The Unambiguous Wife

Carolyn Heilbrun, in her book, Writing a Woman’s Life defines the unambiguous wife as a woman who puts a man at the center of her life, allowing only to occur what honors his paramount position. Her desires, dreams and wishes are forever secondary.

I risked nothing to become such, for I’d spent my first seventeen years learning the godly role of a sanitized, unambiguous woman. A short step that, to wife—yea, preacher’s wife.

For the sleep dust sprinkled in my eyes by my mother, the ultimate example of the “unambiguous woman,” had anesthetized my spirit.

From the very beginning, my world was a wild combination of advance and retreat, then advance again. My body knew things long before my mind did. Even my birth was an on-and-off again affair, battered back and forth by the drama unfolding within my parent’s relationship.

Put the drama on stage and an audience might snicker at the melodrama acted out before them, recognizing themselves in the struggle of another. For my mother, Ruth, lived her life by the answers given to her by others. Never questioning, never modifying.

However, as good as she was, and as hard as she tried, it seemed the more she embraced the answers, the less the answers fit. So she existed, day to day, in her desert of doubt and confusion, never recognizing it for what it was.

She had been taught that she lived in a world of certainties.

Do this, get that.

But when she did this, and that didn’t pan out the way it was supposed to, she never questioned. For it didn’t mean the answer wasn’t correct. It just meant she had not done enough of that. So, she redoubled her efforts, digging the hole deeper. For she truly believed that even in the failure, the problem wasn’t the answers she’d been given, but the effort she’d put forth. And even when she played by the rules, my father marched to the beat of his own drum, which changed the equation. Put simply, the problem wasn’t the answers she’d been given, the problem was in the doing, or the lack thereof.

For me, add to that, the self-serving “will of God” preached by a patriarchal religion, and enforced by my husband, a self-proclaimed “man of God,” and I soon found that my spirit, the essence of who I am, was sacrificed as surely as though I’d been nailed to a cross.

No, I risked nothing to become such, but when I awoke twenty-five years later, my spirit a mere flicker, I left the role of “unambiguous preacher’s wife.”

And risked everything.

Life Lesson # 5: Learning Lessons–over and over again

As long as we live, lessons will present themselves to us to learn.

Now if that’s not the most discouraging lesson of all! After all the work I’ve done on myself all these years, one would think I’d learned all my lessons and could coast till the end.

Not so. Very few of us receive the truth complete, unabridged and sight-blinding, because of instantaneous illumination. We learn it one tiny step at the time. Sometimes, even when we’ve learned it, we find ourselves learning the same lesson all over again, but in an even deeper way.

Life Lessons # 4: Redux

The lessons you come into this world to learn will present themselves to you over and over again until you learn them. Once you have, then you will continue to the next lesson

Thinking about this lesson later this morning I thought of one of my lessons that I have learned that I do not have to repeat. That is allowing people to talk to me in a way that I do not deserve.

When I encounter someone who speaks to me in a rude, abusive, or controlling way, giving me orders when they have no right to do so, I learned to say to them, “I do not talk to people that way, and I will not allow you to talk to me that way.”

Once, I was walking down the street of a small town when a stranger yelled at me, saying, “Stop. Do NOT walk down that street.”

I didn’t know the man from Adam, and turned to him and said, “Is that a please?”

“Oh, please, yes, please, ma’am. We are filming a movie and you were walking right into it. But that was rude of me. I should have asked please.”

My husband marveled at my immediate response. I hadn’t even stopped to wonder who the man was or why he didn’t want me to walk that way. I simply knew I deserved to be asked in a polite, courteous manner. My husband has bragged about that so many times over the years.

I don’t know where my response came from, but it did teach me that is one lesson I have learned. That I deserve to be treated with the same courtesy and respect I give others, and I do not have to settle for anything less than that.

When we know we are worth more, we have learned that lesson well.

Life Lesson # 4: We Come Into This World to Learn Certain Lessons

The lessons you come into this world to learn will present themselves to you over and over again until you learn them. Once you have, then you will continue to the next lesson.

We are back to one of my favorite words: BEHOOVE. I am no authority on how we might come into this world with a set of lessons to learn, or even if we do. But I do know when I CHOOSE to believe that we do, and practice learning those lessons the first, second, or third time around, my life is SOOOO much easier. Therefore, it behooves me to learn each lesson and be done with it.

How do we know when we’ve learned one of those lessons? By making different choices the next time the same situation presents itself.

One of my lessons has been to not put my foot in my mouth by saying something about someone I wouldn’t want them to know I said. I did that once in an email to an employee I supervised, and then realized I had hit Reply All instead of simply Reply, like I intended to do. Wow. Took me a while to get over that flub. Of course another lesson in that example is to be very careful before sending email.

I also learned:

I am not responsible for another person’s feelings. However, I am responsible for choosing to be considerate of another’s feelings. Not because of who they are, but because of who I am. (read, who I choose to be)

And I choose to be a person who is polite, courteous, kind, thoughtful and respectful to all I meet.

Life Lesson # 3 There Are No Mistakes

There are no mistakes, just lessons.

Personal growth is trial and error.

The experiments you try and fail at, are just as much a part of the lessons as those experiments in which you succeed.

I think we are too hard on ourselves. We make a mistake and we beat up on our self, shaming, putting down, telling ourselves we are awful.

Since we attract the lessons we need to learn, every time we attract the same lesson, we are reminded we haven’t learned that one yet. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a part of the whole life-lesson process. We learn from it what we can and move on, not brow beating, but reminding ourselves we’re further down the road to becoming the person we choose to be. We may have to repeat that mistake, but eventually we will get there.

I work at learning to accept myself, even with all my warts and moles. When I screw up, I remind myself the whole world is not going to shun me and think I am a terrible person. That I can still love me, hold my head up, make a correction in my path, and keep going.

How about you? How do you handle it when you make mistakes?

Feel free to comment, below.

Life Lesson # 2: It Takes a Lifetime

Life Lesson # 2: You will be a full time student in the class of lesson-learning. Every day, lessons will present themselves for you to learn. You may choose to learn them or choose not to learn them. You may like the lessons or you may not.

Full time student in the class of lesson-learning? Oh boy, here comes the kicker. We can learn our lessons, or choose to delay them to a later time. But, and here is a big but, we still have them to learn and they will come around again until we do. Because of that fact, it behooves us to learn those lessons and learn them now, so we can be done with them and live a happier, more productive life.

What kind of lessons are we talking about and how many? I hate to tell you this, but they are numberless, running from:

I deserve to keep myself at a healthy weight.

I am worthy of a healthy relationship with another.

I have worth and value.

I deserve happiness, and what it takes for me to achieve such.

I set worthy goals and accomplish them.

I deserve to be with someone who can control their temper.

This is a start. I encourage you to add your own.

The best, most powerful demonstration of Fact 2 is the following poem I’ve kept for years. I didn’t write it, but in a way, I guess I did. I certainly have lived it.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

By Portia Nelson, 1980

Chapter One: I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in.

I am lost… I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find my way out.

Chapter Two: I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three: I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there. I still fall in…it’s a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter Four: I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter Five: I walk down another street.

 

What about you? What streets have you walked down and gotten caught in? What streets have you walked down again, and once more been caught.  What lessons keep coming around again for you to learn? What does it take for you to learn them? What does it take for you to choose another street to go down?

Life Fact #1: You either like your body, or you hate it

Pending cloning, bionics, pending whatever, it goes without saying, this is the only body we will ever have in this lifetime. We may tweak it, add implants, transplant parts of it, fill parts of it with collagen, lift it, increase or reduce it, but in the end, this is the only body we’ll have.

While in private practice as a psychotherapist, I once had a client who, regardless of what she ate, could not gain weight. She so hated her super thin body that she eliminated every mirror from her house. Besides that, she walked around with a permanent scowl on her face, aggravated at the world for her ‘luck of the draw.’ Regardless of the therapy, there was nothing I could do to help her learn to appreciate the body she had been given.

I struggle to keep my weight down, and have all my life, and I will admit, when I carry more pounds around than is acceptable to me, I feel bad about myself. When I lose that weight, I feel great. I’ve always wished my thighs were thinner, longer. As I heard someone say once, it isn’t that my thighs are too big. My legs are just too short.

Then one day while sitting in the bathtub, it hit me, I could lose one of my legs, and then how would I feel about it? My legs have served me well all my life—how dare I wish for them to be less/more than they are.

I admit, age takes its toll, and I spend less time in front of the mirror these days, choosing rather to ignore the pull of gravity since there is little I can do to stop it.

I have a male critique buddy who writes mysteries with a female sleuth—a young Barbie Doll sexy thing who does everything perfectly. We tell him she’s his fantasy come to life. In one scene he had her look in the mirror, dressed in extra short white shorts, and admire her long, tan thighs. We women laughed and informed him right up front, no woman, regardless of how perfect she is, ever looks in a mirror and thinks that. What she will think is, “My legs are too fat, too thin, too short, too full of cellulite, too…” You get the picture. Women always wish their bodies were different, here, there, everywhere. (Why do you think so many spend money modifying here and there!)

I can’t speak for men, but I rather think if they could change their body into bigger, better, they would.

Since my body is the only one I’m going to ever have in this life, perhaps I should develop a more thankful heart for what I have. Improve where I can, do the best I can with the genes I came into this world with, and put the worry about it aside. It’s all I’m going to get, and when I’m gone, so will it be.

We have a tendency to fail to appreciate the uniqueness of the being that we are. One- of-a kind, literally. The only specimen with a set of genes and cells that combine and unite to create the person we are. Think about it. Doesn’t that feel good, to know we are uniquely created? It does, me. I think I’ll go out and smile at someone,regardless of what the scales say this morning.

What do you think? What would our world be like if we loved ourselves and our bodies just as they are, warts and moles included? Changing what we could, accepting the rest. What would change? What would stay the same?

Wonder Why I Write Strong Women?

At least once a year, I post this to remind myself not only how far I’ve come, but also how far I had to go to get here.

A copy of the article, reprinted, below, was laminated and gifted to me in early 1968. The woman who gave it to me said she thought of me when she read it because I personified the woman it described. (Of course, she meant it as a compliment.)

It goes without saying, I was her role model, and didn’t know it until then.  Today, I feel sick to my stomach when I think about the damage this kind of thinking caused me and this well-intentioned woman who tried so hard to fit into the patriarchal world of Southern Baptists. (For those of you who might not know, I was a Baptist preacher’s wife for 28 years.)

At the time, knee deep into the patriarchy of the times, and being the submissive, dependent preacher’s wife that I was, I took her comment as a compliment and tried even harder to fulfill the commandments given in this article as if they were inspired by God, rather than a man steeped in control over women. And it nearly killed me. Nearly choked any life out of me. It almost destroyed my soul.

Today, I shudder when I read it, and think about the damage an article like this does to any woman who falls victim to it. Of the damage the expectation did to me. It took me years to  heal and recover from this destructive attitude and teaching. I share it today, as a declaration of who I am, what I stand for, and what I absolutely won’t stand for–and that’s the teaching in this newspaper article.

DECALOGUE FOR A PREACHER’S WIFE

Ten Commandments for Ministers’ Wives

By Robert Crouch

1. Thou shalt not be afraid either of the board of deacons, Woman’s Missionary Society, the school board, or of anything that is in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth, caring for neither a lazy, casual, hit-or-miss life nor for public praise but only for your role as a pastor’s wife that enables you to a useful Christian service all the days of your life.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image of the wife of the chairman of the board of deacons, wife of the president of the Baptist state convention; nor shalt thou bow thy knee too deeply before the pressures of the Woman’s Missionary Society. Rather thou shalt keep an open mind and remember first thy husband and his needs in everyday life.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain, but thou shalt include high ethics and the teachings of the New Testament as you help your husband and raise your family.

4. Each year shalt thou labor while the pastor’s wife, thou and thy husband and thy children, so that when thou goest to a new field thou shalt continue to study and keep abreast of progress; and at no time shalt thou make a carnival of the works of the former pastor, pastor’s wife, or of thy successors.

5. Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s church nor thy neighbor’s salary nor have the greatest number of unread books in your husband’s library.

6. Thou shalt not envy a successful fellow minister or minister’s wife or the love that his parishioners have for them.

7. Thou shalt not kill the intellectual and scientific curiosity of thy husband by substituting lackadaisical attitudes and efforts for the joy of devoted learning, but thou shalt provide the stimulus to your husband so he can continue to study and remain fresh and clear in his thinking.

8. Thou shalt not commit adultery; but to the state Baptist convention, Southern Baptist Convention, and your local church and its ideals and distinctive function shalt thou be true.

9. Thou shalt not steal thy husband’s place in the congregation nor the love that people of the church have for him. Thou shalt not cause him to falter while he is the pastor; nor shalt thou steal time from him that he needs for study, exercise and rest.

10. Thou shalt love, feed and care for that man all the days of his life in order that he may accomplish his primary task in the world – that of serving the Lord.

Robert C. Crouch is (or was) a surgeon in Asheville, N.C., and the son of W. Perry Crouch, executive secretary of the North Carolina Baptist Convention. He closed his address before the North Carolina Baptist Ministers’ Wives Association with the Ten Commandments for Ministers’ Wives.

Wisdom: What it is, what it isn’t

We think and talk about ‘being wise’ or making wise decisions. We wish for our children to make wise choices, and when we do, we usually mean we hope they don’t do something stupid, thereby getting themselves, and often us, in trouble.

I suggest when we do something stupid, that behavior starts in the brain–it starts with what we’re thinking. What we tell our self about what we want to do and why we want to do it. What we want and how we plan to get it–despite what our effort does to others. It is often not rational. It has more to do with our brain and what we’re thinking, wishing, wanting. It has little to do with knowledge.

True wisdom means so much more than being smart. To me, it begins in the heart.

Wisdom leads our actions to be borne of strong character. It embraces the strength and the breadth of our character. A wise heart leads us to make decisions and take actions unswayed by praise–or censure. A wise heart leads us to put others before self, all the while equally protecting and caring for self. A wise heart listens with more than her ears. She listens with all her senses and acts from her core wisdom, a wisdom from both deep inside her, and yet one which comes from a power outside herself.  A wisdom that runs through her, to everyone and everything else in the universe, and then back again.

Might wisdom belong to one who perseveres with the purest of  motives, unswayed by praise and censure?

Think about your decision-making. Look at how your actions are swayed, or unswayed, by praise or censure. Evaluate your wisdom–your heart.

When we do, I think we take another step to being a truly wise person, and our actions reflect such.

Unattached to the Outcome? Are you crazy?

Unattached to the outcome? How in the world can I not care about the outcome of something I want really badly. You must be crazy!

Often we, in our infinite wisdom, think we have a monopoly on the truth, and if everyone would just agree with us, go to the same church, swear by the same social guidelines, preach the same message, be of the same opinion, then this world would be a better place.

If they don’t, then we need to work harder to make that happen. Coerce, argue, try to convince, demand, beg, plead, cajole, twist facts, show statistics, or, when all else fails, cry or faint.

This also holds true when we work so hard to try to make something happen. Get a book published, make a certain guy like us, get a certain job offer, win the lottery, win a contest, get a part in play, on and on and on, you fill in the blank.

A better rule to live by is to do the best we can to accomplish our goal, and then trust the outcome without trying to force something to happen. That reminds me of the old song, that goes, If love don’t come easy, you have to let it go.

A friend once told me I always tried to push the river. That I thought I knew how things should work out and tried to insure that happened. In other words, I stood out in the middle of the river and demanded that it flow otherwise. And if it didn’t, I worked harder to make that happen.

That same person taught me how to sit and watch the river flow, how at time a branch might get stuck along the bank, but in time, the water moves it along back into the mainstream.

This is uncomfortable to many people, me included, for we all have control issues.

How about you? Do you attempt to push the river in the direction you think it should go? Then that is attachment to the outcome.

Instead, learn to trust the process. And trust that the outcome is for your highest good–even if it doesn’t make sense at the time.