The Distaff Side

Our weekend retreat went beautifully. We started with 8 ladies on Friday night and the group settled down to 7 by Saturday morning. One of the girls couldn’t stay overnight due to obligations on Saturday. Another girl lives two minutes down the road in my neighborhood, so she spent the night in her own bed and joined us after breakfast Saturday morning.

Our topic of “Godliness & What’s Next to It” was well received and it was obvious that God had a plan for our ladies as each of the sessions unfolded. Our assistant teacher for our class, Sencery, led Friday night’s session entitled “A Clean Heart.” She focused on the heart of a woman and talked about our role and how we have clouded our own purposes by integrating man’s role into our own. Obviously there are situations and circumstances that require that in life, especially for the single mothers. However, she was referring to those of us who in an unbalanced fashion grab for the authority in our homes in an effort to remain in control of our lives. Escaping vulnerability because of fear of what will become of us if we give ourselves to our husbands and our God. It was a wonderful time of confession for many of the girls and there were tears shed and eyes opened. I don’t necessarily mean that these girls didn’t know that they shouldn’t be vulnerable at times. I think the key for many of them was realizing they weren’t alone in their fears and frustrations. I was sitting beside Sencery as she taught and just biting my lip because of the incredible way it was tying into the lesson I had planned for Saturday. God is so cool.

We were up bright and early on Saturday, had breakfast and sat around the table talking through our plans and getting to know each other better. I led our devotion right there in the kitchen and as I was finishing up the doorbell rang indicating time to start our first session “A Clean Home”. Sandi McDermon a professional house cleaner and owner of “Clean Blessings” was at the door, mop and broom in hand, ready to teach us some cleaning tips for our homes. She is a member of our church and I knew that she used to teach Sunday school so I felt she would be a good presenter for our group. We got a lot of good advice, learned a few things about cleaning solutions, overlooked areas, the best tools and little tricks to make our cleaning days more efficient. She brought a yard stick with a tube sock on one end fastened down with a rubber band and showed us how easy it is to run that under your refrigerator to get that nasty unseen mess out. I don’t know about you, but that is something I think of on a regular basis. I sweep my kitchen and envision that mess under there but never thought I could get to it without pulling out my entire fridge. No more excuses.

After Sandi left, I gave everyone a bathroom break and then dove right into our final session “A Clean Slate.” I began by explaining my own resource in preparing for this session. I had intended to either teach or find a way to communicate through someone else’ expertise, the benefits and process of organization. It’s a topic I love…but I’m not really terribly good at it. I did find a lot of useful teaching information online but the more I looked into it, the more I felt it was not what we were supposed to focus on.

I prayed, this is just days before I’m supposed to teach mind you, and on Thursday night I was a bit desperate. “I need to know what you want to say,” I told God. In the middle of the night I woke up with these words repeating in my head, “The distaff and the spindle.” Well, I recognized those words as part of the Prov. 31 list of female duties, but I haven’t read them recently, heard them recently or even thought about them recently. I took that as a Word from the Holy Spirit and went back to sleep.

I remembered to look them up when I got home from prayer meeting the next morning and found some interesting things. The distaff was a tool used in spinning of course but what I found most interesting was it’s uniquely female connotation. You can google it if you are curious, I don’t want to spend all my blogging time going into the details but to summarize it was considered so “feminine” that the female side of a family was referred to in Old English as “The Distaff Side.” Another phrase that stuck out to me in reading last week was “your gentleness has made me great.” That is part of verse 35 of Psalm 18. It is David speaking to God and I love that thought. I looked it up in the Amplified Bible and it says “your gentleness and condescension.” I hadn’t planned on going into the condescension part a whole lot but as the weekend revealed the needs and the frustrations of our women I realized it’s importance in the lesson. Many of our girls talked about the inability of their husbands to be a part of the family responsibilities. They don’t know how to dress the kids, put the dishes away or even notice the house needs attention. Condescension is needed in our homes in these areas and gentleness is our God given quality to pull it off. I encouraged our girls to say “thank you,” even when their three year old daughters are wearing striped tights, two different shoes, two shirts over each other that don’t match and no pants after daddy dresses them. Our inability to allow them to be wrong without criticizing is emasculating, discouraging and down right ugly. We can approach those things with gratefulness, it’s just a choice we have to make.

In our Friday night devotion I had talked about restoration and the concept of accepting that restoration as more than a one time clean up. I shared in a previous blog post how I had explained this to Owen one morning and I showed our girls an old picture of my buffet in the dining room before it was restored. It was found in my dad’s basement and was headed for the burn pile. It did not look anything like it’s current state. My point was not how changed the piece is, my point was it’s position. I used that platform to finish off our Saturday lesson. Knowing that you are a fully functioning woman of God, created for a purpose and restored to be seen and admired take the time to ask God what He desires for your life. I had each lady find a corner of the house for themselves and quietly make some notes about 1) Who they are and what they can do for the Kingdom and 2) Who their “fully restored” husband is and what he can do for the Kingdom. I explained that too often we see ourselves as restored but we do not dream from that position. We tend to dream through the filter of our faults, our scars, and our past. That is dreaming from the basement. We need to see ourselves on display in the dining room and allow ourselves to dream from there.

Our quiet, alone in the corner portion of the lesson lasted 10 to 15 minutes and then we congregated in the living room again for further discussion and to share what God had revealed to us. I don’t know that anyone received a lightning bolt revelation about what God wants for them or their family, but it was good practice none the less. They did, all, seem to have stronger convictions about their attitudes and approach with their children and their husbands. There were lots of tears, lots of testimonies and some great laughter to go with all of it. Everyone had something good to share. They all seemed to sit up straighter and in their confession and opened imagination toward themselves, they seemed to grow in their boldness and confidence with each other.

We all went to lunch together afterward and it was amazing how the lessons just seem to continue. We talked over lunch, comfortably, about mistakes we’ve made, experiences that God has used to teach us and how we have learned to lean on our husbands instead of pushing them down. More tears. More laughter and lots of hugs were had before we all went our separate ways. It was a great time.

I decided to create a new blog for our girls and my goal is to try to keep them encouraged in these areas. Keep them confessing those truths about themselves, that they are fully restored and that they are on display for God’s glory.

I’m already making plans for next year too.