The Accidental Pastor's Wife

I just read this goofball's article on www.foxnews.com. The guy reasons that because monogamy doesn't exist in the animal kingdom, then it's ridiculous to expect it among humans. Of course, the basic assumption he's making is that we're no different from animals. I suppose he's at least being consistent. The article was kind of gross and inappropriate so I won't link it here. Yuck.

But the other day as I was in the cardio room, there was a movie on that someone else was watching. I am by no means endorsing the movie; I just wanted to note something in it.

The movie was Anger Management with Adam Sandler. I suppose the story is that he has such a bad temper that the girl he loves won't commit to him and he's in therapy for it, and yada yada yada. Anyway, I saw the very end and here's what happened (spoiler warning-since I'm sure every last one of you is dying to see this movie).

Adam's character is at a Yankees game. His girl is in the stands. He somehow manages to get a hold of a microphone down on the field and the cameras of the stadium are on him. He then tells his girl how he's done getting mad, he's a changed man, and that all he wants is to get married and have a family with her. She gets all teary, he runs up the steep steps to her seat, then hug and kiss all on the big screens and everyone's happily ever after, the crowd's cheering.

If people really don't have an innate sense within them to be with one person for the rest of their lives, tell me why the happy ending to this movie was just that.

Just another example of how we AREN'T just animals, but are created in the image of God.

Yada yada yada about hyperlinking on this Macbook! Here is such a wonderful post by Lisa Writes I just had to share it today:

http://lisa-writes.blogspot.com/2008/01/big-and-little-revisited.html

She articulates so much of what I feel about being a cookie baking, stay at home mother, especially when I was raised in a "have it all" culture.

Thanks for more words of wisdom, Lisa!

I got a great question in a comment today about feminism. Michelle asked me what I thought about it all, mentioning that she thinks Jesus was a feminist because of how well he treated women. A great point! Here's my take:

The modern feminist wants more than equal pay for equal work. She believes passionately about the right to choose an abortion and about the victimization of women in our patriarchal society. She typically believes that women should behave more like men. There is, in effect, a denial of femininity. Think about it: a woman must work outside the home, have no children or very few children, be aggressive in her pursuit of worldly success, serve in the military, on the police force, etc. I think the worldview is best summed by Hillary Rodham Clinton in an old Nightline interview with Ted Koppel back in 1992:

"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life."

Her comment implies that she would have been less of a person if she'd stayed home and raised her daughter. This is the feminism I fight against in my own mind daily. And this is the feminism that is espoused by a respected public figure. This is the feminism vomited all over our girls in our culture.

Let me say that I am not an uber-conservative (as one of my PW friends has put it) and I don't believe that women should not be educated or cannot enter the workforce at all. If a woman is physically capable of performing as a fire fighter, and her husband and children are not neglected because of her job, then more power to her. I don't think my little girls need to wear long flowery dresses to be modest and feminine. And while I will train my daughter to keep the home, I will also see that she gets an education to provide for herself should the need arise someday.

Femininity celebrates that God has created us male and female. It delights in how the sexes complement one another, realizing that they have different roles but equal standing before God. It embraces feminine traits and desires like having children and doesn't seek to turn women into men, which I think is the most degrading aspect of feminism.

In a sense, femininity started with Jesus recognizing the value of women in a culture that routinely denied them any rights or privileges whatsoever. And God, through the apostle Paul, tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, a radical statement in the first century when women were basically treated like property.

That's my beef with feminism. Thoughts??

I grew up in the public schools with a working mom and I was fed the line: "Don't be the nurse, be the doctor!" You know that feminism is something I really, really struggle with. But I also struggle with how some parts of evangelicalism have swung the opposite direction, in glorifying feminity by way of long, pretty dresses, not sending girls to college, only training them to be homemakers.

I guess I lean toward some of the feminist ideals I grew up with, but I know that most of those are unbiblical. On the other hand, I don't particularly like some of the alternatives set before me.

I want to start changing the way I think of being a mother and home educator. If I could start to view it as my profession, maybe I would take more joy in it. Maybe that would develop into a sense of calling on my life.

Best go get ready for church and stuff all this stuff down into my heart and put on my smiley face. :)

Boy, sometimes I feel like I swing on this pendulum between basking in my role as wife and homemaker and homeschooling mother and loathing it.

Tonight, well, all of today, actually, was a loathing day. No one "set me off". Hubby didn't get on my nerves...I just had that little feminazi demon whispering in my ear again:

"Is this what you went to college for?"
"Nobody cares that you're picking up and mopping the floor again."
"Almost 30 years old and this is all you have to show for your life?"

AHHHHH!!!!!! And when I get like this then little things make me so mad, like dog food stuck in the floor grates, strawberry stains on the floor, laundry piled in a basket higher than my head when I carry it upstairs, pee on the floor around the toilet (I live with three boys, remember)...

I KNOW my ministry is to my family right now. I know these years fly by. I know. I know. I know.

So now's where the knowing must translate into action and attitude change, or maybe I don't know it at all after all...