"Carved to Adorn" Briefly Explained

People sometimes ask me if I considered myself a feminist. I don't like this question because the word has too many definitions for a straight answer, especially for someone who primarily identifies herself as a Christian. I have stayed clear of the label and the older I get, the more strongly I avoid it. But I do passionately care about the unique issues women face and am proud of our ability to openly discuss and debate these issues as independent beings made in God's image.

Our current ownership of the debate concerning womanhood, femininity, image, body, etc. is an amazing gift from the Creator after millennia of being the silent sex. I am impressed by these times in the West; women finally have education, financial independence, freedom from many forms of physical marring and deformity, abundant legal rights, and most importantly, our own voice. Never before have women held so much power.

But power is a cheating seducer. With sweet promises of fulfillment, freedom, and safety, women's empowerment led us to believe all can be made right. It did not, however, tell us about the loneliness, frustration, and compromise it would require in return. Where once womanhood was personified by heroines who sought escape from the doldrums of an uneducated and dependent existence, today's TV shows, movies, and literature depict women who can say and do as much as they want, but are plagued by an abysmal void within and isolation from true community without.

Both the secular and Christian conversations concerning womanhood have centered on rights and actions. We love to make issues black and white by discussing a person's given or denied ability to do something. What is not frequently discussed are attributes. We want to know what women can do, but forget to think about who women should to be. Of course, the two cannot be entirely separated. Who a person is will inform their actions and vice versa. But I believe this focus on female action is what has given women the freedom and ownership they now enjoy, while the neglect of thoughtful consideration towards character has in part lent a hand to the lonely aimlessness now plaguing women.

As I struggled in college with questions concerning femininity and womanhood, I came across Psalm 144:12. The second part of the verse reads, "...and our daughters will be like pillars, carved to adorn a palace..." I have not heard a more poetic description of God's view of womanhood. David is describing a time of rich blessing in the country and along with bountiful food, peaceful streets, and strapping young men, he writes this description of blessed women.

Why do I like it? First, the daughters are described as pillars. They are strong and unbreakable. They are admired for their ability, not for their weakness, which affirms the achievements and progress women have made in society. But second, the purpose these women are given is for the palace. They are not made to be alone; they don't function self-sufficiently. Rather, they are made to support the larger structure and faithfully lend it their individual strength. We are made to live in and for community and the modern woman needs to rethink her agenda if it excludes all but her own independent life.

Finally, we come to the name of this blog, my favorite part, "carved to adorn." Another translation uses the word "cut," another "sculptured," and yet another "hewn." These words do not imply an easy process for the pillar. It is not sheltered, nor is it pampered. Under the hands of a Craftsman, the pillar is put through a process that involves difficulty and struggle. But in the end, the pillar is beautiful, designed to display its hard won beauty for the delight of all who see the palace.

Women, God has created us to be strong. It is how he has made us. God created us to live in relationship, to use our strength for the "structures" we belong to, not for our own sakes. God carves each of us by giving us experiences, gifts, and trials. He gives us these that we might be a delight to those around us. We are carved to adorn...

~Hannah

I Met A Woman Yesterday

I met a woman yesterday. Some years ago, her mother-in-law committed suicide and blamed it on her daughter-in-law. This caused her husband to loose face as the local mob boss. Because his lost prestige was blamed on his wife, he took her to the city and sold her to work in a brothel. He came every week to collect his wife's earnings, but she had no freedom or right to leave. Their three children were scattered to the wind. By the time the youngest son was nine years old, he was in a roving countryside gang and already frequently raping young girls. The woman was eventually given an opportunity to leave the brothel and live in a safe house. While there, her husband found her and they both believed in Christ. The safe house searched for and relocated all three children who were reunited with their parents. Their lives have started to change and the parents are being trained vocationally, but recently her husband slipped and beat his wife to a pulp. All of them struggle with deep and harsh anger.

I met a woman yesterday. When she was a young girl, her father sold her into the sex trade in order to pay for a male relative's education. She does not know how old she was, but it is possible she was around the age of nine. Her owners kept her pumped with drugs in order to keep her passive. Everything about her life is a blur, but she is certain she not only worked in her own country, but was sold internationally and worked in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Eventually she made her way back here where she met a high ranking official in an internet bar. He made her his kept woman even though she continued to work in brothels. They have a son together. She eventually left the brothel and entered a safe house refusing to tell him its location. She openly talks about every person's craving for love and how it is only satisfied by the love of the Heavenly Father.

I met a woman yesterday. She gave birth to the most beautiful and healthy little boy six days ago. She was a prostitute and due to the physical harm it caused her, she should never have been able to have children. Last year, she married and this year she rejoices over the miracle of God redeeming "even down there."

~Hannah

Gender roles: What do Isak Dinesen and Swiss Family Robinson have in common?

Hannah recently brought to my attention the new movie Robin Hood and the fact that Marian is wielding a sword in the final battle, which just sort of seems ridiculous. The more I thought about it, the more I started to think about the fact that a lot of times, women fighting in action movies seems silly, and I began to wonder why that is.

It’s such a complicated issue. For most of Robin Hood I really enjoyed Marian’s character. I liked that she fought off the thieves back at her farm, and I think that many women would have (and should have) been capable of protecting themselves and their own. But when I saw her emerge from that helmet in the battle scene, I just started laughing, and it’s the same in lots of movies that have the obligatory heroine-in-battle-beating-on-the-men scene. But why, if, as a strong woman, I believe that women should be capable of many things, do scenes like that make me so annoyed?

Maybe part of it is the very fact that it’s obligatory. There are lots of great women in battle—in both movies and in books. Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings is a Snoke woman favorite, and there is nothing at all annoying or humorous about her participation in battle. But it seems like every movie has to have that scene with the female beating on everyone, and because of that, the women in those movies lose their originality. They are annoying because they are just more stereotypical butch women.

So why is it different for men? Again, this is a really complicated issue, and I have only been giving it serious thought for a couple hours now. But I think that there’s something deeper going on, and that it really comes down to a question of roles. Are there gender roles? Should there be certain things that fall to a woman and certain things that fall to a man? I think movies make a very strong statement when it comes to defining the roles of men and women, by the very fact that there are no specific roles.

I am NOT saying that women’s role is never to fight. Clearly, that is not the case, especially going back to Eowyn and the Snoke woman empowerment that arises from her example. But I think something has been lost, or maybe unnecessarily added, to the complications of identity in our society. There should be women warriors. Look at Deborah in the book of Judges. But arbitrarily sticking a woman in battle scenes just to prove the fact that she can do everything a man can cheapens what a woman is.

I’ve just read some of Isak Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales, a book in which she writes about the importance of roles. She doesn’t write specifically about gender, and I don’t agree with everything she has to say, but I do think she has a strong point. The characters in her stories always end up discovering that when they are resting in a role—playing a part, even—they have found true freedom. When the tension of trying to define, over and over, what they are is gone, they can live their lives freely, knowing that the important task is to fulfill their roles well.

I think Marian, and the heroines of movies like Robin Hood could learn from Dinesen’s stories. Those women, slashing around on horseback, just seem like they have something to prove. Women are trying so hard to define and redefine themselves in society, and it comes out in the insistence that they can do everything men can. Maybe they can do everything a man can. But maybe they should take Dinesen’s advice and rest in their role as a woman: a capable, confident woman, for sure. But a woman.



I was watching Swiss Family Robinson the other day for the first time in a few years, and it struck me that the portrayal of roles in that movie is phenomenal. This family gets shipwrecked on an island, and it’s a mother and father and their three sons, and then later they find another woman. The way the family is portrayed is great, from a life-giving point of view, because everyone has their role and they are not struggling the whole time to figure out who’s better or stronger or which gender is more dominant. Mother lets the boys work as much as they want cutting and sawing and running around without shirts. She works as much as she wants in her role as the mother. Father has the freedom to be a man, but he listens to his wife. The men are men, and the women are women—they all need each other. And in the end, when pirates attack them, all six of them stand side by side and defend themselves. Mother may be content to let her boys do the building and hunting, but when a pirate looms in front of her to attack, she shoots a hole right through him with her rifle. She is not a man. She doesn’t fight like a man—and that’s okay.

The more I experience life as a woman, the more I realize that sweetness comes from resting in my identity first in Christ, and second in the fact that I was created specifically. And part of that specificity is the fact that I am a woman. I don’t think women need to belittle men or try to become men to be true women. I think they need to take a lesson from Isak and Mother Robinson and realize that being a woman is a great thing. And being a woman means acting and thinking like one, no matter what the situation.

~Ruthie