Growing up in church meant growing up in youth group and for years the leaders of the youth group would sarcastically but consistently tell the boys before the service started to not be all over the girls and for the girls to stay away from the guys because we’ll just break their heart. The sarcastic comments were followed by laughter of course…by the ones who said them. It was funny at times but most of the time me and my friends would look at each other rolling our eyes with full knowledge of some of the scandalous heartbreaking girls a part of our youth group that we knew we should probably stay clear of ourselves.

Looking back on things, these little conversations that put girls on such a high pedestal before service caused me to dislike girls with imperfections; imperfections that I defined.  If a girl would act a way I didn’t like or say something I disagreed with I would be harsher with them than I would with a guy or a girl I enjoyed the company of.

I acted this way because I felt like I was in a community where the guys were viewed as perverts and the girls were viewed as angels. So this drove me to purposely find faults in the women in my life as a way of attempting to prove something to the authority I disagreed with (even if they didn’t view things they way I told myself they viewed them).

Eventually I grew out of that phase when I grew out of the phase of feeling controlled by the norm of what others do. When I realized I didn’t have to think exactly the same as the people around me (authority or not) I lost the desire to prove myself as much. It sounds kind of silly to talk about learning to be fully independent in thought at such a later age but I’ve constantly found myself reminding friends of mine the same thing one of my youth pastors reminded me of when I was 16: “It’s okay to be different.”

However, I still see situations where women are given high expectations based on their gender. And what I’ve seen in churches is when people are given high expectations and are tremendously frowned upon when not meeting those expectations it shames whoever fails to meet those expectations. Guilt and fear of failure can lead to a number of terrible things: repression, depression, insecurity, jealousy, self-hatred, etc. I’ve personally seen women suffer from this type of expectation-opression more than men.

Why wouldn’t they, when we live in a society where women are portrayed as the one who is supposed to look a certain way and serve the man a certain way that makes the women seem like more of servant girl than a wife; and a society where the men trot around quoting “submission” scriptures and joking about wanting a Proverbs 31 woman.

“Where are all the Proverbs 31 women at?” they would say.

If you haven’t read the famous Proverbs 31 poem stop and go read Proverbs 31:10-31 right now.

Seriously.

I used to view this poem as kind of silly. I knew it was to be taken seriously but in today’s society it is laughable, up to par with the book of Song of Songs. I remember reading it to a girl friend of mine and hearing her laugh in disbelief at every other verse. Going through verses like “She gets up while it is still night” and “She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes” and of course, “She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.”

Whenever I heard a woman talk about how much they love Proverbs 31 I wondered if they skipped those parts. I would think to myself, “If these women love this passage so much, then why aren’t they making their own clothes and bedspreads? Why don’t they keep their lamp on through the night and wake up before dawn? Why don’t they buy fields, plant vineyards and sell handmade clothes? The only thing I see you imitating of this woman is wearing purple.”

I began asking different women of different ages what they thought of the poem and whether they liked the poem or not, each of them was significantly moved by it. Some were negatively moved and overwhelmed, thinking of it as a ridiculous and unrealistic to-do list and others were positively moved, using the woman of this poem as a role model of the wife they want to be.

The characteristic that stands out in this woman is confidence. She has confidence in herself, her family, and the things she does even when the people around her may fall short. As verse 29 puts it “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”

One of the odd things I heard from younger friends I asked was this perspective that this woman from the poem is a far off goal that becomes practical when it’s time to get married. I can understand that. After all, why learn to cook, when you’re not the one who cooks in the house right now? Or for the college kids, why learn to cook if you don’t even have a stove? Why waste time being trying to be someone who does all these things if you don’t have anyone to do these things for?

Another perspective I heard blew those views out of the water. A friend of mine told me that the Proverbs 31 woman does not become all these things when she gets married and simply because she is married. She becomes all these things so she can get married.

Boom.

The woman who “brings food from afar” can be the woman who knows how to shop for groceries. The woman who sells and buys vineyards can be the woman who knows business and can handle her finances. The woman who makes her own clothes from wool and flax can be the woman who can put a hem in her jeans. (I admit I did not know what a hem was before working on this, which is why I probably need a Proverbs 31 woman.)

I noticed this poem begins with something not as oppressive as I originally thought. It begins by asking who can find a women like this, and stating that she is worth far more than rubies. Before it goes into all the things she is and does, it says that her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. Only then does it go into the things she does. The next verse says she brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. I find it interesting that the writer of the poem doesn’t go into any of the characteristics of this woman without first stating that her husband has full confidence in her. The man is actually the only one given a command in the whole poem. The woman is praised for doing all the things she is already doing. Then in the last verse it reads “Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

Maybe marriage isn’t about the woman providing every need while the man orders her around quoting the “women should submit” verse. Maybe this woman isn’t the fundamentalist June Cleaver some of you may have imagined during first read.

In Orthodox Jewish culture the men are actually the ones who memorize the Proverbs 31 poem. And every week at the Shabbat table the man sings the poem to his wife. He praises her for all that she does for the family. Proverbs 31 is not a to-do list or set of commandments for women to follow. It is a poem of praise to the woman doing all she can to provide in her own way. And she doesn’t do these things for the sake of competition with other women or for the glory. She does it out of the kindness of her heart.

So all I want is for women to stop feeling oppressed by ridiculous expectations and know many of you can fulfill Proverbs 31 without it stuck to your fridge in list form.

And for the men,

“Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

–Proverbs 31:31