On having it all…or, How I learned to stop worrying about others’ expectations and became my own “woman of valor”

In January 2012, I wrote a blog post in reaction to a sermon preached at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas by a wonderfully insane Christian ethics professor at Baylor by the name of Jonathan Tran.  Aside from being wonderfully insane and a professor at Baylor, Tran is also, along with his lovely (and not insane) bride, Carrie, the leader/facilitator of the Young Professionals Sunday School class at Calvary.  Jonathan pointed out in his sermon that we (the church) spend far too much time trying to cater to our pre-conceived ideas of ideal church membership (a husband, a wife, and their 2.5 kids) that we often overlook the nowhere-near-married in our midst.  Young adulthood is a time of great learning, maturing, and figuring out one’s calling and purpose in life, and it should be appreciated as that, rather than seen as a time to speed quickly through on the way to “having it all,” whatever that means.

I reacted strongly (positively, yet strongly) to Jonathan’s sermon because I was dealing with all sorts of questions about what it meant to “have it all” and to “have a life” in the aftermath of finishing my PhD.  The past year has been spent continuing to reconcile where I am in life to where society expects me to be.  It has also been a pretty awesome year.  Not a lot of people can say they landed a teaching job at their dream school right out of the gate, and yet, here I am.  We’ve heard a lot this year about women and “having it all.”  “All,” as typically understood in American culture, includes a job at which a woman can excel and a family with a successful husband and Stepford children.  By this definition, I do NOT, in fact, have it all.  But I don’t see it that way.

One of my favorite bloggers is Rachel Held Evans.  Many, many times, I have read something she has written for the interwebz and said, “Yes!” almost immediately followed by, “I wish I could have said it that eloquently.”  But alas, bluntness, rather than eloquence, is much more my style.  So, of course, I was beyond excited to buy her new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  The premise of the book goes far beyond the idea of “biblical womanhood.”  It’s really about the dangers of picking and choosing which scripture to adhere to and uncritically discarding those passages that we find uncomfortable or “outdated.”  However, one of the features of Evans’ new book that she (and many of her readers) have truly latched on to is the notion of eshet chayil, or “woman of valor.”

In many evangelical circles, young women are taught to approach Proverbs 31 as a checklist—a whole rubric to discern where they fall short of being a “Godly woman.”  After all, evangelicals do enjoy a Bible-based guilt trip, even if the exegesis leaves something to be desired.  In correspondence with a rabbi’s wife in Israel, Evans discovers that, to the Jews, Proverbs 31 is not a checklist designed for women, but a blessing to women from their families.  In fact, Jewish men recite Proverbs 31 to their wives at the Sabbath table.  As Evans says, “Eshet chayil is at its core a blessing—one that is never meant to be earned, but to be given, unconditionally.”  Anything a woman does to her utmost can make her a woman of valor.

I may not “have it all,” indeed I reject the American ideal of such, but I have embraced the idea that even still, I can be a woman of valor:

• I may never have children of my own, but in counseling, nurturing, encouraging, and teaching classrooms full of college students, I am a woman of valor.
• I may not be a parent to two-legged children, but in caring for, amusing, loving, and nurturing my cats, I am a woman of valor.
• I may be an only child, but in loving my “niece” and “nephew,” supporting their parents, lifting up those families in prayer often, I am a woman of valor.
• I may never be the “go-to” commentator on all things related to the Middle East, but in doing whatever I can, whenever I can, wherever I can to correct faulty assumptions people have about Islam and Muslims, I am a woman of valor.
• My parents and I may not always get along perfectly, but in assisting them, communicating with them, and helping in times of medical uncertainty, I am a woman of valor.
• We may not in the same city or even, in some cases, in the same state, but in listening to, loving, and laughing with my friends, I am a woman of valor.

Over the past year or so, as I have contemplated what life as a “grown up” looks like and the pressures that women feel within American society, I have decided that we would all be a lot happier if we would tell society to take its expectations and shove them.  It’s not society’s expectations I ought to be concerned about, but my own.  If I am happy, if I am making contributions to society, if I am loved, if I love, then I am a woman of valor, irrespective of my marital status or any other ridiculous metric that society and especially America’s religious culture suggest ought to be applied.