Can’t Fool Me

By Rebekah Curtis

Adults love torturing young people by asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is a stupid question. For boys, the answer is, “A man.” For girls, the answer is, “A woman.” Duh.

What adults mean, of course, is, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” They’re asking what kind of job you want. It’s a question that, until about fifty years ago, no girl would have been asked.

In the past, a poor girl would have to work in a factory or a rich person’s house as soon as she was old enough and give the money to her parents. Girls from families that weren’t so poor would prepare for marriage by acquiring the skills needed to run a household. Then, they would get married and have children and move into the lives their mothers had. But nobody asked them what job they wanted, because everybody knew that their job was to take care of their families.

That’s still their job. It always has been. When Adam was alone in the garden, God made Eve to be “a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). No matter how much life has changed since then, studies show that it’s still almost always Mom who keeps the house livable, even if she’s away from it for most of the day.

This is why it’s really unfair to make girls think they’d better start climbing a career ladder that’s already crawling with dudes. It just means the girls are going to have twice as much work to do, because back at home there are still diapers to change and lasagnas to build and football jerseys to scrub with stain sticks. The world is so busy judging women for what they do that it doesn’t treasure who women are: the heart of the house, the people without whom a family’s life becomes a mess, the ones who care enough to make sure hair gets brushed and birthday presents get wrapped and Dad’s holey underwear gets replaced.

There are still women who have to work to provide for their families’ basic needs. There are also women who are successful in public careers. But when a woman marries and has children, she finds herself faced with a choice: keep devoting her time to her career, or let the career go to take care of the family God has given her. She actually can’t have it all. There just isn’t enough time in the day to become a CEO, or maybe just an office manager, and to be the mom that children need (which is more work than you might think).

The devil is this world’s prince, and he is a liar. He loves weakening families by confusing and dividing the attention of the person God created to hold that family together. In our time, he’s accomplished this by telling girls that they’re not respectable, smart, or worth anything if they don’t compete with guys in everything. He whispers in their ears at college fairs and career days, “Aren’t you going to do something with your life?”

You have to be able to smell a lie. You can’t outlift a guy in the weight room, but that doesn’t mean he’s better than you. It just means you’re different. The day will probably come when you will perform a feat no man could ever approach: you’ll become a mother. In the years that follow, maybe it will become a little clearer to you that nothing in human life is more important than what you’re doing as that baby’s mom. It’s so important that it had to be done to bring a baby Savior into the world. That baby was born to a girl who wasn’t a National Merit finalist and certainly wasn’t respected, since her reputation was shot after everyone heard she was pregnant. What she had going for her were her words of faith: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” She submitted to the will of God for her life, contrary as that will was to what this world and its prince had in mind for her.

So when someone asks you, “What do you want to be?” return that dishonest question with an honest answer. Tell them you’ll be what God makes you. If He makes you a wife and mother, do that job with all your gifts and energy, and don’t believe the lie that you’re worth less for it. Or if God blesses you with celibacy, show the world what a daughter of Eve looks like. She’s not a counterfeit man imitating gruffness and bravado but a gentle person whose virtues include industry and integrity, like every faithful woman, no matter what she does.

Mrs. Rebekah Curtis is married to Rev. Heath Curtis and resides in Worden, Illinois. Contact her at rmgcurtis@gmail.com.