As a woman, I understand that there have been many strides made in the corporate world as well as the sciences and other traditionally male careers.
This is a good thing.
Women bring a different perspective to the workplace. If a woman wants to be a CEO or a doctor or an attorney, she should be able to do so. Alternatively, if a woman wants to stay at home, or pursue a less demanding career, she should also be able to do so. Either way, she shouldn’t receive judgment for what she deems best for her and her family.
It seems that we are bombarded with messages about what women should be doing.
Women who work or have more demanding jobs are looked upon disdainfully because they are allowing someone else to “raise their children.” Women who stay at home or have less demanding careers are seen as “wasting their intelligence” because they want to focus on spending time with their families and raising their children.
Either way, we’re seen as failures to the outside world.
I think that we put all these expectations on ourselves because we WANT to be superwomen. We want to show the world that we can do everything and still be like June Cleaver: happy, graceful, and always put together. It may be that one woman is meant to be a doctor or lawyer and a mom, and she was given the faculties to manage it all with grace. It doesn’t mean that I was, and that’s okay because we aren’t all the same.
There’s only one voice we need to listen to in the din of criticism and judgment from the world:
The voice of Christ.
It is through him we have worth, no matter what the opinions of others may be.
When we focus on whether we are doing the will of God, we can let go of all the criticism and begin to have peace. If we do that, even though society may see us as failures, our God won’t, and I’ve found that I can accept—even embrace—being a failure in society’s eyes quite well in that case.
