The Glory of Being Differently Woman

I never dreamed I’d live in a world where real live humans would be talking about “the harm of infant gender assignment”, saying of their expecting baby: “We’re going to wait and let it choose which gender it identifies with”, and calling you a cruel parent if you announce the gender of your child before this monumental event.

“Obstetricians, doctors, and midwives commit this procedure on infants every single day, in every single country. In reality, this treatment is performed almost universally without even asking for the parents’ consent, making this practice all the more insidious. It’s called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It’s a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring’s genitals.” From Don’t Let the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn

Nevertheless, I’m not going to talk about that in this post. I can’t. I simply can’t contend with the illogical, irrational belief that definitive evidence of Science isn’t enough for the declaration of gender.

Contrasted with the craziness of our gender confused culture, Rebekah Merkle’s Eve in Exile has given me a refreshed idea of the BEAUTY and the POWER of gender difference, specifically, how being a woman is so immensely wonderful, even though it’s a tenet I’ve never questioned.

And, can you even wrap your head around this? Our culture is fighting for a person’s right to deny his own biological assignment, but simultaneously persecutes the one who chooses to embrace it and celebrate it? I can be a man if I’m really a woman (and you will celebrate me and tell me I’m brave and maybe even the Woman of the Year), but how dare I act like a woman if I really am. Maddening and void of absolutely any shred of logic.

As a woman, I am different and I believe that difference makes the human race better. In my difference, I get to translate the gospel (in a thousand ways) using what God gave distinctly to me. Using a favorite analogy from the book, Merkle explains that invitations are framed in the language of what the men are to wear: “black tie” etc. but it’s the women who translate the “rule” and glorify it, and the others wait to see what she wears. The red carpet is about the woman’s attire. Because she is dressed differently, femininely, beautifully, even though it was a “black tie affair”, we want to see her. We want to see her version, her unique outworking of the dress code.

Why? Because women, in their differences, translate beauty and glorify everything.

Listening to a harmonious ensemble, we are glad for the different parts. It is precisely what makes it better, beautiful. How awful if everyone sang the same note!

As Merkle aptly stated, if men are the skeleton, women are the bones. If men are the words, women are the music. If men are the radio waves, women are the amplifiers.

We GET to be that.

How glorious it is to be woman, to be different, and to use my differences to improve everything around me.

Instead of putting our efforts into screaming about equality, what if women threw themselves into being women, in all their distinctness and uniqueness and giftedness, preaching the gospel through their fingertips, lending their harmonious parts to the great symphony called life?

“So be the glory of your husband. Be the concentrated, intoxicating, incarnate poetry that tells the story of death and resurrection, and then throw yourself into the task of glorifying. Be fruitful. Build your house. Work hard. Be ambitious. Be productive. Learn more. Run harder. Take the gifts God has given you, the desires He has given you, the constraints he has given you, and then figure out how to weave those into something glorious, something compelling, a beautiful aroma that can’t b contained and that beckons a broken world to come and taste, to see that the Lord is good.”