Role Models vs. Titus Women
Did you ever have role models? There are wonderful women in our church that I have looked up to for years now. I have watched them raise their families, teach Sunday School, and hold various positions of notoriety in our town. I still think they “hung the moon”. But I think I held some unrealistic expectations of them. After all, they are human and they are capable of every emotion, good and bad. I just never saw their bad side.
Don’t think that something has happened to one of these women to make me change my mind about them. I am just realizing now that it’s time for me to stop aspiring to be one of them and to follow my own life’s plan. I can’t be them; I’m not them! It’s hard for me to think that maybe somewhere other little girls might be looking up to me, wanting to be like me. (And I don’t say this to be proud, I say it because I have a daughter that will hopefully want to be at least a little bit like me.)
So how do I be “all that I can be” without joining the army? How is it possible for me to aspire to be perfect, when I fall so laughably short? I keep running across these verses -
“…the older women [should] be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” – Titus 2:3-5 (NIV)
The New Living Translation says if the older women do these things, “then they will not bring shame on the word of God”. Wow. What a responsibility. I don’t claim to be old, but I know I’m older than most of the people I am around, and I know my life choices make me “older” than most. (being married, having kids, etc.)
So, I don’t want to be a role model. I want to be a Titus Woman. Next week I’ll pick out my costume. Hopefully it will have a cape.
Add comment March 15th, 2008