as a child i am pretty confident i despised being a girl. i was surrounded with boys. i had two brothers and a dad. though my mom was there she was quite the tom boy. she was often sick and in the hospital which meant that we were headed to the brown’s house to play and they had three boys. so as far back as i can remember, it’s been me and the guys.
i never did girl scouts cause they just sold cookies but the boy scouts got to go camping and learned how to widdle a log into a sword. boys got to be adventurous. boys got to be “boys”.
i don’t remember when but i remember the moment i first read “captivating”. they talked about how woman was created as adam’s ezer kenegdo. many have translated it helpmate or helper. but it is so much more.
ezer is found 20 other times in the old testament. every time, with the exception of here, the word is used in description of God to His people. the way it is used in those verses is God as a helper and if He doesn’t come through, they won’t make it. i remember being hit by that. i had always assumed girls had a sissy role. had the left overs. i wanted to be on adventure! i wanted to build the swiss family robinson home in my backyard. but here i am reading that God created woman to be for man (to a degree) what God was for mankind.
ezer has two root words; one was power and the other was strength. kenegdo means counterpart equal. so in genesis 2:18 God was saying “i will make a power or strength corresponding to man”. woman was created to be his equal and his match. some translations even translate it as lifesaver. i began to understand that it was a phrase of honor, of significance, not an assignment to a lesser person, or a second-class individual.
how often as women do we let satan steal the purpose for which we were created?! i don’t mean that we should take on the world and be feminist because we are “equal” to man. we are. we are strong. but just because we can doesn’t mean we should. it wasn’t what we were created for. though we can make a way for ourselves, we weren’t created for that.
it is easier said than done especially as a single woman. to wait on a man pursuing you (making sure to do your part) is so hard. but it is so much better to hold out for position you were created for than to settle into something God never desired for you.
