Last weekend, my husband and sons took a three-day canoe trip down a wild stretch of river that has poor cell service, no road access, and grand promises of adventure.
I have to admit, I was slightly terrified at the prospect at first.
It’s all well and good to want to be married to or raise a “real man” when this means being protected, provided for, and treated like a lady. But it can be a bit daunting when our manly men set out into the (literal) wilderness to test the full breadth of their masculinity.
This can often happen at a very basic level in women’s relationships or interactions with men. We might abstractly desire for them to embody masculinity but struggle to make peace with what this actually means when it reveals how they are different from women.
Because, let’s be real, men and women are indeed simply different.
As we women embrace our inherent femininity and the ways we are beautifully different from men, it is important to remember to equally cherish the ways men are different from us. This often means they face danger in a very different way, and that’s OK. We need them to do this.
Our husbands and sons were made to be men. And perhaps the worst way a woman can try to usurp God’s design for men is to try to stop them from being men.
Making peace with our menfolk’s inherent design is a very bold act of surrender, particularly when we surrender that deeply affectionate but misguided tendency to worry, mother, nag and try to control.
I want to be very clear that you’re not a bad wife or mother for worrying about your husband and sons. It’s only natural, and I wholly understand simply wanting them to be safe.
Yet trusting in their ability to fend for themselves is a critical — and rarely mentioned — component of practicing respect for men.
After all, are we as women going to keep them safe with our worrying and tut-tutting at their mannish displays? Hardly.
Men can and want to take care of women, and this means they must receive the message that we trust them to take care of themselves.
What I have found most liberating about this mentality in my own experience as a wife and mother of sons is that it ultimately boils down to surrendering to the soft, still voice of the Holy Spirit reminding me in a moment of anxiety in Whom I ought rather place my fear.
That is, in the Lord, and not the factors that might threaten the safety of my men.
Turns out, the rain, thunder and lightning I was afraid of before the guys set out on their trip did come crashing down after all.
And my boys, in all their young, manly determination to prove themselves on their wilderness adventure, displayed spectacularly good attitudes and rose above and beyond what was needed for the occasion.
My husband said they didn’t complain a single time, not even when they had to abandon camp in the middle of a storm and huddle under their canoe for shelter all night. Their very proud dad couldn’t stop commending them for what a great attitude they’d displayed and how well they’d done under very difficult circumstances.
Imagine if I’d been too fearful to give them this opportunity to grow as young men, as future providers, protectors and warriors.
Imagine if the message I conveyed to my sons was to let fear get in the way of aiming for greatness. And to my husband, that I didn’t trust him to keep them safe.
I do not want to raise fearful little boys. I want to raise strong, brave men who would show the same fortitude in the face of any adversity, particularly when young lives are threatened.
I want to raise boys who know that their father will protect them even at the cost of his own life, as he did when he scrambled to keep them safe in the storm, as he has countless times when our family has faced trials or even real danger and he’s risen to the occasion without stopping to think.
As it happens, he might have saved our dogs’ lives yesterday when he ran to grab a shotgun after discovering a 5-foot rattlesnake preparing to strike outside our house!
What if I had been the kind of woman to beg him to stay away and call Game and Fish to come remove the snake instead? What would that have conveyed to my husband?
A deep-seated lack of trust in his abilities as a man.
When we discuss femininity and submission, it can be so easy to anxiously focus on our own attitude, behavior and even appearance as the mark of a supposedly biblical woman.
But the woman who is content with her design as a woman is the woman who can be content with her husband’s and sons’ design as men.
Many a woman has inspired a man to greatness simply by trusting him to behave as God intended him to for the sake of keeping women and children safe and defending home and countrymen. That’s masculinity, and there’s nothing toxic about it.
Don’t underestimate your power to inspire greatness in the hearts of the men in your life.
Let him be a man, and he’ll love you for being a woman.
A version of this article first appeared in the Substack “A Homemaker’s Manifesto.”
