Empowered to do what? And, exactly, what does empowering itself mean for a woman?
According to the Oxford dictionary: "Make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights."
There are articles and lists of ideas abounding of how to empower women. Most of those things are what most people seek, men and women alike. But it's only politically correct to empower women. Empowering seems to be rather gender-specific. Or discriminatory. Or anything but equitable.
Personally, I want to be equipped, not empowered. Equipped to fulfill responsibilities in my sphere of influence, in my marriage, in my home, toward my extended family, in my community of faith, toward my friends and those who need the touch of God's love and drawn to Him who are on the outside looking into the life of one who lives for more than this world and its achievements can offer.
I don't need (nor want) to be empowered to claim my own rights, to rise above others, to have my own dreams fulfilled at the expense of others, to have them pushed aside so I can get ahead, or to have position or rank or wealth or opportunity handed to me simply because I am a woman of the 21st century and he's a man. I don't want the freedom to be non-committal in relationships, to walk away when I feel the urge, nor to be open-ended in decisions. I don't need empowerment to prove myself. I see the desire for empowerment as empty and self-aggrandizing.
Give me, rather, opportunity to become equipped for whatever role I may be called to fill. No role is small. There are circumstances when I may be called elsewhere, but the home is central to life itself, to the welfare of a nation, certainly to the welfare of the children. We are seeing the results of a generation raised without their mothers, mothers who are themselves confused about who they are. We are living in an age of confused identity and suicide is at its height because of it. People are killing themselves because they see no hope in the vortex of present-day ideology.
Where is their guidance? Who is confusing and leading the children away? The Pied Piper, and he isn't after the rats. He is the rat. Who is home to even know he is whispering and shouting detrimental philosophies and dark thoughts and perversion into developing ears and minds and hearts? Mothers are at the office, on the construction crew, anywhere the paycheck is, while the children are trained by the philosophies of this present world system.
Women have been empowered, and as she says, Santa Baby, she doesn't need your stuff because she can buy it all herself. And do it all herself with just a little help from her friend empowerment. Or so she's been led to believe. Until one day when she says, "What has happened to me?"
No, don't empower me. Equip me and encourage me to fulfill my responsibilities, to develop and strengthen my abilities and capabilities in order to benefit and support others and in that glorify God, with the freedom to be who I am and who I need to be. And with that equipping, enabled by the Holy Spirit to be God-confident, not self-confident. To be selfless, not self-actualized.
Image ~ Young Woman Before a Mirror
William Merritt Chase, 1887
public domain via Wikimedia Commons
