THE LIE I BELIEVED –
AND TAUGHT
Vicki Courtney
I plucked a well-worn Christian parenting book off my bookshelf one afternoon and, out of curiosity, began scanning the introduction.
It didn’ t take long before my eyes landed on a phrase common in many Christian parenting books from my young motherhood days. This particular book referenced motherhood as“ a high calling” and went on to declare it“ perhaps, the highest calling God can give a woman.” I grumbled under my breath, triggered at the false, impossibly heavy expectation that had been placed on mothers of my generation.
Sadly, the book I picked up was a book I had written years ago! I was part of the problem. At the time, I had sincerely believed that motherhood was a woman’ s highest calling, echoing what I had been taught over the years under the guise of biblical womanhood.
Biblical womanhood had become a catchall term of directives and expectations— many of which were nowhere to be found in Scripture— that determined whether a Christian woman was sufficiently living up to who she was“ meant to be.” Culture at large reinforced the expectation that a woman’ s life was incomplete without marriage and children.
8