Women of valor > Seen and not heard

I don’t like Proverbs 31 either.

My whole life, growing up in a very traditional, strictly conservative community, I was constantly bombarded with the type of ‘biblical woman’ I should be. Maybe at one point I did agree with it all, but honestly anytime anyone utters the words ‘biblical womanhood’ I instantly stop listening because I’m sure I know the types of things they’re going to say and I’m honestly so sick of it.

I grew up wearing long dresses, never cutting my hair, discouraged from going to college (not by my parents, they wanted me to continue my education, but by the community they involved me in) and having a career, and expected to stay at home until I was married, then go live with him and have at least five children. Preferably more like ten. Because after all, that was a woman’s place, that was God’s design for women, and it was shameful and sinful to want to pursue anything else.

I cannot even tell you how sick I am of those expectations.

I loved this talk by Rachel Evans, it was so refreshing to me to hear. Because it’s so true – these things that my community picked out as the rules to live by, what grounds did they have for that? What about all the other rules?

I especially loved her thoughts on how Proverbs 31 cannot be a blueprint for biblical womanhood because of all the women in the Bible – woman who are praised and held up as examples – who break the ‘rules’.

I hate the idea of biblical womanhood and I hate all the rules and I hate the expectations. I would much prefer to be a woman of valor, a woman who laughs in victory. I’d much rather serve God in all the diverse ways that I believe He is calling me to do so than to follow a to-do list that Evangelical Christians have extracted from a poem.