This blog post has been fermenting in my head for quite a while now, but I've found it difficult to put what I want to express into a framework that makes it understandable. It started out as a testimony to the great diversity of interests and drives God is developing in me, then it moved to a more social statement on not putting women in a box. But then, I experienced a situation a couple days ago that threw everything into a different relief.
I was speaking with some fellow students on the steps of the library, when the conversation turned to a (female) professor I had my first semester who informed one of my classmates (to paraphrase), "In the academic world, a woman is only as worthy and respected as her highest degree. Do not give up an academic career for a husband and family." Needless to say, I highly disagree with this statement, and I expected my listeners to have a similar reaction. However, one of my friends replied simply, "Well, yes, a woman does have to make that choice [between academia and having a family]." I was taken aback by her statement and decided to steer the conversation a different direction, not knowing what my response would be if we continued down that train of thought. I found myself filled with frustration, agitation, dejection, outrage.
In examining these emotions, I had to ask myself, why? Why would her opinion produce such emotions inside me? Why do I get up in arms when such attitudes are put forth?
The easy answer is that I believe I can do anything, even be both an academic and a wife/mother. But that's a terribly wrong answer. If I put that down on God's midterm exam of life, the Great Teacher would probably flunk me. Truth be told, the easy answer is entirely selfish and wholly impossible. If it's a situation of "I can be anything I put my mind to," then I need to seriously re-examine my life decisions, because right now, my mental acuity comes desperately short of holding life together, and we don't even have kids. On my own merits, life falls apart.
Thankfully, the hard answer--the correct answer--is also the grace-full answer: I can be an academic, a wife, a mother, a musician, a liturgist, a "canner," a chef, and a theologian because God has called me. God has called me to be myself, and as the Creator, God has created and continues to create in me a complexity of desires and gifts and talents. In listening to the call and diving head first into God's plan, I am given the freedom and the strength and the joy of making the only choice that matters: to follow.
As much as I may want to roar when my moderate-feminist sensibilities are affronted, the security of resting my identity in the pinions of the Most High urges a different reaction--quiet affirmation. We live in a world--in secular and sacred venues--where women are shoved into boxes. An academic woman is only as good as her highest degree. A stay at home mom gives up the opportunity to develop her mind. To be "this" means you can't be "that." And everyone on either side of the argument employs themselves in judging the opposite contingency. In all the noise of fighting and in-fighting to figure out a woman's place in the world, we forget the power of a gentle touch, a whispered encouragement, a welcoming embrace. Even the Psalmist, in the middle of his descriptions of God as a rock and a Helper in battle remembers, "You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand upholds me; and Your gentleness makes me great. You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped." [Psalm 18:35-36]
Rather than add a voice to the throng, I choose to gently listen and quietly affirm:
Women, you can be all God calls you to be. Listen and go!