To unpack the destruction of women and children, the key concept is this:  Insignificance.  It’s a word I use a lot, but find difficult to really convey.  It’s a tidy little word for an unbelievably cruel form of destruction.  Let me try to fill in the picture.

It has become clear to me that most of the atrocities in the world don’t file through an open door of hatred, malice, and rage.  The worst of the widespread worsts come through a much less noticeable and offensive door.  Insignificance.  It’s what is in place when a person cannot see another person as having worth, dignity, value.  It’s our incredible ability to look at another person and see…nothing.

Think of these difficult things from the past and present.  How does a Southern gentleman go to church on Sunday and sleep at night planning to sell a mother down the river away from her babies?  How does an English lord ponder the quality of his sherry while his stewards evict starving Irish families off their tiny plots of land?  How do Brahmins step without distress over diseased untouchables dying slowly in their path?  How does your cordial neighbor who’d happily grab your mail while you’re on vacation carry a strong conviction that a woman should be allowed to tear her child limb from limb in her womb, if she chooses?

This is the human condition.  Sure, there’s rage, there’s hatred, there’s anger.  Some slave owners, Nazis, Anglo-Irish aristocracy, pro-choice activists had or have rage and hatred for their victims.  But not most.  Mostly, there’s just numb, blind indifference in a fog of busy self-focus.  This is the sinful human heart…all of us.  When we look at certain kinds of people, we don’t see anything.  Make sense?

Insignificance is like a drab tablecloth that you don’t notice, and so never wonder what is underneath.  God NEVER, EVER, EVER does this.  Because He is LOVE, and love sees.  It’s actually, contrary to popular thought, the one thing that is NOT blind.  This is ALMOST beyond our comprehension.

I love this verse:  The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it?  So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”  And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.  Luke 13:15-17

THINK OF IT!  The Lord Jesus has to shake people awake from blind slumber.  THINK OF IT!  She’s a person.  A real person.  Think of her suffering.  Is she not worth more than an animal?  Does she not matter?  Can you not see her at all?  The pharisees were debating what was right.  Jesus was appalled by their blindness.  The woman was a nothing to them, worth less consideration than a valuable animal.

THIS is what women are fighting against, for centuries and generations and decades, all the way back to the curse, when we were told that our desire would be for our husband (a man), but that he would be consumed, desperate to overcome futility and uselessness in his toil.  She would be looking at him, and he would be looking at his hands.  Struggle, lack, and disappointment.  Enter:  the tablecloth.

I don’t know exactly what it was like for Eve before that, to have her husband’s complete delight, attention, to be fully satisfying, to be perfectly dignified, queened, beautiful, and fruitful.  To be completely significant.  But I imagine it was a little like the situation for a growing baby in the womb, enveloped in ceaseless embrace and total provision.  Just about perfect.  (Oh, and probably a lot like how it feels to encounter Jesus.)

Side note:  the quickest way for a woman to feel like she’s out from under the tablecloth is through her physical appearance.  Instant attention and recognition, the ability to pull a man’s eyes away from himself.  This is why you find new mommies dieting, exercising and obsessing about their post-baby figure.  This insanity does not come from post-partum hormones.  It comes from desperate fear of going under the tablecloth, being worthless, becoming a nothing.

There are a million ways women fight the tablecloth of insignificance.  Through usefulness, status, her work, education, ministry, philanthropy, birthing more children than her neighbor with less drugs, the whole vast array.  But when men leave women under the tablecloth, and women are busy fighting their way out, guess who gets left under there completely?

Children.

This is why you find women pumping breast milk in the office bathroom while her eight week old takes a bottle from a stranger.  This is why you find stay at home moms antsy, depressed, desperate for something to give their days meaning, actually seeking out busyness and preoccupation.  This is why our grandmas could take perfect care of the furniture, but tear ruthlessly into their daughters with criticism and control.  This is why the birthrate for Westerners is around 1.2-1.7, not even enough to replace the parents’ generation.

Children:  we just can’t see them.

Can’t perceive their worth.  Even if we would say they are our highest priority (just like most men would say their wife is the most important person in their world), we just don’t feel what they feel, aren’t engaged by their personhood, aren’t emotionally impacted or able to intuit their needs.

I’ve got to stop, b/c I’m trying to fit a book into a blog post.  There’s so much more to say.  I know I said I would offer something practical, though, so here’s a little bit of what the Lord’s been showing us as we’ve sought how to walk out of insignificance as mothers and as women.  We asked for some practical ways that a mother in Christ flies in the face of all this destruction and communicates significance to her children, rather than insignificance.  Here is the first of five:

1. Time with touch

• Unhurried time, b/c you ARE my agenda.  Even for moms who stay at home with their kids, it is so easy to find that the agenda has ceased to be the development and nurturing of the children.  It becomes practical, or distraction driven, or anything but focused on what they really need. ( E.G.  a child needs breakthrough out of rebellion, but the plan for the week is filled with fun activities.  What the child needs is to stay home and deal with the heart issues with discipline and intentionality, but instead, mom heads out and wrestles screaming child at tumbling, music, and the park.  Mom is exhausted and resentful.  Her agenda was in the way of seeing what was really needed.)
• Physical acceptance, laying down of the rights to my body.  Children needs TONS of touch, and having recently come from mom’s body, kind of perceive it as theirs.  :)  Mom is not a jungle gym by any means, but it is crucial to lay down the right to “personal space,” as the security that comes from physical closeness is irreplaceable.  No amount of college savings, hallmark cards, or a car at sixteen can make up for what is built in a child in the early years when mom is accessible for touch and physical comfort.
• Enjoyment of every aspect of the child, including their appearance.  When a child delights a parent, insignificance can’t get a foothold!  Letting delight cover every aspect of relating to your child is RIGHT and GOOD.  Celebrate their beauty!  Laugh at their jokes!  Highlight their talents!  Expect favor and goodness for them wherever they go.  They’re the Lord’s children!  Watch for little ways that fear and insignificance would steal from the celebration of your children.  The need to “tone it down” is not from God, and is useless in trying to teach humility or righteousness.
• “We are at peace.”  Mom= home and home = safety, peace…  This is what the world will not acknowledge.  In the early years, mom is home.  Dad is hugely important, of course, but mom is where the kids live, if you will.  They don’t care about what make the car is, if they have a spacious room, or about the pottery barn kids catalogue.  They need peace in the home, and where mom is is home.  Mom’s peace is the investment point, the urgent need of the hour, and represents the security of the children.  If Mom lives without peace, don’t waste time on non-essentials, and don’t bypass it.  Seek the Lord to find out why.  (E.G.  if mom lives busy and exhausted, Dad doesn’t just need to get her a pedicure, they need to seek the Lord and make changes, even if they’re major.)

Eight months ago, Suzanna and I started leading a small home group.  The goal was to train some couples on the power of the Gospel, freedom prayer, and discipleship.  After a few months, we realized that leading a small group into lasting transformation was much more fulfilling than constantly teaching larger groups the freedom class (which basically is an introduction to discipleship). For us, momentarily touching the tip of a giant iceberg with a group, seeing them temporarily engage, and then seeing them distracted again by the next conference, the next movement, the next big thing that seems better or more attractive than the Gospel was severely disappointing.   Our hearts have longed to see the people of God understand the Gospel as THE message, THE movement, THE answer for our generation and for this world.

The Lord has clearly shown us what the content and the message of the Gospel is.  We have understood and REJOICED in what a great power there is in Jesus to transform lives and to destroy the works of the devil in people’s lives.  But what we were lacking was an understanding of how to reproduce this on a large scale.

We have traveled to many places in the world to teach this restored understanding of the Gospel to other believers.  We have taught multiple groups of very hungry believers who have been so excited to hear about freedom and the power of Christ within.  During these times it has been so encouraging to see them engage for a few days or a week with the incredible power available to us in Christ to break strongholds and to come into freedom and joy.   However, when we would leave a place after a trip there or in the conversations with the believers one month, six months, or a year later, we would see how little lasting impact we were able to have.  We began to realize that a week of teaching, a conference here or there, even a special school do not equip a believer to walk in power or understanding.  Even in a large, healthy church with consistently good biblical teaching, personal discipleship can be lacking.  The disconnect between what is true theoretically and what is actually true in a person’s life is very strong.  This disconnect in the church is implanted so deep, that even quality teaching and an earnest personal desire to “be on fire for God” are not enough for the reformation needed to produce a church that multiplies.

So as we wrestled to know how to see God’s power, His truths, multiplied across the earth, an answer came from God that was so different than what I had expected.  Smaller, not bigger. As we accidentally stumbled into leading this home group that has become a home church, we realized that we had entered into a way of worship, a way of life, a mode of discipleship much more biblical than anything we had experienced before.

We starting moving forward with leading a small home church with a goal towards training individuals and families to walk in the power of the Gospel in every area of their lives from marriage to children to their interactions daily with other believers and with unbelievers.  We preached multiplication as a lifestyle, not a program or a class or a movement.  In the midst of this, we were sort of shell-shocked.  Most of our thinking up to this time had been on trying to get larger and larger groups into some sort of school or conference or training atmosphere where they could get free, get trained, and get ready to GO.  Now we were realizing how impossible and unproductive this was for the church as a whole.

Most believers are called to GO exactly where they are.  They have children and wives and families and jobs and houses and responsibilities to the community God has called them.  How then do we help these believers in bringing the Gospel where they are?  The answer is in the Gospel.  The answer is in Jesus.  The answer is in discipleship.  The answer is in the Church that Jesus is building.  A church of LIVING STONES, real people filled with Christ himself, the hope of glory, living out the Gospel and multiplying themselves where they are.

A book I have been reading is called Houses that Change the World by Wolfgang Simson.  In the beginning he lays out 15 Theses for how to change the basic structure of how we do church.  While I don’t think these changes are powerful in and of themselves, I see that they are God’s plan for the best structure to multiply the powerful message of the Gospel.  The core of this book is understanding the most basic truth of discipleship. In order to change the world with the Gospel, we have to have quality transformation at the most basic level, the individual believer, before we can see mass transformation and proclamation.

We have been exploring restoring significance, importance, and worth to women, and have decided it can’t be done.

Well, not that it can’t be done completely, but that it can’t be done in a vaccuum, divorced from the relationships that matter most to women.  Especially, women’s significance as mothers, carriers and nurturers of life.

In the later decades of the last century our culture (and subsequently much of the church) has tried to right centuries of wrongs, millions of mistreatments, and the utter degradation and abuse of women by freeing them from…the very core of who they are.

There’s so much to say about this, and I have an incredibly personal testimony of transformation, as a woman who desperately wanted to make a significant mark in this world and hated/desperately feared the role of motherhood.  I saw it as the least significant role I could possibly fulfill, a hefty distraction from what would be a truly worthwhile use of my “incredible talents.”  Over time, as my heart was being wooed to discipleship by the Lord Jesus, this attitude neatly conformed to new and more “eternal” goals.  I would do “significant” things for God.  Motherhood would hopefully not get in the way.

When I share it, my testimony can sound a little extreme, for a church girl.  But it’s not.  Friends, it’s no coincidence that my generation, about the same age as Roe v. Wade, has seen astonishing drop in birth rates worldwide, is having fewer babies later and later, is dropping them off at day-care to pursue more worthwhile endeavors, and as mothers are experiencing what often amounts to a daily nightmare of anxiety, isolation, and exhaustion.  Not to mention failure.

AAP, you can give us more booster seats for the couple children we can fit in our crossovers, or someone (Jesus) could actually HELP us by hearing a heart cry.  A heart cry to understand what in the world has happened to us as women in a world gone mad.  A world where the most important, life-altering, costly, exhausting, and miraculous marathon of our entire existence (in which we will produce a generation that replaces us ALL on the planet) is reduced to meeting basic physical needs under higher and higher pressures of fear with less and less time to do so, with almost no mentors, in often almost total isolation, in the face of general indifference of society (except for magazine covers that undress celebrities to expose how quickly they get back in shape) and with a generation of fathers who may have not even taken the time to marry us.

How can we be healed?

It did not heal me to be told I could be anything I wanted to be, and did not have to be a mother.  It did not restore me to tell my husband to split duties with me, fifty-fifty (this cannot be done).  It will not honor me to offer me more day-care choices subsidized by the government.  It will not free me to have the church elevate me into positions so I’m not “just a mom.”  Oh, and Parenting, get a clue.  There is not enough “me-time” in the world to soothe a mommy’s soul, which is even more exhausted and fragile than her sleepless body.  So quit offering that tired, old answer.

There is only one placed to be healed, to have dignity restored, to be returned to honor, to find abundant provision, to hear the WISDOM that finally brings peace.  It is the Father’s House, the HEART of God.  It is discovering how He feels about women, which can’t be done without understanding something of how he feels about children, which will lead to uncovering what a great charge He has commissioned to husbands/fathers.  This discovery is entirely unearthly.  It is LOVE, from start to finish.

There is so much to write on this topic.  I think I will pick it up in the next blog, when I want to talk about turning the tide practically.  Seeing that while God has designed that the generations be like a chain of love, significance, and identity all the way back to Him, satan has has sought to turn the chain into one where worthlessness, insignificance, and confusion get passed down from mother to child, generation to generation.  Hopefully, though my broad, dramatic strokes won’t speak to everyone’s situation, there’ll be something for every woman in it.  :)

As I approach the brink of being mom to a trio of boys (boy #3 will join us the end of April), instead of just a duo, I’ve been pondering what this means.  Especially on Saturday mornings.  On Saturday mornings, Judah has been playing in a little soccer league with a bunch of other preschoolers in a hilarious display of pure boyhood exerted on hapless little soccer balls they call “bobcats.”

“What happens if we touch ‘bob’ with our hands?  OWWWWWWWW!!!!!  That’s right!  He bites us!  We always use our feet!”  You get the picture.

Girls are welcome, too, and cute as pie with their little pink shin-guards and ribboned piggies.  But the boys…well, there are obviously way more of them, and unleashed on the itty-bitty turf fields, the boys are just TOO AWESOME.  I can’t help it.  I LOVE BOYS.

I love that they’re happy, that they can’t sit still, that they want to be in charge, that they cry over ego-bruises, that they yell when they try to whisper, and that they are filled with raw, boundless LIFE.

Back when I was a girl, I used to not like boys.  I don’t mean that I wasn’t attracted to them.  Just that I used to not like that they can’t sit still, used to HATE that they always wanted to be in charge, used to bruise their egos on purpose, used to try to shut them up, and despised their wildLIFE.  :(  I’m so sorry.

But God set me free.  He had to…so I could marry one of the wildest men of them all.  And then raise up three (thus far) MIGHTY MEN:  hard-charging, tender-hearted, free-spirited but self-controlled BOYS.  And considering God keeps giving them to OJ and me, I’ve realized He must be serious about how we do it.  So what’s been brewing in me on Saturday mornings is the beginnings of a manifesto.  A charter for manhood, if you will.  Some of the targets we’ll have in sight as we parent these small giants.  I’m sure we’ll modify it some over the years, but here goes:

The McDowell Mighty MAN-ifesto

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.       Mat. 22:36-38

1. We are like Jesus. Jesus Christ was the manliest man who ever was.  He was stronger, wiser, and more courageous than any king, sage, or hero before or after Him.  No one has led a stronger army, defeated more enemies, rescued more captives, conquered more of the world, sacrificed more painfully or loved more radically than He.

2. We are productive, not passive. In our generation, millions of males will waste their lives on video games and movies.  We were made to bear eternal fruit, and every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  We hate wasted lives.  We will rest well when it’s time, but first we will get to work.

3. We are hardcore. We are willing to be consistently intense.  We exercise our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  If we are smart, that is no excuse to be lazy.  If we are strong, that is no excuse to be a fool.  If we are gifted, that is no reason to be lofty.  We’ll do what we’re good at excellently, and do what we’re poor at better every time.

4. We love women. Women are what we are not and can never be.  They are other, they produce life, and they are sacred to the Lord, and so we carry an awe and reverence for each one, even if she will not carry it for herself.  No woman God assigns to our care will be forced to unduly protect, lead, or provide for her self, her honor, or her purity.

5. We guard children.  Our eyes are open, not shut, to the weak and the vulnerable.  Every time we meet a child we are encountering maximized opportunity to display God as loving Father, strong protector, and kind authority.  Every child is a mission field, and no ground is softer.

6. We are like Dad, and we like it that way. We were wired from birth to adore and emulate Dad.  Mommy knows that her boys will at some level hate themselves unless they honor Dad.  Dad is King in the home, and it is our privilege to honor him as the Mightiest Man of them all.

7.  We value time above money. Money comes and goes, but time just goes.  Our days in this life are very short, and every single one counts.   We will not fool ourselves into thinking we have used our time well because of how much money we’ve produced.  Jesus Christ came to save men’s souls.  We’re bold to use what is temporal blithely to buy what is eternal.

8. We have courageous hearts. Cowardly men go numb.  We “guard our hearts,” choosing to feel as tenderly as God does.  We will allow our hearts to hate evil, weep over injustice, cry out for mercy, delight in God, rejoice in triumph, and love passionately.

9.  We are always seeking wisdom. The fool hates correction, and the fool is doomed to destruction.  We  search for wisdom like silver and gold.  We’ll hunt high and low for good instruction and wise counsel.  However, we know how rare wisdom is, so while we live desperate for counsel, we’ll not take it from an unfruitful man or woman, no matter what their credentials may be.  We see through titles, positions, and professors, searching for the voices of those who fear the Lord.

10.  We were made to lead in our generation. To be great leaders, we can have no part with rebellion.  We’ll obey our parents to learn to obey the Lord.  We will honor our delegated authorities.  We know that if we agree to the tension of meeting pressure from authorities above us (either godly or ungodly) with a submitted, flexible spirit, while drawing our thoughts from immovable roots that go deep into the word of God, then we will find ourselves in God’s school of training for Great Men.

11.  We will laugh really, really hard just about every day. We’ll be clear about what’s serious, but anything else is fair game in the great contest to make our sister cry from laughing and our brother pee his pants.

12. We will remember that we were raised in a home with two parents who loved us and each other with all their hearts, prayed for us incessantly, and devoted themselves to discipling us in the fear of the Lord.  We will remember that in our generation, very few souls will have ever experienced that kind of love, security, and truth.  Because of this, we will not cease to preach the gospel, which opens the door of God’s family home to every orphaned soul in this entire world.  We will owe each person we meet a debt of love, give out constant grace, and remember that to whom much is given, much will be required.

Well, it’s time for our biannual apology for going offline!  We’re back, after many hours of shenanigans with our domain renewal.  Whew…thank goodness that the sharks who’ve been trying to buy “ojandsuz.com” for a few measly tens of thousands missed the chance to swoop in and steal it from under our noses.  :)

Oh, and after a LOOOONG hiatus from writing, my fingers are itching and my mind is whirling…and my belly is GROWING!  So while it could seem like I sure don’t have time for writing now, good sense tells me I’ve got loads of time compared to oh, say, the month of May…

So as long as I can reach the keyboard, I’m going to take the opportunity to get some things off my chest, while I have no such powers over the belly…which is not going anywhere…for another seven weeks.  :)

So…Sorry, hello again, and here we go!!!