Male and Female He Created Them!

If I’m being absolutely honest, I didn’t always appreciate being a woman. I once looked upon my “femaleness” as something of a burden.

As a young woman, cycles and the changing relationships with guy friends and all the other things I associated with becoming a woman seemed burdensome. Honestly, with all the pressure to go to Ivy league schools and “make something of myself”, getting married and having babies seemed to be a hindrance to all my hopes and dreams.

Without knowing it, the change in the culture around me had informed my ideas of what it meant to be a woman — and not for the better.

The conclusion I began to draw was that I needed to conform to the world’s standards, which basically boiled down to a woman must excel in a career in order to find fulfillment and she must avoid at all costs staying home and raising kids.

Sure, have a kid or two, the world told us, but as soon as you can, get back to achieving your goals in the workplace.

Which, of course, meant using contraception or delaying marriage until we had achieved our goals. This was the message I had seen in movies and the pressure I felt in the competitive and materialistic world I grew up on the North Shore of Chicago.

To be clear, my parents never taught us that, and in fact, they clearly showed us that family was way more important than achievements — but it was difficult to fight against the tsunami that was sweeping over the women of my generation.

We were on the edge of a precipice and we didn’t even know it. The precipice of chucking all femininity and everything that made us different from a man out the window and resolving to become like a man and live according to standards that were put forward by secular men and women in the world.

We were supposed to look like women — but act like men.

We were supposed to be the aggressor in romantic relationships (thank you Titanic for making that clear.) Make a lot of money. Spend a lot of money. Look like a million bucks at all time. Keep that figure (p.s. having babies were an obstacle to that), and break that glass ceiling when it came to our careers.

The problem with all of that, was that instead of allowing there to be a womanly standard of action, achievement and success in the world, we all had to conform to a very narrow-minded idea of “success” — a frankly very “masculine” version of success in which we were told to ignore or erase all signs of being a woman.

Embracing what made us different from a man was highly discouraged. Embracing our fertility, our curves, our ability to make a space a home and our ability to nurture others — embracing our gift of motherhood — that would be taking it way too far and was highly frowned upon as backwards and not living up to our full potential.

Which is ironic, because to fully embrace those aspects of our female soul that make us so different than men is to actually begin to live out our full potential. But the world tried at all costs to blind us to those gifts and that potential within us.

We were told to take the pill to avoid babies, because babies will only hold you back. We were told to aim for lawyer or doctor or at the very least a doctorate in some academic field, because otherwise you are wasting your gifts and talents.

We were told that our self-worth was rooted in what we did and how we looked — not in who we are and what God created us to be.

We were told the hierarchy was a bunch of oppressive men who only want to keep women down and that is why they speak out on contraception and abortion and anything that would help a woman achieve her goals.

Basically we were told to drink the cool-aid and shut up. Get in line. Never question the source of the message and do what we were told to do.

I guess what I’m trying to say is we were lied to — and those who began to recognize the lies in their own personal lives or in the misery of their friends and family who were following the “rule book” put forth as “the only way to live your life” began to grow.

It’s one of the reasons I decided to start a chastity program and share the good news about sex and babies. It’s one of the reasons why it took about seven years of marriage to finally begin to see the beauty and gift that is was to be a woman.

I love being a woman, and frankly, only in recent years have I truly begun to understand what it means to be a woman.

This isn’t to say a woman can’t work outside of the home and still be a true woman of God — on the contrary — as long as you prayerfully discern His call in your life, then you can still very much be a woman fully living out her call in the world and work outside of the home.

I’ve been able to work from home for our family business, and I love that, but I also love that those hours spent doing the books were hours that John didn’t have to spend in the office — and he could spend with our kids. My “working” was a way that ensured John had more time with our kids.

We are a team and we both recognize that family is way more important than worldly achievements, so however we can support each other so that we can both be actively involved in our kids lives is a very good thing, in my opinion.

But I would add to that, in those early years with babies, both mother and baby benefit from that time together. Truly, mom and baby need each other in those early years.

We learn so much about ourselves in those early years with babies. We learn to truly love without counting the cost, we learn to give and to serve and we gain a humility that is hard to achieve in any way other than being a mother with a bunch of littles.

People, those early years are so beautiful — but they are also incredibly humbling — and we need that humility to become the Saints the world needs us to be.

So don’t be afraid to chuck the world’s standards out the window and stay home with your babies. I promise you, anything you sacrifice, God will more than repay — in this life and the next — I promise!

Having said that, please moms let’s stop judging each other and each other’s decisions! I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and I hope you will do the same for me. Let’s support each other in the MOST IMPORTANT WORK THERE IS: raising up an immortal soul and preparing them for Heaven!

If this past year has taught us anything, there are many people who will follow the masses without questioning whether or not they might be headed off of a cliff in the process. I saw a meme recently which perfectly illustrates the point. Here is my own version of it.

The only way we are going to learn to truly embrace our womanhood is by carefully choosing good role models, reading good literature and avoiding just blindly following whatever is popular in the moment.

Ironically, the more we embrace who we are and who we were created to be, the more we embrace our femininity, the more joy we will discover in our lives — which is a win/win in my opinion, because that joy will speak far more than most anything else we can say about it.

So women of the world, embrace your femaleness, your particular Feminine Genius and you will leave a legacy of beauty wherever you go.

And for my male readers, I would encourage you to embrace your “maleness”, your God-given masculine genius and be the men we need you to be. Be the men the world needs to see and to be inspired by: men of courage and honor, sacrifice and love. Be that guy!

God created us male and female — and He created men and women to complement each other, to work together for a more beautiful world now and to get as many people as we possibly can to Heaven. So let’s work together in bringing about a civilization of love!

Let us go out and reflect that Light of Christ, the Truth of Christ in a world that is desperate for it. You go girl and guy reading this! I believe in you!

Have a great weekend.