Heavy and Holy
I hear a lot of discussion around the topic of the mental load that women carry. I don’t disagree that there is a heavy load and I feel the strain of it myself. Titus 2:4-5 speaks to this.
4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
-Titus 2:4-5
When I consider this passage, I think what we often miss is the perspective that this is a holy calling… To bear the mental load of the home and of the family. I don’t think the scripture is saying that women can’t work outside the walls of their home. I’m saying that the mental burden – the mental load – is a weight that women are called to carry and that in Christ and through his design we can.
Proper Form
There are two very important caveats to women being able to shoulder this burden. One is that we must abide in Christ and be filled with his spirit. John 15:5 tells us this plainly without Jesus we cannot accomplish what he has called us to do.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
- John 15:5
The other is that we carry it according to his design. Titus 2 tells us that young women are to be trained on how to bear this load by the older generation. This is something I feel is lacking in our current climate – even in the church. Rather than being trained, I see much of the time these young women fall into two categories: burden-less or ill-equipped.
Training and Sustaining
Young moms talk about how they lack “a village” to help them in motherhood. This desire is good - God has designed a community for us when we live in the pocket of his will. We’ve gotten comfortable outside of the roles and responsibilities God has established, and the reprocussions are becoming more and more apparent. Titus 2 calls the older generation to train the young women on how to efficiently care for their families. Training takes intentionality, time, and relational currency. This is not a one size fits all or one and done situation. The intention here is that these women would walk together, with the more experienced one showing and modeling the way. Young women should be neither burden-less nor ill-equipped. It is not that older women should take this burden from the younger altogether. This is unsustainable. There are so many older women in our culture caring for two families at once. It’s also not to be that they leave the younger generation to figure it out on their own (and judging them for how they do it wrong). Christ calls for the older women to come alongside the younger women and train them. This verse is not addressing mothers and daughters. This is a cultural expectation of how all of God’s daughters should interact with one another. This is a high calling - and just like most callings, is simple but not easy. I pray for redemption in this space. I pray for humility. I pray for courage. I pray for his will to be done.
