Walking Wounded

on being raised up in "traditional womanhood"

This is the fourth (and final) installment of my current substack series on my personal experience with being raised under complementarian theologies and my subsequent deconstruction from them. You can read the first post here,  the second post here and the third post here. 

Thank you for being gracious in receiving my story.

---

Where am I now?

After being raised in the tight fist of legalism and complementarianism, what has life been like as an adult with my own family? Writing this series has been more difficult than I anticipated. I’ve been forced to take a magnifying glass to some corners of my life that I haven’t thought about directly in years but still affect me daily. My hope in broaching the subjects of being raised complementarian (or as some would describe as hyper-complementarian but that’s such a mouthful), is that it would bring some nuance and perspective to this conversation. 

As parents we can’t see into the future. We don’t really know how the choices we make now will be translated into the soon-to-be adults we’re raising. All we can do is what we know. And then, as Maya Angelou said: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” 

Perhaps reading my story can help you do better. 

What now?

How did those teachings affect me as I entered womanhood? 

What's it like to be the “fruit” my parents were working so hard to see harvested? 

What do I wish was different about my upbringing and what would I keep the same? 

I’m a married woman. My husband and I have two children. He works an incredibly demanding job to bring in our primary income. I work an incredibly demanding job to be the primary caretaker/educator for our kids while also working part time. We’re thankful to have built a life together and life together is incredibly hard. 

I have complex trauma as a result of the systems I was raised under. It crippled my socialization and emotional bandwidth in ways I’m still trying to heal from. My husband is working through burnout from being held to the toxic masculine standard of the sole provider/protector of the home. Untangling his worth from that man-made idea has been a journey I wish he never had to take. 

One thing my parents did instill in me was the ability to always think critically and be ok with going against the grain if necessary. I’m thankful they taught me how to chart new courses and be uncomfortable. They didn’t have it easy by any means. It seems contradictory, but I’m willing to face issues like the resurgence of the trad-wife movement head on, in part, thanks to them.

His and Hers

When we got married, there were clearly defined roles assigned to us from our parents, pastor and mentors. 

As the husband, he will do this.

As the wife, she will submit to that. 

He will take on this for the family. 

She will do that. 

He will stay in his lane. 

She will stay in hers. 

Let not anyone separate how these roles should compliment one another, etc. 

It makes me wonder, who would we be if we’d grown up differently? Would we be further ahead in life? Could the thousands of dollars we’ve collectively had to spend on therapy just to function in the world have gone towards a better living situation for our kids? Was I predisposed to depression and anxiety because of my genetic makeup or was it the culture of holy shame I was nurtured under that has caused them to be life-long companions? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

What I do know is this: Jonathan and I have had to fight tooth and nail to divest ourselves from certain beliefs we grew up under. It’s made adulthood and parenthood a lonely, tender journey because we’re forging new paths far away from the ones our elders or ‘village’ said we had to take. At times, it's made our marriage stressful as we’ve navigated the different roles than the ones we were told made us “good spouses”. Doing the opposite of what you’ve been told made you ‘good’ in God’s eyes can be terrifying. Shame likes to follow those choices like a hound after a deer. Sometimes the fear and pain of forging new paths gets taken out on the one who loves you the closest. 

Making peace with loose ends

I wish I could wrap up this series with a healed up wholesome we-no-longer-struggle story. But I don’t have one. A small part of me is always angry. A small part of me is always grieving. Why didn’t anyone in power step in and actually read what the bible says about being a woman? Why didn’t anyone teach me that being a man isn’t about holding onto power but holding the ones you love up to Christ? Why did it take being dropped in the deep end of motherhood and mental health crisis to wake me up to everything I didn’t want to be?

And still, I see post after post from people with thousands of followers talking about how strict gender roles are God’s design, biologically hardwired into our bodies.

“Deep down, Women just want love and want to be at home and submit to their husbands.” They say. “Men want to be respected leaders working outside of the home as the primary provider of their family. Teach your children this. Bring them up in the way we say they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it.” 

Let me tell you: I’ve spent my whole life ‘departing’ from those belief systems.

The ones that told me becoming a mother who stayed home would be the sacred fulfillment my soul craved (spoiler alert: it wasn’t, but Jesus is). The ones that told me I had to vote Republican no matter what. The ones that told me America was the greatest nation in the world while glossing over hundreds of years of racial violence and systemic oppression towards people of color. The ones that told my husband he needed to be the absolute lone-wolf leader of the home and anything else was shaming his God-given manhood.

Like dismantling a house one brick at a time, it’s been a painstaking task to get back to the foundation of my faith underneath all of what man-made institutions have tried to pile on top of it. 

Twisted prosperity promises

I understand if it's difficult to read, but allow me to share with you what it took me years of therapy to realize: the ‘blessed and godly’ legacy those teachings promise to give if you follow them is a twisted form of prosperity gospel. It may not be promising you ‘health, wealth and happiness’, but it is promising a new generation protection from the evilness of the world. It’s telling you that if you check all these boxes you’ll be spared the heartache that comes after deviating from a human-shaped translation of God’s design. And it’s not true. 

We live in a broken world. We’re all born busted. And when certain ideologies come along and promise to shield your family from heartache it seems attractive, it seems safe. It seems as though you can substitute the hard work of trusting God in a world where others have free will for a set of extra-biblical rules that put you in control. While I am angry about how God’s truth has been twisted, I have compassion for those who taught it to me. They just wanted me safe. They just wanted me to be ok. 

Humans aren’t formulas. Your relationships with your spouse and children aren’t mathematical equations where you plug in numbers and get exactly the answer you want. Life is too big to be approached that way. And thankfully, God is bigger than anything humans try to use to circumvent the loving truth of His word. Holding onto this (sometimes with just the tip of my fingers) is what’s anchored me through the storm of being tossed about by bad theology. 

It’s been difficult for me to wrap up this series because I don’t like ending things on an in-between note. I like knowing the ‘right’ answers (a residual of the teaching I was raised under). I have a tendency to be a very black and white thinker. I like the superiority that comes with knowing I’m “right’. But holding myself to that standard broke my spiritual back with its weight. These days, I’m too tired to go around proving I’m right. These days, I just want to spiritually curl up on the couch and let Jesus sit nearby. These days I’m walking wounded and that’s ok. 

Even Jesus’ resurrected body was left with scars.