Am I THAT Woman?

As we studied, yesterday, the Proverbs 31 woman...you remember her-- the Virtuous Woman, the perfect woman... I started to self-analyze. Maybe reflecting on the things that I do. The things that I say. Because, I have tried to measure up to her. The woman that I saw in my own grandmother. Cooking and cleaning and sewing, mending, caring for her children and her husband, serving in the church, hot meals and clean restrooms, teaching Sunday School and carting children, her own grandchildren, and others' to and from. She prayed with the women and sat on the front row. She affirmed the Pastor's words with her own, shaking her handkerchief at him with a little hoot or howl and a hearty AMEN! 

I recognized my own attempts to be all things to all people. Maybe because I thought that was what grandma did, certainly because I thought that's what that Proverbs 31 woman did. Everyone that touched me, I vowed would be affected by me. I would spread God's love through my actions. Then someone would be guilty of some transgression against me and I would lash out and forget who and what I was but I would assuredly be redeemed through my actions. Right?

But it was yesterday or maybe the day before in preparation for the lesson that I heard God's voice explain to me that it is not the actions of that woman that I am to emulate, it is the heart and the spirit and the attitude of that woman that I should hold in deference. I need a mind of servitude and a heart for it. I should do because that is who I am, not because that is how I think I should be. So, with a different outlook I took on the day. Serving, as my heart sings, my husband and my children. Serving not out of obligation or title, but simply out of love. Out of Love. 


What a revelation to understand that He did, not because of who He is, but because of who I am, and His love for little ol' me!