The Burden of Equality
Lately, I’ve been wondering about the plight of yearning and pursuing equality. This has come about because of the longstanding discontent I’ve had with my husband about the skewedness I feel and see in his presence and proactive participation in building up and nurturing our friendship, marriage, family, and household.
Recently we were gifted a dishwasher. I’d lied to myself that perhaps that would solve the problem. But the dishes were never the problem.
What is the problem, Daughter?
I feel it’s true that, like many wives, I shoulder the bulk of the weight of carrying a marriage and family life while getting the short end of the benefits. I feel it’s true that as the automated Operations Officer of the home, my role seldom has breather moments, and my work often goes unnoticed, unless I have a burnout or end up in the hospital. It’s obvious that I’ve been reduced to a beast of burden.
Oftentimes being capable feels like a curse. My aunt once pleaded with me to never show a man that I am capable, instead I should nurse long nails and play the damsel diva. I did not listen, and more truly, I did not know how to be incapable when in fact I am highly capable. Like the A student teamed up with slow coaches and slackers, I’ve been annoyed that I’m often left to do most of the work while others benefit off my capacity.
I am starting to secretly agree with the pop culture maxims: I don’t need a man, don’t depend on a man, miss independent… basically, I am low-key becoming the thing I loathe: a political and ideological feminist.
The sad truth is I’m not completely wrong in my frustrations. Many men in our time are indeed cowardly. Having abdicated personal and pack responsibilities, most are nauseatingly passive. Like a beggar plucking out their eyes to elicit more pity, they choose disability by allowing laziness and selfishness to castrate their authority, masculinity, and power. And when they see female ability, great envy ensues and they persecute her in overt or passive abuse.
Yes, like me, many wives dim their light so as not to shine brightly upon the darkness in the males they live with. No wonder so many languish like caged birds in perpetual anxiety and depression from stifled potential and muzzled expression.
The cowardly man is a master at manipulation through gaslighting and breadcrumbing. He is referred to in many wives’ minds as another baby, instead of an equal and a husband.
You ask, what is the problem? I am completely frustrated because he demands not to be treated like a child, but he is not willing to mature and rise up to admirable and honorable manhood.
The Unspoken Truth
I see. Yet you are charged with submission, and you fail to reconcile submitting to a man-child. You continually lament but feel defeated, because you made your bed, and now you must lie in it.
Alone. Again tonight.
Yes, I can hear you thinking it: “while he plays video games, watches sports, or perversion on screens.” You feel this time you have of solitude is a bad thing, even excruciating. I wonder, why?
Is your company so loathsome that you cannot bear to be alone with yourself? And if you cannot bear to be alone with yourself, why should anyone else suffer you?
I know you’re startled and didn’t expect this blunt probe and feel like it is harsh. The truth often is, daughter. You have bought into a lie, and I want to show you how you’ve been short-changed, and that your grumbling over burdens you need not take on is foolish, because I have commanded you to do everything without grumbling. Therefore if there is anything you are doing half-heartedly, you are better off leaving it than crumbling under it.
There is truly nothing new under the sun. Just as it was in the garden of Eden, many women across time continue to be deceived and scammed of autonomy, authority, and joy.
Autonomy is a gift the Creator bestowed on humanity. It is one that is only enjoyed responsibly. For many women across history, the ability to act freely and independently is a right that has been severely suppressed to the extent that female heredity still struggles to reign with natural ease.
Instead, as a present-day female, you live in a time where your access to autonomy is suppressed by a continued belief in your oppressors’ narrative of who you must be, despite the screeching protests from deep within you.
Perhaps you hold fast to the incapacity narrative because you know that you are complicit in your oppression and the dissonance of who you are and who you allow to be is an excruciating jamming.
When Woman was created in the garden of Eden, she received the right to act with independence and freedom in the capacity of an agent of objective morality. She received every right to be fruitful, to increase in number, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to govern over all the earth, including herself.
The woman, however, used her right and capacity to act under the influence of her desires instead of obedience to her Maker. Moreover, she chose to not own up to her failure in favor of assigning blame. In this assignment, she relinquished her power of autonomy. Someone else now had the right to act on her behalf, imprisoning her to limited or no capacity and thereby keeping her oppressed time after time.
And so it is also for you, dear daughter. As long as you do not own your whole life—your attitudes, behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and well-being—you continue to forfeit the right to freedom.
Authority is the power we have been given over our own lives. How does the following statement make you feel?
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.“
Me before this meditation: Thoroughly vexed and indignant.
The focus of my probe above is not cincerned with the context or eschatology of this scripture, merely the statement in plain. In a hyper-feminist culture, such an utterance has conditioned women to lose their shit in protests. But on closer consideration, I find there is great wisdom for me, and perhaps you—if you would be true, if you would see.
I’ve been around many women who are consumed with teaching men and assuming the power to make decisions for men, yet they never teach themselves or own the right to make resolutions and enforce obedience over themselves. I was once such a woman, and for lesser and lesser parts, am still her. But thank God who delivers me daily from this needless and futile toil.
Eleanor learned this sweet truth one morning when, after expressing her aching need for intimacy with her husband, he chose to spend his evening watching videos. The following morning was a weekend, and as was his custom, he opened his computer at the breakfast table and proceeded to fiercely gaze at the videos that had become his passionate love.
Heart crushed and burning with searing sorrow, Eleanor thought for a moment to repeat her near-decade plea for his attention. But she remembered the wise counsel that a woman must not exercise authority over a man and should rather remain silent and quiet. She realized what she had authority over was her response. So she finished her food and went to another room to spend time with herself. She came from her retreat feeling empowered and strengthened in her dignity.
It is a truth as old as time that we have no power to truly make anyone do or be what we want. The bitter fruit of such efforts are grumbling, murmuring, and criticizing. These resorts erode self-esteem, but picking up the mantle of personal dictation begins to build a deep well of self-respect and enjoyment.
A Harvest of Joy
There’s a fallacy about partnership that leaves all who fall for it critically depressed. Except for the rare one percent, most unions are unequally yoked. At any given time, one of the parties is bound to contribute less or the bare minimum. This can lead to grumbling and diminishing joy for the party who is wired with conscientiousness.
But we’ve determined that grumbling is a thief of joy. Therefore, we must cease this rebellion.
I know submission has for the longest time been a dirty word, but I am finding that it is in accepting the truth and reality of individual autonomy and authority in our daily encounters that we can bear every unequally yoked toil with ease and joy.
You and I can only be and do what we decide we can be and do. If we decide we are incapable and dependent, we sentence ourselves to the gloom of endless disappointment and frustration. But if we submit to our God-given identity, ability, and capacity, we will reap the delicious harvest of joy, peaceful contentment, and personal fulfillment.
The Crowning
From infancy, little girls and boys are endearingly called princesses and princes. This has been a lifelong fascination to me. It seems we innately know that we were made to rule, and indeed, this is the very first command our Maker encoded. Following the corruption of sin, however, we now seek to have power over everything and everyone, but ourselves!
But we’ve already established that this, too, is futile.
Since that rude awakening breakfast, I continue to pursue reigning over myself first.
One way I am taking charge over myself is to cease grumbling about my burden as the default “operations developer, executive and manager” in the home. Choosing to assign personally meaningful reasons why I must do the mundane tasks, like the fact that I am a neat and tidy person who appreciates the peace and wellbeing a clean and organized living space provides for the residents, of whom I am one, helps. Doing it also in service so the other residents can be nourished by the solace that a clean environment provides elevates it from pure drudgery. But doing it primarily as unto my LORD is the ultimate “why” that revives me when I’m weary and launches me to soar when I am down and out.
It’s not easy. I admit, it is just about the hardest thing I will do for the rest of my life.
But do it, I must. Because in so doing, I rise from glory to glory, unburdening from baseness into the divinity and image of the Holy Deity who made me and crowned me to rule and sway myself and all things within my reign to greatness.
xoxo
Nimi
Kingdom Purposed Daughter 
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