Pulling Together: Marriage, Ministry, and Calling
Yesterday, Bible teacher, Christian radio host, and conference speaker Nancy Leigh DeMoss announced that she will marry Robert Wolgemuth this coming fall. If you’re familiar with DeMoss’s ministry, “Revive Our Hearts,” you’ll understand the significance of this news. For years, DeMoss has been an advocate for Christian women to embrace the “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness” found in Christ, including the unique calling to home and motherhood. At the same time she has confidently and comfortably embraced her own singleness, believing it to be a gift that has allowed her to commit herself to ministry.
But as God does, just when we think we know the plan, He changes it. Recently, He has brought widowed Wolgemuth and DeMoss together in order “to continue serving Him wholeheartedly, trusting Him to make us even more spiritually fruitful together than we could be apart.”
DeMoss continues:
I love this man dearly and look forward to becoming Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth. But my life mission has not changed. It will now be our life mission to magnify the Lord together… We envision a continued robust Revive Our Hearts ministry. Our longing is for even more women (and men) around the world to experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
And Wolgemuth adds:
My promise to our heavenly Shepherd, to Nancy, to her precious ministry family, and to the thousands around the world who love Nancy Leigh DeMoss, is that I will come alongside her and her ministry with my prayers, encouragement, and support.
And all God’s people said, “AMEN!” This is precisely how we should talk about married women and their calling to Christ’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, I don’t hear this language employed very often. Instead, I regularly hear Christian women being told to seek their callings through their husbands. Don’t get me wrong. I am fully convinced that a woman is called to minister to her husband and family. And I’ll be the first the trumpet the imago Dei-quality of a well-made peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich or a properly laundered (and folded) pair of boxer shorts. What I’m concerned about is how often we confuse our prepositions—how often we misunderstand the difference between through and to.
In I Corinthians 7, Paul makes it clear that husbands and wives must cultivate and care for each other. Of all the neighbors you are called to love, your spouse is the closest one. This means that being married will naturally limit your ability to pursue other callings in the Church. But Scripture also makes it clear that the call to marry is rooted in a larger call so that even as we enter it, we remember that marriage itself is not all-consuming. It is only part of how we serve the Lord with our whole hearts and lives. This is true for men. This is true for women.
It may sound like I’m stating the obvious. Don’t Christian women understand this? No, I’m afraid that some don’t. Some, in fact, believe that the calling to help their husbands trumps every other ministry calling or desire. Sometimes they believe this because of their own immaturity; and sometimes they believe it because this is what they have been explicitly told. The result is confusion and frustration as women wrestle with their own gifting and place in the Church. They either become weak and directionless, unable to serve apart from their husbands; or they become frustrated and manipulative as they attempt to live out their own passions and gifting through their husbands.
How do I know? I used to be one.
Early in our marriage, when my husband first entered professional ministry, I honestly believed that my calling in the Church would be fulfilled through him. So whatever he needed me to do to further “his” ministry, I did. But I also ended up crossing a lot of boundaries I shouldn’t have crossed. I invested myself too deeply in his career, attempted to do the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, and meddled in things that were not my concern—all in the name of “supporting” his calling.
What I was really doing was longing for a way to use my own gifting to serve the Church.
God was faithful despite my immaturity, and today I work beside my husband as a wife, mother, and active member of our local church. Out of the Holy Spirit’s gifting, I offer advice, counsel, and support as he needs it; but what he most certainly does not need is for me to confuse my calling with his. As I’ve found the freedom to develop my own gifts, God has led me to a place I never expected. Today, a significant part of my ministry happens independently of my husband’s. It happens through mothering and homemaking, to be sure, but it also happens through blog posts and articles just like this one.
The result? Today my husband and I are more fruitful for the Kingdom than we have ever been.
You may know that I live in the Blue Ridge of southwest Virginia. You may not know that this is railroad country. Our county and the surrounding area was built on rail and to this day, Norfolk-Southern is one of our largest employers. We also have a lot—A LOT—of mountains. So it’s not unusual to see two engines coupled together pulling a load of cars. With hills this big and loads this large, one engine simply can’t do the job alone.
In many ways, marriage is the same. Both men and women have the same basic calling: We are called to work for Christ’s Kingdom. We have to get the load up the mountain. But just like one engine can’t do it alone, neither can men nor women do it alone. “So God said that it is not good that man should be alone; I’ll give him a second engine to help him.” (That’s from the SWVA version of the Bible which also translates the plural of you as “ya’ll.”)
But here’s the thing: too often, we think of a woman as the coal car that fuels the man’s mission; in reality, she is a strong, second engine tasked with the same mission that he is. His engine may be out in front, and she may even be a different make and model, but make no mistake, they are both tasked with getting the load to the top of the mountain.
I am thrilled to see Nancy Leigh DeMoss and her fiancé confirm the work that God has called her to. I am thrilled that in God’s providence, He has brought them together to serve His Church as husband and wife. But mostly, I am thrilled that they will be able to model this for the rest of us. Because ultimately this is what a truly Christian marriage looks like—two people bound together by a mission greater than either one of them. two people bound together to love Christ and serve His people.
Persuasion Podcast
So here's a bit of news. Erin Straza and I will be hosting a new weekly podcast on the Christ and Pop Culture Podcast Network called Persuasion. In some ways, this is a departure for me--moving beyond the written word--but in another, it feels very natural. When I mentioned the opportunity to my husband, he asked, "So basically, they just want you to give your opinion about cultural and theological issues?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Oh, you'll nail that. That's what you do all the time around here anyway."
The larger goal of Persuasion is to offer feminine insight on issues of culture, theology, and everyday minutia--without reducing it to a podcast about "women's issues." This is easier said than done, but it's something that Erin and I believe is worth pursuing.
The full name, Persuasion: Fine Ladies, Rational Minds, and the Best Kind of Company, comes from two Jane Austen quotes:
I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
and
"My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." '"You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company, that is the best.”
We're still getting our feet under us, but here's a clip from the first episode in which Erin and I talk about how it easy it is to define ourselves based on other peoples' lives. Erin works full-time and does not have children while I am a SAHM. We explore the temptation of each of us to define our work in terms of the marketplace and/or domesticity. What are the dangers when we try to live our lives by comparing ourselves to others? How can we avoid it?
[audio mp3="http://www.sometimesalight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Persuasion-Episode-1-mp3cut.net_.mp3"][/audio]
The full podcast, including a discussion of what exactly we hope to accomplish on Persuasion and an interview with JR Vassar about his new book, Glory Hunger, is available here and on iTunes.
CAPC & Love in the Digital Age
Every so often, I get to write for this great site named Christ and Pop Culture. My relationship with CAPC happened gradually, as so many do. You start out as friends, you find yourself more and more often in the same place, you realize that he's funnier than you first thought, and smarter too. And then one day, you wake up to discover that you're meant to be together. Well, it wasn't exactly like this, but I have come to believe that the folks at CAPC are some of the brightest, funniest, and most committed Christians writing on the web.
Christians tend to have a complicated relationship with the culture around us. From our earliest days, we're taught that we are not of this world, but then we spend the majority of our lives living in it--encountering and engaging with art, thought paradigms, and culture that may or may not be consistent with the Christian faith. It creeps into our worship, influences our buying habits, and affects how we raise our kids. Even those of us who actively try to protect ourselves from its influence are shaped by it, if only in response. CAPC exists to be a guide in this crazy, often confusing world, to uncover what is beautiful and good and to call out what is tawdry and evil in our culture. To do this, they write on a whole host of topics that Christians rarely talk about well: gaming, the music industry, television, movies, technology, and cultural events.
I don't agree with every opinion that every writer presents at CAPC, but that's also one of the things that I love about it --it's a space for vibrant, engaging dialogue and at times, flat-out disagreement. CAPC also offers a monthly membership that allows you access to their fantastic online community (if you're a blogger or writer, this interaction alone justifies the cost of membership), free book and music offerings every month, and a subscription to their bi-monthly magazine. And that's nothing to speak of the loads of free content that go up on the blog weekly.
Last month, I wrote a piece for CAPC about the struggle of romantic commitment in a digital age. It seems that more and more of us are using social media and technology to keep in touch with friends and previous lovers as a kind of insurance in case our current relationship goes bad. These "back-burner" relationships pose all kinds of questions for Christians. Even if they are not steamy or exotic, what are the potential dangers of cultivating them? How does digital interaction skew our sense of reality? What does marital commitment require of us?
The irony of commitment—the kind evidenced in marriage—is that it exists because of the what if, not despite it. Without the potential for other alternatives, the concept of commitment is meaningless. If two people are by all measures the clearest, most direct avenue for each others’ happiness, they will naturally gravitate toward one other, bound together by sheer self-interest. In this sense, marriage exists, not because other viable options don’t, but precisely because they do.
You can read the rest here at CAPC.
Women & History
Because of this, one of my odder habits is the overwhelming need to place current trends and issues in proper historical context. Bring up the situation in Crimea and my mind immediately runs to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade. ("Half a league, half a league/ Half a league onward/ All in the valley of Death/ Rode the six hundred.") Mention immigration reform and I'll start talking about our complicated history of bringing in certain ethnicities to do our grunt work. And in the growing restlessness of Christian women wanting to work for the Kingdom, I can't help but remember the stories of women who did this generations before us--women like Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, Mary Slessor, and Amy Carmichael.
Recently, I wrote a piece for Her.meneutics that explains why hearing these women's stories is essential to our own growth.
If history can be understood as "The Story," learning about the women who have come before us will help us understand where we belong in it. We'll learn which act and scene we've walked into; and with these prompts and cues, we'll be better able to play our own parts well.
Over the course of the next several weeks, Her.meneutics will run a brief series for Women's History Month that highlights "women of character, courage, and commitment." Each post will focus on a specific woman and draw connection to our own time. These may not be women you've ever heard of, but they are women who, in their own way and in their own time and place, changed history. And if we let them, their stories might change us today. You can read it in its entirety here.
Hideko
But before she was my aunt, she was Hideko.
Born on a small island in the Pacific, she was a toddler when WWII invaded her tropical home and turned it into a major battlefield of the war. To escape the firestorm, her family and neighbors fled to isolated caves where provisions and medical care were scarce. When she contracted an infection, there was nothing to do but move her to a separate part of the cave, administer meager doses of black-market drugs, and endure the shunning of the other refugees.
She survived and eventually the war ended. But the lush paradise she once knew had been destroyed and rebuilt and repopulated by US military bases with an ever revolving collection of American GIs. By her early twenties, she had adapted to this new normal and caught the eye of a young Marine far from his home in rural Pennsylvania. One whirlwind romance later, they were married and welcoming a daughter with the same dark eyes and black hair as her mother. Eventually he was discharged and hoping to find a quiet life as a family, they left her Pacific paradise for his home in the States
But what she found there were the wintry hills of Pennsylvania, trees stripped naked of all green life, fields of mud crusted with ice, and skies that never cleared but forever changed from gray to black to gray again. Instead of pots of rice and freshly caught fish, she found rice mixed with greasy ground meats wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves. Fish was strange frozen rectangle coated in yellow batter and plunged in hot oil. And yet, she blossomed. She soon had a son and despite her limited English, quickly learned to navigate the continuous cycle of doctor’s visits, bus schedules, PTA meetings, and after-school practices. She became a faithful member of a church, mastered the pot-luck, and saw her husband become a deacon.
All this, seven thousand miles from where she had been born.
After her death, my uncle confessed his misgivings about bringing his bride to such a foreign place. Early in their marriage, he had opened a bank account in her name and deposited $1,800 in it. He told her that if she ever found her new life too overwhelming, too lonely, or if she simply wanted to return to her family, she was to use the money and go.
She never did.
Instead she stayed and chose to be part of our family. She left her own mother, father, brothers, and sisters and embraced her husband’s mother, father, brothers, and sisters. She left her own nieces and nephews and embraced me and my cousins. She traded life on a Pacific island for life in rural America with the man she loved. Growing up, it seemed pretty unremarkable to me that Hideko was my uncle’s wife, my aunt.
Today it does not.