For starters!

Now for Ironman grandma

I love hearing stories of older people accomplishing incredible physical feats. It’s so inspiring to see people who you wouldn’t expect to be athletic, do crazy things. Earlier this week, my social media feed kept showing me this 80 year old woman who is now the oldest woman to finish the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. She happens to be from NJ too (go Jersey girl!)! She’s getting praised all over the place, very understandably! What she did was nothing short of amazing.

For those of you who don’t know, an Ironman is a 3.8 km (2.4 mi) swim in the ocean, 180 km (112 miles), bike ride, and a marathon (42 km/26.2 mi). Holey canolies is all I have to say. I’ve only run a few marathons BK, and that was plenty for me (FYI, ‘BK’ stands for Before Kids). It took hours of time to train for a marathon, so my mind explodes to think what training would look like for an Ironman.

Amazing mamas

But you know, after I was thinking about this, the LORD brought to my mind Allie Beth Stuckey and her Share the Arrows conference just a few weeks ago in Texas. On one of her more recent podcasts, she was talking about how she had a motherhood panel that had Abbie Halberstadt, a fellow mama of 10, and Hillary Morgan Ferrer, author of Mama Bear Apologetics who has zero physical children. I love the wisdom of having both of these women on the same panel. Both are mothers, but to very different kinds of children. And they are also both amazing in their own right.

The world is awed by people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and fight their way to the finish line, no matter the obstacles. To be clear, that IS incredible. However, the praise of the crowds in these situations is so short lived. Trophies come and go. There has to be more. And thankfully, there is.

Bigger and better

I would argue that Abbie and Hillary (above), have devoted their lives to something much bigger and better. Their lives aren’t glamorous and to the world, nothing to envy. But they are incredible women of God, and they’re far from alone. Just think of Amy Carmichael, a young woman from Ireland who traveled to India to serve and rescue orphaned children who were forced into temple prostitution. She was never married, but she was always loving and caring for the rejected, afraid, and most vulnerable. As only a woman could.

And then there’s Mother Teresa (Eric Metaxas included her in his book, 7 Women and she’s also written about in Courageous World Changers for children). Also never married, but she was the hands and feet of Christ to those who no one wanted to even get near. She set an example that inspired hundreds of nuns to follow in her footsteps, to the glory of God.

God Created Women

My point is that God created women with the capacity to do incredible things. But where we can see women really shine is when we see them embracing their femininity and loving others as only women can. Feminism has fed us all so many lies, but the most heartbreaking one is that our best accomplishments are of value only when we can prove we are able to do the same things as men.

God didn’t make everyone the same. And that certainly applies to men and women. It’s not that men are better, but that men are different. If we were supposed to do the same things, one of us would be redundant. Rather, women are far better (in general) at nurturing, extending kindness, and bearing children (obviously). And those aren’t little, insignificant things! Those are beautiful and necessary, especially in our current culture.

I don’t think I’ll ever finish an Ironman, now or when I’m 80 (God help me!). Not to say I don’t want to be a good steward of my body and keep myself as in shape as possible! I have a lot of kids and hopefully grandkids in the future to keep up with one day. But our goals as women shouldn’t be about what we can accomplish to benefit only ourselves – again, it’s not that we shouldn’t have personal goals, but those goals shouldn’t take precedence. Instead, our ultimate goals should be in being Titus 2 women:

…teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Titus 2:3b-5

Those accomplishments don’t just get forgotten in a week or two. They have eternal implications, since they impact the people around us.

We may be different, but…

It’s not going to look exactly the same for each one of us. Some of us will be married, some of us will be single; some with children, and some with none. But the sentiment remains the same. We can always honor the LORD in a way that only we can as women, just as the LORD created us to be.

To be clear, I’m very much NOT advocating for the trad wife thing. I mean, to each their own! But that’s not the point. The point is that we can accomplish so much for our own good and glory. But I pray that we focus our efforts most in accomplishing much for the glory of God, as women of God. Let us be different in this world, and all strive to be incredible women of God.

Click on the images below to purchase Abbie Halberstadt’s book, M is for Mama or Hillary Morgan Ferrer’s book, Mama Bear Apologetics

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