Soft-Girl Era

“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” Genesis 2:18. NIV.

                Why does no one talk about how hard it is to transition from being in your “hard girl era” to your “soft girl era”? If you’re unfamiliar with those terms, you are likely not alone since they are products of Gen Z. What living a “hardened life” essentially means is living in a season where your heart is hardened to the world, to God, and to anyone outside of your trusted circle. According to the internet, being in your “soft-girl era” is a “trend that involves a tender, sweet, and vulnerable personality.” Not that I’m not a typically nice and caring person, but I definitely had trouble with cynicism, sarcasm, and vulnerability.  If you are or were anything like me, your circle is/was VERY limited.  During this time, I was constantly stressed out, exhausted from the stress, depressed because of the exhaustion, suffering from the depression, which in turn, led to my children suffering. I felt like a constant failure all the time. I had no relationship with God other than pleas to help me. I didn’t understand what it meant to not only walk in faith but let go of my life and give it to Him.

                I met my now husband when I was 25, after being a single parent for seven years. From the get-go, I knew we were going to get married; you may call it fate or intuition, but I call it the grace of God. From the time I was eighteen, I prayed so heavily for a husband, to love me and my kids. However, what I didn’t know and what I believe God was saving me from, was myself. I had no idea what it took to be a wife, let alone a biblical one, a wife that God described throughout the Bible. We often fall in love with the verses that tell us how wives are supposed to be treated because it’s easy to be treated like what’s described in Ephesians,

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church”. 5:25-29.

Or in 1 Peter when Peter writes,

“Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of live, so that nothing with hinder your prayers.” 3:7

But what about what is says in Ephesians 5:22-25, the verses just before the one I wrote:

“Wives, submit yourself to your own husbands as you do the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

As easy as it was for me to accept the gift that God had given me and my kids, the man that my husband is, it’s another thing to be the wife that God called me to be. For years, I was a solo parent, I didn’t have a counterpart to lean on and much of my support system lived two hours away from me. Why I chose to move away from them is a mystery that I’m still figuring out but that’s a story for a different day. During the time that my husband and I met, and even before then, we were not walking with God and not in a relationship with him, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. We were truly walking in the dark.

                That is probably a testament to the choices that we were making, living together, obviously sleeping together, not going to church, indulging in drinking, gossiping, anger, etc. Thankfully, when we finally decided to take our relationship seriously with God, He poured His love out onto us and slowly cleansed us of those things, when it became a problem with our relationship. We started reading the Bible, having meaningful conversations that didn’t involve other people but theories on the Bible, our prayers, hearing God’s voice, listening to the Spirit rather than our flesh. Soon enough, our relationship with Christ started growing and becoming richer and more authentic, leading us away from choices that were leading us away from Him.

                One thing that I didn’t realize was keeping us from Him, that He started revealing to us shortly after we got married was the status of our house. We were claiming to live in Christ-centered household, and we truly thought we were until an argument we started having started becoming more prevalent. My husband is five years younger than me, and he was nineteen when we started dating. It’s a funny story to us but has the tendency to catch people off guard when we tell them, and when my husband tells people he’s 23 and has three kids: the oldest one being 11.

                We did not enter this relationship equally yoked, as the Bible tells us we should be. When we started dating, I was the “breadwinner”, the decision maker, the provider, the protector, and I took on all the roles that God specifically designed for the husband. I had always wondered why I was constantly stressed out, depressed, exhausted, and now I feel like I know why. I was taking on a role that was not meant for me and it was draining me.

                My husband is one of the most amazing men that I have ever met in my life, and my appreciation has become greater since he fully gave his life to Christ. He has given me that safe place to set my “hardened life” down and pick up this “soft-girl era”, however, even with giving me this safe place, that doesn’t mean I’m any less stubborn. Just like Jesus gives us a perfect love, it doesn’t mean we’re always ready to accept it. I would say up until January of this year, I wasn’t ready to give that role over and entrust it to my husband. I had so much pride and self-importance with the mindset that I carried the weight and burden of our family on my back. In my mind, the lie I bought into was that my employment and salary status was going to either make or break our family.

                As one could probably guess, my unwillingness to let go of the control and being “in charge” of our family caused some rifts in our relationship. I wasn’t meant to be the man, that I why God not only made me a woman, but he also made me a mother and a wife. I have a different calling on my life than my husband does, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit, to understand that. My husband’s spirit was having to battle my prideful flesh over who got to be the head of the household, let me tell you, that time was stressful.

                No one ever told me that, for one, it would be a problem that we would have to face within my marriage, and for two, how difficult it is to let go of a lie that the enemy told me. Don’t get me wrong, my husband is not out here bulldozing me, making decisions for me, or not letting me have a voice of my own. What it does mean is that my husband picked up the roles of being the provider, protector, and making decisions with me and allowed me to step back into my role of being the nurturer, caretaker, and peacemaker. I have to tell you; I feel like I can finally breathe again. I don’t feel as stressed out or exhausted, and I’m not as easily overwhelmed or overstimulated. Let’s face it, motherhood isn’t easy, and we’re still bound to feel negatively. To be honest, this blog post is the inspiration for the name of my website, I'm a daughter of the Lord, recovering from a mindset that I spent far too long in.

                 Now I can rest more easily knowing that God sent me a husband that wants to follow His will that he is willing to take on these roles and that submitting to him doesn’t mean I am subservient to him. I have a marriage that allows us to love each other in the ways that Jesus first loved us,

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to write this post and glorify you while doing so. I thank you for the readers that resonate with my story and know that You led them here to know that they are not alone. I ask that whoever reads this and finds comfort knows that the comfort that they are feeling is directly from You and that You have a plan for their life. I pray that if they are struggling the way that I did, that you settle their spirit and release the need for control that they have and fully surrender it to You. I ask that You soften their hearts to change and help them understand that even if the change that’s coming is scary, that You have already been before them and declared victory. I pray that they keep looking to You and know that Your plan is greater than theirs. Thank you, Jesus, for this time to connect. In Your name, I pray. Amen.