Me, a wife? Snerk.

Proverbs 31 and other wifely things.

²⁹ “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”

Yeah.  Noble things.  I don't do many noble things.  Proverbs 31:10-31 speak of a wife and woman of amazing character.  But it's not an incomprehensible list.  It's not a hard list.  It just speaks of a wife of noble character who watches over her household.

²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.

Now this part, I sort of have nailed?  Dignity, not so much.  I'm not a terribly dignified person.  I prefer not to be, I'm a goofcake.  But I like to think I have reached a place where I can face obstacles with dignity.  

¹¹ In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.

I'm not usually a malicious talker.  I've borne the brunt of gossip before, and prefer to not indulge.  Sometimes the church frustrates me, because there's still so much gossip going on.



I've also struggled with the whole submitting thing for.  Well, years.  I don't submit well.  I have a horrid love/hate struggle with authority.  On one hand, with authority, expectations are usually clearly defined.  On the other hand, I feel as if there's someone breathing down my neck, demanding me to live up to these things.

I just searched for bible verses on husbands, and found a slew of them regarding submitting.  However, I found it interesting that almost all mention wives should submit to their husbands the way we submit to the church.  And I realized there's nothing wrong with that.  I try and submit to God (though I'm a bossy managing sort, so He has his hands full there!) so what is so hard with submitting to my spouse the way I try and submit to God?  It doesn't mean roll over and let go of all the things that make me, well, me.  It means I should follow his lead, bear him up and praise him, and take care of him.  Yes, I know there are times when this doesn't work, but thank God I'm in a relationship where this isn't hard.  Often.  (I had to.)

Body and soul.

Alan recently lent me a cd to listen to, From Love, By Love, For Love, by Father Michael Schmitz.

I was blown away.

In the Protestant version of body and soul ideas, the spirit is the big deal.  Bodies are left behind, but the soul is forever.  In Catholicism, the emphasis is on both body and soul.  That one was new to me, and yeah, I've never really been the type to take special care of what I considered my shell.  No, I wasn't the type to abuse my body, but I never took much interest in it, other than (to be a snot) almost gloat over how much taller and built I was over most other folks.  Other than that, it was a shell, the outer layer of what I presented to the world.

I smoke.  Well, hopefully after today, it'll be the start of a lot of not smoking.  It's been a heckuva battle.  I started when I was young, to add a dimension of this tough girl image I was working to form.  I have a stupidly soft heart, and was afraid of being hurt, so smoking goes a long way to show how much of a hardcase one can be.  Or how stupid one can be.  I did quit before I married my ex-husband, and stayed smoke free for several years.  Then we got divorced, and I started again.

I'm thirty seven.  My mother has COPD.  My grandmother had emphysema.  My great-grandmother dipped snuff for years, and ended up with mouth cancer, which contributed to her death.  You'd think this would discourage me from smoking...

But now, we're gonna give it another shot.

Welcome to my brain on God.

Life never ceases to amuse me. I'm engaged to a Catholic, and I came from a strong Protestant background. Alan, the fiancé, refers to me as a "free agent," which is true. I've been dissatisfied with the church as of late, and have been attending Mass with him. I get more out of the homilies the priests give than I've gotten out of the Protestant preachers in the past goodness knows how long.

We'll see where that takes me. Hah, wrote "tames" at first. Interesting.