Women

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Time has had her way with my body.

I think my moisturizing cream welcomes my wrinkles like long lost friends. The woman in the mirror is my mother. I see her in crystal blue eyes and hear her in my quick laughter. The lines around my mouth and the shadows under my eyes are hers too.

No matter what I do or what I wear, the truth is I am growing old.

But what about my spirit, what has age done to her?

She smiles secretly because she knows the answer to that question is pleasurable. Her ugliness has disappeared. The every day work of the Spirit makes her even more beautiful.

The yielded heart beats strong and true. Impatience no longer has her way and the screams of self are muffled by love for others. Complaints are silenced by gratitude. I no longer hurl insults or curse the morning light. With new eyes I see the truth. My God supplies all my needs in Christ Jesus. I move with a purpose because I walk in the Spirit.

I know my husband sees this aging body, but I hope he sees the gentle and quiet spirit shining out from the safe place of my heart. Does he see I have learned the true value of submission?

There’s a lot of chatter inside and outside the church about submission. It takes courage to submit. It takes bravery to yield to unanswered questions and questionable actions.

True submission trusts the Lord, not the husband.

Sarah showed the way when she kept silent in the shadow of her husband’s lie. “Tell them you are my sister.”

I can’t imagine what it was like to be thrown into a king’s harem. It must have been scary. Women sent there are never released. Sarah trusted her God to rescue her. Her trust was rewarded and the king never touched her.

In my yielding to the Lord, I trust Him to do a work in my husband’s spirit as well. In submission I am rescued from the world of selfdom.

It is a perilous thing to be wrong with God, but oh how freeing and joyous to be right with Him.

In God’s hands, I stand here an unfinished book. On the outside I’m wearing out, but on the inside He’s writing a new and beautiful story that ends with “and they lived happily ever after.”

This is true living picture of submission

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

1 Peter 3:1-6

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