The Art of Nurture

Thanks, folks, for the comments. After bouncing my thoughts off several other unsuspecting victims who just called for a quick hello or mindlessly suggested lunch, I've been able to tweak my thoughts on the role of nurturing as applicable to women. One of the things I don't want to be misquoted for is thinking that nurturing is an exclusively female role. I definitely think men are nurturers, especially in the parental context. But unlike other male roles, I think (and have been affirmed by other believers and my digging into the Word and tuning in to God's heart) that nurturing is divined to women, women in all walks of life, not just stay-at-home moms.

So that's what I'm going to start exploring. What does this art of nurturing mean for women in the workplace? Single women? Women who are divorced? Married? Mothers? Daughters? Childless? Fresh out of college? Fresh out of high school? You get the idea.

One more question for you mighty fine helpers out there: apart from nurturing, what other roles do you see as a uniquely feminine role? Not exclusively, mind you, but yeah, having God's fingerprint on the heart of a woman. I'd like this to be the beginning of a series we're doing for our women's meetings. Thanks again, homies. Peace out.

Readers: Comments Required. Seriously. You think I'm kidding.

If you're reading this, I would appreciate your comments like whoa. I've been chewing some stuff over in my mind for the next women's meeting later this month, and I want to check myself against the Word and other believers before diving into it fully. When I bounced these thoughts off my husband, he warned me to be a little bit careful with what I'm saying, but I don't know if his concern was based more in truth or more in worry over me and how my message will be received against women not in my position (i.e., stay-at-home moms). So let me bounce them off you fine folks too.

I was thinking a lot lately about the role of nurturing, specifically the role given to women to be nurturers. Not exclusively; I don't honestly believe that characteristics of either gender are exclusive, just more like trademarks. When I think of the role of Nurturer, I want to approach it in the most general sense, completely apart from the context of parenting. I think nurturing applies best in that context, but because of that, it has lost its significance in other areas of our lives (women). What I mean is, have we put that role secondary to other roles women have, saving it for when we become wives and mothers? I think we have. And then to take it one step further, we save our nurturing spirit exclusively for our families. There are few women who I know, and literally none who live apart from God, who are nurturers in being. The more I think about this, the less I believe nurturing is a gift, such as hospitality or evangelism is a gift given to believers. To nurture is a watermark of being a woman, just as protection is of a man.

So then, what does it mean to be nurturing? How do we apply that role to all aspects of our lives, in every relationship we cultivate? Who is God the Nurturer? Within the parental context, I think of a parent nurturing her child in the sense that she creates an atmosphere of safety, truth, and growth. In the Old Testament, God seems most parental when addressing Israel, calling His people His children, the land His daughter, and so forth. Not that He is that way exclusively. But when I think of God the Nurturer, I think of when He calls forth His children.

To nurture, I think, is to foster one's identity. As a mom, I nurture Max in the sense that I provide him with a sense of security, I give him the means and the space to become the child he is becoming, I offer guidance when needed, and I allow this to happen in an environment of godly wisdom and truth. Apart from being a mother, this definition of nurturing can be applied to all areas of a woman's life, within all relationships.

We as women can nurture our friendships, the people we work with, and on and on. We do this, I think, by creating an atmosphere that goes with us of truth. We bring with us a sense of security, that we will speak in truth and call forth truth in your life. We will nurture God's truth and God's calling in your life. We will foster your identity in Christ, affirm His work in you. We will allow the movement of the Spirit to comfort you. We will not allow untruth to fester, we will not tolerate deception.

All those things, I think is obvious, work only in perfect accordance with God and His will. We can't be those things all the time; we are still of the flesh. But the role of Nurturer, defined by God's own character, I think has been pushed aside, postponed. Maybe that's why many new mothers feel overwhelmed with the possibilities of growing their children. They haven't had the practice!

Ladies, what areas, other than in the parental context, can we fulfill this role as Nurturer that was divined to us as women? And men, how would it affect your life, apart from being a husband or father or son, if the women in your life accepted and practiced this role daily?

Rise up and call her blessed...

I have been meaning to update for awhile since the women's meeting I held last month, but...time gets away from me. I've joined the blogging bandwagon, and I've also fallen off. Sorry, kids.

Well, the meeting went supremely well. There were five ladies there, four more than I expected!! (I was one of them.) But after the fact, a lot of women from my church came up to me and told me they should have been there but for some reason or another couldn't, and that they'll be there at the next meeting (3/25), so maybe attendance will triple!

I got to share one of my hidden talents: crafts! I think I make some pretty kick-a homemade cards, and I also shared my knowledge of unique gift ideas for loved ones. That took about twenty minutes, and I gave out doorprizes!! I worked hard for that meeting, and God blessed that.

I also shared the verse that had been on my heart for weeks, Esther 4.13,14. Mordecai is telling Esther about the Jewish people about to be slaughtered, and he says, "If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this." While preparing for the first meeting, I went to the old faithfuls for women's ministry: Esther, Ruth, Proverbs 31...this was the second time I read Esther, the first being while reading The King's Daughter by Diane Hagee. And that book touches mostly on Esther's preparation for the King and how we prepare our lives for our King. But the majority of the book of Esther is about her cunning, her bravery, and her wisdom in handling the situation and the enemy. That verse stuck with me because, who knows, maybe I was made woman for just such a time as this. What am I doing to bring help and deliverance to my people, my family, my loved ones? How am I interceding, appealing to the heart of God, on behalf of the men and women in my life?

Anyway, that stuff needs its own entry. For now this is just an update on the meeting. Aside from that verse, we talked about things on a whole different level. I'm just going to copy and paste what I have in my notes and stuff. That makes it easiest. (I borrowed from my own blog from other entries. Forgive the semi-self-plagarism...)

In the very beginning, when there was nothing, God was lonely and bored. So He created. I believe and see everyday that our God is astoundingly creative, beyond the wonders of just our world and our environment and our universe. It goes beyond the colors of sunrise or the music of a windy day. He continues to creatively love and provide for each of us, and I truly believe that when we as humans mimic the need and desire to ourselves create, we are touching closest to God’s character. We will never come even close to matching His capacity to love, grieve, accept, forgive or amaze…that is clear. But the act of creating, I think that may be one of the most, if not the most, ways we begin to understand and reflect our God.

Each person has an innate creativity – beyond the scope of the most obvious talents, art, music, writing, and other traditional “creative” skills – and that creativity is a piece of God’s image that remained with us after the Fall. You don’t have to be an artist, musician, composer, or writer to be considered creative. There are many different avenues to express our creativity, God’s creativity. Maybe you’re a creative chef, or teacher, or manager. Maybe you can even work creatively and organize creatively to bring the creativity out of others. We could go around the room and find something creative in everyone here, in ourselves and in others, and we will, but that’ll come later. So be ready. We are by design intended to create, and to appreciate creativity, and are often driven by it. And I believe God’s creativity is a direct effect of His love for us, for His love in general. His unconditional, unbounded love spurs this awe-inspiring world full of creativity; it fuels His need to reveal Himself to us in unique and breathtaking ways, as well as quiet, subtle ways.

God is Love. God is creative love. And that is what I want to share with you today. God has taught me in the last few weeks that His love is more than provision and grace and mercy and forgiveness and redemption. It is all that, and most of all, His love is creative. It is what threw Him into that artistic frenzy at the beginning; He created when He was desperate to outpour the love that He is. So what He has taught me is this: Creation is His Love. And we, women, are the pinnacle of that Creation.

You may have just took a mental step back, but hear me. I am not saying that God created woman as the best part, or that Adam was merely a rough draft (although that makes a good punch line). God has shown me that female was the pinnacle of creation, much like the cherry tops the sundae. I’m a big sugar fan, so an ice cream sundae with all the fixings is just about Heaven for me. Without the cherry, I’m still in Heaven, but nothing tops a sundae like that cherry. We are not more valuable than any other part of creation, we are not above, we are not below, we are not the closest to perfection. But we are the pinnacle. When I looked up the word in the dictionary, two synonyms it gave me were “summit” and “peak.” When you climb a mountain, your destination is the top. When God created all we see, He finished His creation with humankind, and He finished with woman.

Since the Fall, everything God created became corrupt. Instead of being His reflection, we became His distortion. All He meant for us to be was somehow turned into our separation. Only through Jesus do we take on our intended identity as God’s likeness. Because of this corruption, the very things that most women identify with and recognize in themselves are seen in our society as weaknesses, drawbacks, burdens and obstacles. But God has been teaching me and revealing to me that these things are divined to us as women. We’ve all probably heard of John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart. He writes about God’s wild spirit and how He instilled that spirit in men. But Genesis tells us in 1.26-28, “God spoke: ‘Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature […].’ God created human beings; He created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female.” Male and female, God created them to reflect His nature. It takes both the masculine and the feminine to completely reveal His nature. We read in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, more about God’s wrath, His judgment, and His wild spirit. He is the Lion of Judah, the Soldier of Israel, wild, uncontained, and a mystery. But He is also divinely feminine, which He intended for us women to reflect. He is the Lamb of Zion, the Grace of believers, nurturing, whispering, and beautiful. We are intended to describe God’s heart. And He has shown me specific areas of femininity that has been cursed, problematic, and twisted to be hardly recognizable as God-like.

A few of them we’ll get to today, but know that everything that defines you as a woman was intended to portray our God, divined and fashioned in the very beginning. We will look at a woman’s emotions, maternity, romance, submission, and beauty as divine characteristics of our Lord. Hopefully we will begin to see these things, and all things that deem us feminine, as God saw them in the beginning – reflections of His heart, His deepest desires.

How many of us have been accused of being overemotional, of being too sensitive? My personal favorite is “you’re reading too much into it.” These accusations have come from both men and women, so it’s not discriminatory. True, women have a tendency to be too much of these things. But God has shown me that women were designed to reflect His emotions. Is it not true that our internal monologues and attitudes will directly affect not just us and the rest of our day, but those closest to us? Truth be told, everyone I’m around suffers when it’s that time of the month. But God tells us that our deep range of emotions is not only part of being a woman, but part of Him that He instilled in us. It is a tool of ministry if we allow it to be used and worked by the Lord. Women are specifically equipped to deeply connect emotionally with other women, as well as with our loved ones. Since the Fall, we’ve been exploited, lied to, and deceived into thinking our emotions are over the top, a distraction, and God-forbid, unprofessional. We women automatically connect our heads and our hearts. One way the devil uses this against us is by filling our heads with lies. Our thoughts directly affect our emotions, which can be destructive. I’ve allowed myself to be hurtful, to say things I wouldn’t normally say, under the pretense that I’m just “emotional” right now. I’ve used it to justify wrongdoings. God’s love is as deep as His wrath is as deep as His grief is as deep as His joy is as deep as His glee is as deep as His sorrow. Only God can be all these things, so He split it down the middle. We get to be His emotions while men get to be His action. I’m not saying men don’t feel, or that women don’t have the desire to act or fight. But our God-given depth and range of emotions are not hindrances; we can allow them to be if we don’t recognize that they are in fact God-given. But our emotions allow us to solidify relationships, and are not meant to destroy them.

I have yet to meet a woman who does not have a maternal instinct. I know lots of women who don’t care for kids, but I haven’t ever seen them not swoon over a newborn, or ache to hold one. I don’t mean instinct in the sense of automatically knowing how to change a diaper or knowing the best way to rock a baby to sleep. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to sleep-train Max. But the instinct to mother is in all women, even women who don’t have children. There’s a tenderness that God instilled in us; physically, apart from our hearts, women are equipped during pregnancy and for the first months of a baby’s life to nourish, nurture, and shelter their infants, without the help of the father. This is by design. Not to exclude the men, but to reflect God’s own maternity. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus says, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under wings, and you wouldn’t let Me.” It is maternal instinct to protect (like a mother bear) our children. And if you don’t have kids, that maternal instinct manifests itself in other ways: we show love and attention to others who act as our “children” like co-workers, friends, even animals or causes we feel passionately about. Society has allowed the corruption of motherhood by seeing it as a hindrance, an obstacle, an old-fashioned ideal. Career-forward women see getting pregnant and raising children as a threat to their jobs. This is how the devil corrupts our maternal instinct; by denying it exists, or at best, seeing it as a distraction.

Another thing about being a woman is our appreciation for romance. I’m not saying men are unromantic; I’ve known a couple guys who shed a tear at a sappy movie. But women, on the other hand, are dying to be swept off our feet. We long for the girl in the story to be us, for the man to be our soul mate. I don’t have to tell you that romance is part of God’s heart: He wrote the very first love story! Adam awakens to the sight of someone, something he has never before seen…Adam sees her and knows she is his. We, men and women, were created for each other. This is one area the devil exploits consistently and across the board. No relationship between a man and a woman is immune to the attacks, because I believe that this is one of the deepest longings a woman has, second only to the longing all creation has for God. Because it is so closely related to seeking God, women often use a romantic relationship to fill the need for God. God is romantic – reading His Word, there’s no denying it. Looking at the beauty of this world, it seems He is just setting the stage for romance. There are eight chapters of romance smack in the middle of the Bible, in Song of Songs. God delights in our romances. And He fashioned that delight into women everywhere. This is one area of our lives that we must submit to the Lord; allow Him to be the Author of our love story. Because it is such a deep desire of our heart, we make the mistake of thinking we know best and would be best in control. And because it is such a deep desire of our heart, the devil uses it to hurt and attack us in the very center of our souls. That is dangerous to our relationships with others, with God, and the relationship we have with ourselves.

When God called women to submit to their husbands, that role became an easy one to corrupt. Women have been belittled, demeaned, condescended, and pushed aside throughout history. Submission itself is not the only exploitation, but by contrast, the arrogance and ego-boost it inevitably allowed. But true submission is a choice made in love. Jesus submitted to God’s will, even though He knew that meant pain, death, humiliation, and worst of all, separation from God. Jesus was no less God because He submitted; nor was He seen as weak or unable to think for Himself. He made the choice out of love and trust in the Father and love for us. Despite our strong wills, despite growing feminism, and despite our world-glorified “independence” from men, I really believe that there is a piece of us as women that longs to follow our men. I believe God designed that in us, the very same way we long to follow Him. Stormie Omartian, author of The Power of a Praying Wife, wrote “Submission is a matter of trusting in God more than trusting man.” Submission, she points out, is different from obedience. We are called to obey God, and to obey our parents. Those are the only two times God demands obedience.

And finally, we come to beauty. This one was a little hard for me to swallow. Woman, as the pinnacle of creation, was also the pinnacle of beauty. We were designed to reflect God’s beauty. This, too, disturbed in the Fall. What woman does not want to be more beautiful? What woman does not find it a struggle to see herself as beautiful? All it takes for a lot of women is a bad hair day, a pimple, or a makeup mishap to feel insecure, ineffective, or irritated for the entire day. Women, more so than men, gravitate toward appearances. Most men are well-groomed and care about looking presentable and professional. But no man I know cares that his eyelashes aren’t long and curly enough, that his lips aren’t red and full enough, that his cheeks don’t glow like J. Lo’s, that his skin isn’t smooth and flawless like a baby’s. Why do you think the cosmetic industry is such a huge industry? Because women do not believe that they are beautiful, not without work and the truth of the Lord anyway. No woman I know would ever agree that she is beautiful just the way she is, that she wouldn’t change a single thing about herself given the chance. The women of the Bible were always described as beautiful, in heart and in physical beauty. Sarah, Rachel, Rebekah, Esther, Mary…God designed them to stand out physically, but also in spirit and in reliance on the Lord. Physical beauty was designed to be enhanced by our trust and love for God and righteousness. God designed women to long for beauty, both in herself and for her surroundings. It is a gateway to seek Him, the most beautiful, the Artist of beauty.

So here we are. This is what the Lord has been saying to me, as a woman, a daughter, a wife, and a mother. We are divinely feminine, a purposeful masterpiece deemed beautiful, the reflection of the Lord’s softer, gentler side. While God spoke everything else into existence, He fashioned Eve carefully, uninterrupted, an Artist carving and glossing the grand piece that is woman, the finishing touch to His glorious creation. We were designed, not called, and we are beautiful.
Because we were designed with a specific role intended for us, it is important not to revolt against the Author, but instead embrace our calling and entrust our role to God. We were fashioned with a specific design in mind, in God’s mind, and once we turn each aspect over to the Lord, He will use them to reflect His heart more accurately, His gentleness, grace, emotions, and beauty.

So anyway, sorry for being so long-winded...hey! You didn't have to read it. ;)