11 Jun Femininity and Suffering

A few days ago, I put my hand on my wife Lacey’s stomach and felt our son moving for the first time. I suppose there were days when that was the only ultrasound people could get, and for me it had the same effect: a surreal moment of realizing there was a real human being growing inside my wife, and he was my son.

My hands aren’t overly large, but when they felt the little rumblings of my son who could fit inside my palm, I knew the substance of my own being more than I ever had before. Humility and pride reconcile in those moments. I felt the weight of both. For me, it was a rite of passage: I’m a father. I’m a man.

Psalm 127 tells us that we labor in vain to build a house (a/k/a a family) unless Yahweh Himself builds it. That’s why it makes sense for the Psalm to then say that children are a gift from God, and not something that our own toil can accomplish. So, if this is a rite of passage for me, it isn’t something I worked for. It was conferred upon me.

Lacey has been sick through most of her pregnancy. She’s over half way through now and thankfully the morning sickness (and evening sickness, and often noonday sickness) has finally subsided. And as joyful as she is in becoming a mother to our son, she has never felt any sickness that is as prolonged or potent as pregnancy, and she tells me very often that she’s “ready for him to be here.” But I’ve gotten to look her in the eyes and thank her for suffering for our family, and I doubt if either of us have ever been closer to what we were created for, she as wholly feminine, and I as wholly masculine, as we have ever been.

“I’m struck by the idea that her suffering, whether from pregnancy or otherwise, can confer manhood upon me.”

I’m struck by the idea that her suffering, whether from pregnancy or otherwise, can confer manhood upon me. When she nurtures life, intimacy, and beauty to the point of sacrifice, she lives out her distinctiveness as a woman. The surprising part is that I become more uniquely masculine as a result. The weight of God’s wise design for men and women would crush us if it didn’t give us exactly what we needed to become everything we were created to be. Or, put more solemnly, the weight of God’s wise design will crush us if we don’t live into its wisdom. I’ve seen it happen. It comes when the woman who desires love and devotion from a man does not own his cause, even when it means suffering for him. Along the way, she finds that she has compromised his ability to love her well, not because he doesn’t want to love her, but because she has disempowered him. Her struggle to live into her femininity for his sake contributes to his struggle to live into his masculinity for hers. I’ve sat across the table from that man, his strength dwindling and his masculinity locked up and suffocating. He has not had masculinity conferred upon him by one of the people from whom he most needs it.

I’m thankful that my wife’s pregnancy has shown me a picture of this. The more wholly feminine she becomes (by nurturing to the point of sacrifice), the more wholly masculine I become. And through both of us, God is building our house, and making us wholly who we were meant to be.

In your current season of life, how might you ennoble the men in your life (whether co-workers, friends, neighbors, bosses, husbands, or sons)? In what ways are you pursing your own comfort and avoiding the suffering which might strengthen and empower another?

-Jonathan Allston, Downtown