If you're not old enough to remember June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver!, just use any old TV sitcom as an example! You know what I'm talking about. Come one! Even the worst kept TV houses look better than I can keep mine, even before I had kids as an excuse! I'll never forget the first time my mother visited us in the first house my husband and I ever lived in. Mom cane to the house and spent three days in utter shock at how clean it was. She did that for years. When I was younger, she used to describe me as her "little Martha Stewart." Of course, nearly 15 years and three kids later, she still thinks of me that way, but she also knows my house is rarely that clean anymore. Of course, she also knows that it wasn't always that clean even then. See my mother lives seven and a half hours from my home. It's pretty hard for her to sneak up on me! I usually have at least a day's notice if she's coming for a visit. Even if she's coming to see me because I'm ill or have just had surgery, I'm going to at least try to clean my house before she arrives!
It's the same with my mother-in-law. And SHE lives down the street! Actually, love her as I do, it is worse with her. She loves me like her own, but I'm the one with issues. Several years ago when they still lived 15 hours away, I spent three hours cleaning my bedroom before one of their visits. I think we spent about three minutes in the room the entire time they were visiting. What was wrong with me?
It's very simple. I call it a combination of some very potent role models. One is the Leave it to Beaver! mom and one is the Proverbs 31 woman. Yeah, I know. Why her? This could have been just as good without HER. But, just wait, there may be something here you actually haven't heard before.
So what do we do? Do we live like slobs in pretest of this unreachable ideal? Do we maintain a spotless home in hopes of attaining the unreachable ideal? No to both, but where do we draw the line between a cozy and lived-in home that's relatively clean and a spotless showplace that is worthy of multiple re-pins on Pinterest?
I've been in both types of homes (and re-pinned several myself) and I live in one. Can you guess which? Those of you who guessed cozy and lived-in would be correct (that is of course, if a little ground in pop tart on the carpet and a whoopie cushion on the couch are your definition of cozy). Is that the right answer for each of us? No. But that's not exactly the point. The point is, do we sometimes take so much time trying to be that Proverbs 31 woman that we neglect to be the woman that God wants? Sounds like the same thing, right? It may not be. Although Proverbs 31 is a genuine guideline, there are other female examples in the Bible that may guide us in other directions. The "Virtuous Woman" is not the only woman in the Bible that we could try to emulate. There may be some others that God placed there just for you.
Take Deborah and Jael, for examples. Some of you may or may not know wheir story. You can look it up in Judges 4, but I want to retell it in my own words: Judge Ehud, the Israelites' leader and protector, died. When he died, the Israelites started doing all sorts of bad things again. Maybe they were partying too much or stopped tithing or worshipping, or maybe they weren't raising their children right, or they drank too much or they sold themselves to the highest bidder. Maybe they just lied every now and then or didn't trust God, but whatever it was, they went right back to it. So, God gave them to this king named Jabin. Jabin may have been a half-okay guy, but he gave the command of Israel down to one of his army captains, Sisera. Sisera was one bad dude. He was the kind of guy you wouldn't want to meet in any alley, much less a dark one. He had nine hundred tanks, swords tipped with Tungsten steel and he was the only guy in the military with that specially designed Navy Seal Issue Titanium Watch. He was the stuff befor the term was even invented, and he oppressed the people. And not just for few months, for twenty years!!! And he was good at it.
Anyway, there was this judge named Deborah, the only woman judge, an dshe used to sit under a tree on the outskirts of the city and the people would come to her to settle their disputes.
One day, Deborah sent a message to Barak, who lived in Kadesh, near Naphtali. So, Barak goes to meet with our lady of the law, Deborah, and she tells him that hse is sick and tired of Sisera treating God's people badly and if he will gather an army of ten thousand men, she will hand over Sisera.
Barak, being the big strong man that he was, said, "Okay, but only if you go with me." Well, our Deborah told him of course she would go, but he wouldn't get any credit. THEN she told him that the Lord would allow a woman to get the privilege of defeating Sisera.
So Barak and Deborah go out to battle Sisera's army, and just as Deborah had prophesied, God delivered the army into the hands of the Israelites. All of the army that is, except Sisera, who ran.
Enter our other sister, Jael (Jael was a housewife, too) Jael's husband, Heber, was at peace with King Jabin and his armies, and Sisera ran to her tent to seek help. And Jael ran out to meet him.
"Come into my tent, master! Come in. Don't be afraid." So he went in and she put him to bed with a glass of warm milk and a bowl of chicken soup. BUT, while Sisera was sleeping off his retreat, Jael did what only an ingenious woman inspired by God could do. She took a hammer and one of the nails out of her tent (think tent peg), snuck up on Sisera while he was in a deep sleep, and well, I think you can guess or remember the rest, but I'm rather fond of the way the King James translation puts it. "Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him, Come, and I will shew thee the man whom thou seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples." (Judges 4:21-22)
So our Jael took the hammer and the tent peg, drove it through both temples and then ran out of her tent to catch Barak and tell him that the man he was chasing lay dead in her home! Talk about extra clutter! "Hey, somebody, come and get the dead man, he's cluttering up my guest room!"
Deborah was a woman of the law, a judge. Jael was a housewife. They worked together to carry out God's will. It was something neither of them could have done alone, and it was also something neither could have done if they were busier trying to be the perfect June Cleaver/Virtuous Woman clone than the right kind of Christian woman.
As our kids return to school and we begin again those busy school days lives, our desire should be to seek God's perfect will for our individual life, not to try to recreate a sitcom wife. Maybe it's time for us moms and wives to go back to school ourselves. There are a lot of great Bible study groups out there, not to mention Sunday School. Maybe all of us June Cleaver wannabes need to go back to school a little ourselves. Perhaps, if we spend a little more time reading our Bibles and searching God's voice while we let the dust gather, we may notice a cleaner home inside our hearts and be less concerned with June's kitchen.
