Let Me Be a Woman--Biblical Womanhood

[aribell]

Let's Discuss!

The book Let Me Be a Woman, by Elisabeth Elliot, is a series of notes she wrote to her daughter in preparation for her daughter getting married. It's about what it means to be a godly woman. Here are some quotes:

...surely motherhood, in a deeper sense, is the essence of womanhood. The body of every normal woman prepares itself repeatedly to receive and to bear. Motherhood requires self-giving, sacrifice, suffering. It is a 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 woman. 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.

note: I don't think Ms. Elliot is speaking primarily of the actual physical bearing of children so much as the call every woman has to be "mother-ly," regardless of whether she is married or single, with children or without them.

We are called to be women. The fact that I ama woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be. Ruth Benedict, one of the first women to attain recognition as a major social scientist, wrote in her journal in 1912:

"To me it seems a very terrible thing to be a woman. There is one crown which perhaps is worth it all--a great love, a quiet home, and children. [Her childless marriage to Stanley Benedit ended in divorce.] We all know that is all that is worthwhile, and we must peg away, showing off our wares on the market if we have money, or manufacturing careers for ourselves if we haven't. We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a 'lifework' of teaching, of social work--we know taht we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this makeshift time-filler of a job is our lifework after all."

Mrs. Benedict has expressed candidly what thousands of career women must surely feel, but today there are few who would have the courage to admit to such feelings, when the career woman is thought by many to be somehow superior to the woman whose occupation is listed merely as "housewife." Any nine-to-five job, no matter how routine, monotonous, or boring, is elevated by the feminists to higher status than being a wife and mother, as thoughthe wife and mother's work were more demeaning, more boring, less creative and exciting, or allowed less latitude for one's imagination than being a lawyer or fitting parts on an assembly line.

What do you think it means to be a godly woman? Not just a godly person, but specifically a godly woman?

 

[Southernbella.]

Ooh, I read this book several years ago! It's still in my bookcase. I might have to revisit it and come back to this thread.

 

[momi]

I really enjoy the writings of Elisabeth Elliot. She is a woman of true wisdom, especially concerning the issues of womanhood and holiness.


The following is one of my favorites from when she was a guest on Family Life today quite some time ago...
http://www.familylife.com/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=dnJHKLNnFoG&b=3789887&ct=7323115