Monday, October 14, 2013
On Why Being Called a Strong Woman Sometimes Bothers Me…
I get called a
strong woman a lot. At first, I took it as a compliment. And I usually still do. I am a strong and
assertive female who knows what I want with my life. I take care of things. I
put coolant in my car and change my furnace filters. I do on-the-fly plumbing
and plan birthday parties and work and go to graduate school. I am a strong
woman, but sometimes I feel like by using that is just a label that keeps
people from knowing the true complexity of who I am.
First of all. All
women who rely on the strength of the Lord do to whatever work God calls them
to are strong. I am not strong simply because I choose to operate in a male
dominated field. The stay at home mom is not weak because she doesn’t. That
choice requires a level of strength I will never understand until I have
children of my own. While it is true that my personality can be strong and my
dreams are strong and my God is strong, I don’t want strong to be a new badge
women use to start organizing ourselves into greater thans and less thans.
Another issue I
have with being called a strong woman? The assumption that I am always strong. Coupled
with the fact that I am an introvert who is unlikely to share lots of personal
information, I often feel left dangling on the edge of a cliff. People assume
that I am ok because I am strong and I clearly must have it figured out. I am
strong, but sometimes I am also weak. Sometimes I am at a loss and I don’t know
what to do but because I am “strong,” I don’t know how to ask for help.
A lot of that is
on me. I am continually reminded how I need to be more open and vulnerable with
people. I can’t really expect people to know when I am struggling if they don’t
know me. But some of that is on other people, particularly women. In our desire
to be strong (whatever that means for that particular woman), let us not allows
our strength to keep us from having support when we are weak.
Let us not allow strength to become another label we hide behind. You can be strong but you are so much more than that. If you are strong, you can also feel free to be weak. Because we serve a God who is always strong and it doesn't get much better than that.