a women’s schtick, men tend to bow out of that arena. Sadly, this is another miscommunication of gender roles in the church.
Here’s a verse hinting at the correct order of church worship from 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36:
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
For a lot of women today, this entire idea sounds straight-up sexist (I abhorred this passage for many years and avoided it like the plague), but Scripture here is talking about the proper order of things. Women should not be asserting themselves over men in the context of Biblical teaching or projecting their emotions onto the church body. Harsh, but true. As a woman, godly submission is a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s part of the price we pay for sin. Genesis 3:16 makes it clear that women will have to suffer with two very difficult burdens because of what Adam and Eve did in the garden:
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
Indeed, the struggle between the genders is a result of sin, and nothing else. It is therefore integral that, within the context of our fallen, sinful environment, we follow the structure carefully laid out for us in Scripture.
Now, older women are explicitly instructed to teach the younger women in Scripture, which is where the entire concept of women’s ministries springs from:
“Older women are to teach the young women to love their husbands and children. They are to teach them to think before they act, to be pure, to be workers at home, to be kind, and to obey their own husbands. In this way, the Word of God is honored.” (Titus 2:4-6)
This is bold, simple, and effective advice. This gives us a simple blueprint. Older women, who are in submission (or should be) to their husbands and, hopefully, to strong and wise male elders in the church, should maturely oversee the teaching of the younger generation of ladies. This is the pecking order, plain and simple. The men should be overseeing the content of women’s ministries.
“…They are to teach them to think before they act, to be pure, to be workers at home, to be kind, and to obey their own husbands.”
This simple handful of verses debunks a whole lotta bad theology. Check it out:
· Lie: Always be authentic and vulnerable. While there’s nothing wrong with being honest or sharing your life experiences with friends, Titus says to “think before” you act. Don’t let your emotions be your guide. Don’t follow your heart, because it’s deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). Don’t give yourself grace – let God handle that job.
· Lie: I have to protect myself, value myself, and show myself self-compassion. There is a huge difference between basic, practical self-care/self-respect and self-indulgence. Don’t fall into this trap. We are commanded to be workers at home, and God’s standards are high. He created us; therefore, He gets to set them. If our husbands are frustrated with us because we’re not keeping the house clean or because we’re not willing to cook dinner, we need to reevaluate our priorities based on our own personal situations. Lifestyles will vary depending on if you and your husband are both working outside the home, for example. But you must respect the needs of your husband. To shirk this duty is to invite catastrophe. Listen to what he has to say and be receptive to it. Work out an arrangement that facilitates efficiency for both of you. We live in a culture that is horribly toxic to our beloved menfolk – let’s not go down that road, too.
· Lie: My husband needs to be more emotionally receptive to my needs. This is another bitter pill to swallow, but in the realm of the Biblical model of marriage, we need to give our husbands respect first and then love. Men are hungry for our respect, and they will not give us what we need if we don’t submit to them as God has commanded us. That means respecting him as a man, even if we don’t feel like doing it. Bad theology in the church has ridden shotgun alongside the driver’s seat of modern-day feminism, elevating the emotions and feelings and authentic self-love movement over a woman’s actual commanded role in marriage. This has wreaked havoc on us ladies for too many years. I’ve fallen prey to it, too. But we must go to the Bible first on these issues, or we will be hopelessly lost. Women have an essential role in maintaining peace and order in their homes. We must rise to the occasion and work wholeheartedly, with a selfless kind of love, toward balancing the home environment with love, submission, and respect.
As women, we have fallen prey to a lot of bad stuff, theologically speaking. But the issue is two-fold. As our society and even modern, progressive Christianity emasculates our men, women predictably begin to assert themselves in areas where they shouldn’t.
This only adds to the confusion among Christian women today.
We want to be led. If our men are going to do that, we’ve got to get out of our own way.
I am woman, hear me roar
Women.
We are strong, we are resilient, and we were created by God to help men maintain dominion over the Earth. 1 Timothy 2:9-15 describes more attributes of a godly women, which includes quietness, submission, decency, propriety, faith, love, and holiness.
In an unflinching “ouch” moment, Scripture points out that a woman (likely because of our predisposition to be more emotional than men) was the one who was deceived in the Garden of Eden (thanks a lot, Eve).
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” (Titus 2:13-15)
Here, the Bible again reasserts the proper order of things. Man was made first, Woman was made second. A woman sinned first. A woman was deceived first. A woman led the human race into its fallen state.
And yet, it was through a virgin named Mary that Jesus Christ entered the world, triumphantly fulfilling prophecy and conquering that horrible sin once and for all (Isaiah 7:14).
A woman brought sin into the world, and a woman gave birth to the one who would expunge sin forever.
Despite the sin of the woman, God has been gracious enough to grant us salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ. It is only fair that we submit to Biblical teaching. That we stop deluding ourselves with empty promises of self-love and instead love the one who made us. It is time we stop intermingling the secular teachings of the world with our Bible studies and women’s ministries. The two cannot be reconciled with each other.
“No one can serve two masters,” the Bible says. “Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matt. 6:24a)
It’s time to stop engaging in Bible studies where we sit in a circle and ask each other how we “feel” about a Bible verse and start looking at what the verse actually means.
We’re spinning our wheels, friends. We’re confused. We’re stagnant. And it’s time for change.
The revolution of trekking toward restored Biblical femininity and wisdom begins with YOU. In the home, with your husband, with your children, and most importantly – in your relationship with the Lord.
Read your Bible. Stay in prayer. Remain vigilant. Speak truth. Work hard. Cast off idleness. Strive ever onward, reaching toward excellence, with your eyes fixed firmly on what is right and what is true.
25 Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
26 She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
27 She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
31 Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.
(Proverbs 31)
Resources:
Eve in Exile (film version)
Eve in Exile, by Rebekah Merkle (Book)
A discussion about masculinity and femininity with Kyle Thompson on the Alisa Childers podcast.
Some facts about the enneagram, from The Gospel Coalition (I don’t always agree with TGC, but this is a good, cursory overview of the really nasty roots of the enneagram).
This was exactly what I have been needing to read. Thank you for sharing it!