When What God Asks of You Makes No Sense...

One day I felt the gentle touch of the Spirit of God impress upon my heart, “Don’t wear pants.” I answered, “Whaaaat! Are you sure?”

I continued my conversation with the Holy Spirit that morning: “But Joyce Meyer wears pants, and you use her, Jehovah. Do you still have to deal with her about that? And what about the pastor’s wife and the preacher you use so much up front?”

It was a long spring. I had no explanation I could give my husband, my sisters, or even my sisters at church. Only that “God took away my pants.” I couldn’t explain it to many other people, either. Sometimes I would simply say with a smile, “I’ve decided to wear skirts.” That was more readily accepted and understood than the former explanation. I wasn’t lying; it was true.

As I walked in faith, I noticed how my skirts and stockings and little shoes made me a delicate, tender woman. They made people stop to let me pass, pull out a chair for me, and treat me gently. My inner self began to change along with my outward appearance. I liked being treated as a woman, that special treatment a woman inspires—gentle, hers alone. A woman need not be someone who “can do it all,” but can be willing to be delicate, ready to anticipate and accept the sweet, kind offers of healthy men who, in their hearts, also long to be hospitable and to be needed by a healthy woman.

I came to know men I had never known were there, and I came to know a woman I had never known was there: me. A woman whose heart innately holds tenderness and the desire to be treated tenderly and pampered. I realized that what God had placed innately in me had been stifled by the great movement for women’s liberation, which continues to grow today and whose purpose is to establish no differences between men and women. That hidden desire, instilled in me by society, to be “supreme,” equal to or better than a man, with the same rights as a man, began to mean nothing in my life.

Everything that began to happen around me began to complement my womanhood. Wonderful! When I asked for help, I saw that it gave my sons, and even my husband, a sense of worth in being needed. From that, a new appreciation for men, both in my home and outside it, was born in my heart. I began to see men as strong beings, capable of coming to the rescue, and the part of me that thought she “could do it all” began to die. With its burial, some ghostly resentments that existed within me, though I could not see them, were buried too. I was living well, happily, but my Almighty God, who knows the heart of every woman and of the woman He formed—how He formed her and the order in which He formed her—knew that something was missing in me.

What is innate in me is not the desire to be a woman who lifts her foot as high as she can reach because she “wears the pants.” Deep inside, I was crying out for that innate way of being a woman “without pants,” while my attitude rebelled against men because they treated me like a woman “with pants.” I wanted gentle treatment. I didn’t know what was happening inside me: the delicate, tender woman had been stifled and could not be seen.

It was not long before this story reminded me of Eve in the garden and the offer of “more.” History had repeated itself once again, and I was the main character. I wear pants now, but inside me there is another outfit.

When what God asks of you makes no sense, do it with confidence. Amen.