Empowerment through Submission
Have you ever had to lay down your dreams for someone? Did it feel like you were doing the right thing? Did it FEEL good or did you feel like something died inside? If I were completely honest, my experience of laying down my dreams and ambitions transpired so unexpectedly, it felt like a burial without a memorial service, and I was the only one in attendance. Here is the story of my promotion from a position of a leader to a helper in submission.
If you have read my introductory post, you already know that I was born into a Christian family, grew up with eight siblings, and had immigrated to the United States with my parents as a child. We all had to learn the new language and culture. That process took up most of my childhood years.
I am blessed to have been raised by a true woman of faith, who displayed by her daily life what trusting the Lord really looks like. Because of her example, I committed myself to Jesus and made a public declaration of my faith when I was nine years old. To this day, I am certain that my commitment to Jesus at a young age is, by far, the best decision I have ever made.
At the age of sixteen, my pastor placed me as the leader of the worship ministry at our church. Most likely NOT due to my vocal talent or musical gifting. I was after God’s heart, with all of my heart and all of my strength. I wanted to be a part of everything that happened at the church. I participated in organizing children’s summer camps, taught Sunday school classes, gathered teens for prayer, and preached AT them. My three younger brothers were the majority of the youth, who sat under my teaching, and they lived to tell about it!
In order to complete my college education sooner, I enrolled in the running start program at sixteen, earned my associates a year after graduating from high school, and enrolled at a university to earn a bachelors in psychology.
Since I was enrolled in college and had excellent grades, I was able to obtain employment with a government agency through a student worker program. Upon graduation, I was guaranteed a life-long career with a decent salary, great benefits, and a retirement plan. Needless to say, I wasn’t sitting around, waiting to be “rescued’’. I had a clear vision of where I wanted to go and a precise plan of how I was going to get there.
What I didn’t realize at the time and in that season of my life, was that God had His own vision of where He wanted me to be and how I was going to get there. He brought someone into my life at a time when I was so close to reaching what I have been striving for, and my life took a turn in a direction completely different from where I was headed. Why does He do that? Why does God “mess” things up when we least expect it?
I have discovered that His ways are better. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I had only a few more semesters left when Slavic got my attention, proposed, and we got married. I left my position of leadership and ministry at my church, began attending Slavic’s church, withdrew from all my courses at the university, and submitted my two week notice to my employer. All over the course of a few months.
The transition was so sudden, I didn’t really know how to step into my new position as a wife at first. I went from being a part of and leading in so many aspects of church life at my church to simply being Slavic’s wife. Instead of a degree and a career, I was learning to cook and keep the house clean. It makes me laugh just remembering how awkward I was in this new role.
My story of giving up my education, career, and position of leadership is definitely not the most dramatic, and I am not claiming it to be. I am certain that there are plenty of stories of women reaching much higher goals and achievements than I had. I am not claiming that women do not need a college education, neither am I claiming that my husband is in any way inferior to me. I am simply sharing my story.
What I am attempting to tackle here, is the tendency in modern culture to view women who do give up their ambitions to become wives and mothers as weak or oppressed, or both. The role of a helper, in general, is viewed as something undesirable and even demeaning. Yes, a wife is a helper to her husband. That is who God designed her to be. After fifteen years of marriage and raising five children together with Slavic, I can speak from experience that it takes quite a bit of strength and endurance to fill that role, and more than ambition and a college degree to fill it well.
The position of a helper is not limited to women, however. In the same season that I was learning to step into my role as a helper to my husband, I watched my husband give up his dream to move away and work as a missionary. He became a youth pastor instead, but not according to his own plans. That was over fifteen years ago, and he is still serving faithfully as the youth pastor because that is where his pastor wants him to be.
In a time when “Do Your Own Thing!” is the mantra and drum beat infusing every aspect of our society, submission and faithfulness is becoming less common. Jesus was tempted to do his own thing in the dessert by Satan, by his disciple Peter, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet he overcame every time through SUBMISSION and was FAITHFUL to the end, even enduring death on the cross. “Not my will, but yours be done” is the mantra, the drum beat of the Kingdom of Heaven, where we do not lord our positions over others, but live to lift up and edify others.
We hear the word “empowerment” so often, but what does it really mean and what is being implied? Cambridge dictionary defines empowerment as “the process of gaining freedom and power to do what you want or to control what happens to you.” Another source finished off its definition with something along the lines of “giving power to someone or something, especially pertaining to someone who had no power.” Unless we all compete for “first place”, we are not “empowered”? The phrase “Women’s Empowerment” is especially unpalatable to me. How condescending, disdainful, and ignorant to imply that, unless they compete for masculine roles, women are worthless living out the essence of who they are as helpers and mothers.
“Gaining freedom and power to do what you want” is not freedom, nor is it an indicator of power. Doing what you want always ends up in living in bondage to what you want. That is not freedom! Doing what you want doesn’t require much power; doing WHAT IS RIGHT does!
I’ll let you in on a little secret I’ve discovered through this journey of learning to be a helper: when you live to lift others up and help someone else succeed, you will never have to compete for your desired position. You will never feel like you need to defend your titles. You actually get to share in the victories and accomplishments of those you have walked alongside with, lifted up, and encouraged. That is why, for me, it is a joy to submit and be a helper.
True empowerment is accepting the position of a helper because a helper builds up and advances the vision of another. Filling the role of a helper is for the strong and unwavering. It takes true maturity, integrity of character, and endurance. People who truly understand the role of a helper don’t need to be empowered. They never lacked the power in the first place.
