This may be one of my favorite quotes in the world.
And it’s so hard to choose just one.
Being in a very authoritarian marriage, where our church preached something called “Spiritual Authority”, a concept backed up by many biblical scriptures,
A woman was to submit to her husband whenever there was an impasse in decision making.
Example, (a benign one)
Man wants to spend 100$ on item A.
Woman wants to spend 100$ on item B.
Conflict.
Man pulls submission card.
The end.
Maybe the woman’s choice was for the family instead of herself.
Maybe it was the wiser choice.
If a man is not humble enough to consider the intelligence of his wife…
If a man is selfish and has lost sight of his mission to be a servant to his family, to follow the example of Christ, who washed the feet of all twelve of his disciples,
Who died for them and for us,
If a man is short-tempered, and full of himself, loving himself before his wife and children,
He could snap at his wife right away, pulling the “I’m the boss around here.” reminder card out of his pocket, and silencing her.
I didn’t do many things I wanted to do because I obeyed.
I didn’t work,
Attend college,
Or Pursue a career.
Grow as a human.
As an intellectual.
I educated myself with Readers Digest Classics and other books I’d check out or purchase.
Mi mente tenia hambre.
My mind was hungry.
What a revelation, to read _Jane Eyre_.
To read of a girl, lost and rejected, mistreated,
Then placed in an orphanage to be mistreated further, but to find a friend who taught her about God.
There, Jane and Helen learned what true godliness was, even as religion in its unyielding granite-like hardness oppressed them.
They created a warm nucleus of friendship and learning of Christ and they existed that way until Helen died.
Jane is plain.
And poor.
But her spirit found expression in her resolve to survive and in her sketches.
And a very strong and stern man fell in love with her.
He was married, though, to a mentally-infirmed woman watched over night and day by nurses he hired.
He fell in love with Jane and asked her to run away with him as man and wife where no one would know them.
During this moment of decision, she finds strength to rise up from within, to remain true to her values despite her desperate desire to say yes, and she protects her individuality, preserving her freedom.
Charlotte Brontê, alias Currer Bell,
In the 1800s,
Was setting women free in their hearts through her writing.
She sets people free today.
She lies in a grave but her words remain full of life,
Full of deliverance.
Exhortation to stand.
To not deny one’s self.
To allow the soul to branch out into greatness.
Despite what others, even those loved most, say.
I look back at the history of intermittent violence in my marriage with a bit of shame.
My cousin (who survived cancer) asked me one night,
She and I were lying in bed together last August, for she’d come up from the Carolinas for a family reunion after her strength returned,
and we slept in the same room…
She asked me, “Why did you stay?”
How do I explain to my cousin, a fighter of, and victor over the invisible clutches of cancer, why I would stay in such a union, when I could have simply got into a car and driven away from it?
I had many answers and zero answers.
There ::is:: a helpless remorse that accompanies regret, and if I allowed it to, it would destroy me.
Like a thick gray cloud of smoke invades the lungs, remorse would invade any man’s senses until they ceased to try anymore.
It’s an ugly emotion and must be taken by the horns and forced to do good in a mind.
Become fuel that drives a body to rise up from ashes and live better.
Stronger.
No net of guilt.
No net of anguish.
Instead,
A Strong-Hearted human being who is NOT a trembling bird,
But a human with…
An independent will
That won’t be bent or twisted into a warped thing ever again.
The only chains I will ever have,
will be the chains that bind my heart to the heart of God,
who loved me ,
who designed me ,
who gave himself for me,
and who saw each tear when they fell.
Golden bonds of love we have,
Holding us together.
And it is He who works in me still,
Both to desire,
And do,
His will.
Even as he’s given me my own,
And the freedom that goes with it.
God Bless Currer Bell.
And Jane.
And Helen Burns who died prematurely,
But not before she shone the light of true Christianity in the freezing corridors where religion cast its shadow.
-leah
...Just Thoughts... 