The Incredible Worth of a Daughter

Every June my town hosts what is absolutely one of my favorite annual events…Gabby Days. It begins with city-wide garage sales, dozens of them. As if that isn’t wonderful enough, for a junk junkie like me, a week or so later, the city sends around huge garbage trucks to collect anything from the corners of their homes and garages that people want to get rid of. And that is when the real fun begins.

Some of my very best treasures have come from the scrap piles that I have gone through. And always the question I ask is “why would anyone throw this away?” Vintage linens, handmade quilts, flower pots, antique jars, and furniture of all kinds have found new homes in my house. This year I pulled a solid oak desk from someone’s trash and it will be a wonderful addition to my son’s room when it is sanded down and repainted. Though it was hard for those who drove right past it to see, on its inside, my desk is a wonderful treasure.

Sometimes when I look at the young girls who work in our local fast food restaurants or who spend their Saturdays shopping in the mall, I wonder if those around them can see the amazing treasures that they really are. Underneath the silly t-shirts, stylish jeans, and flip-flops, they are women-in-the-making and many of them do not even realize it themselves. They are caught somewhere between being little girls with fairy princess dreams and grown women who must live in reality rather than an ivy covered castle.

To many of them, their value as young women is based on the standards established by the world around them. They are girls in the sense that society tells them they are. Their lives express what it means to be feminine by following the definition of the week for what that means.
The problem is that they are being sent a message that narrowly defines what it means to be a girl or a woman and all of those messages are based on their physical attributes. Feminine is described, both in the secular culture and within conservative Christian circles, in terms of gender specific expectations.

But godly womanhood begins with recognizing that we are to love one another, as Joni Eareckson has said, “simply for the preciousness of their souls.” And that, I believe, is one of the greatest challenges for homeschooling moms as they raise daughters. We must concentrate on those attributes of godliness in their lives that reflect that they are unique creations, image bearers of the living God, a part of His royal priesthood.

Here are two of the reasons that I believe this is important:

Not all daughters will naturally be drawn to what either secular culture or conservative Christian culture deems to be “feminine” nor should they have to be.

In fact, as we concentrate on the spiritual aspects of our daughters’ lives, we may begin to ask the very question that apologist Ravi Zacharius posed when he asked “If you strip off the flesh are our souls essentially different? Are we masculine and feminine on the soul level?” And that leads us to ask for definitions for the words “masculine” and “feminine” which is nearly impossible to do!

I remember reading the story of Betty Greene, the founder of Missionary Aviation Fellowship and one of the first women test pilots during World War II. As her high school years came to a close, her parents encouraged her to study nursing since the common belief at that time was that women are natural nurturers and, therefore, ought to pursue the fields of education and nursing.

So Betty reluctantly attended nursing school even though her heart was drawn to airplanes and flying. Eventually her parents agreed that she could follow her dreams and it led to the founding of a worldwide ministry that today enables the work of over 800 missions organizations! God’s calling on the life of Betty Greene is an incredible example of one of God’s image bearers reflecting Him through His calling on her life, though it didn’t resemble what many people might call “feminine.”

Another concern I have in this area is that inadvertently, many people can be setting their children up for homosexual temptation by defining what is for girls and what is for boys according to their own personal preferences.

Christians who have repented and come out of homosexual lifestyles will often tell you that, when growing up, they were more interested in the hobbies and activities of what the culture said belonged to the opposite sex. They often had parents or teachers who conveyed their disapproval about those interests, pushing them into areas they genuinely disliked. They heard phrases like “Boys don’t play with dolls.” or “Boys don’t arrange flowers.” Girls often heard “Those sports are for boys” or “Put on this dress so you can look like a girl.” *

Instead of turning away from their natural interests or preferences, they were left confused and became vulnerable during their teen and young adult years when someone suggested that their interests showed that they “might be gay,” leading them into a lifestyle they never wanted or were even attracted to in the first place.

Rather than wringing our hands over any gay marriage bill (which, of course, I do not support) we ought to be examining the teachings in our own homes that might send a message to our children that they can’t be girls because they like sports or boys because they like dolls. And rather than pushing our own strident and unbiblically supported views of gender, we should accept and encourage the differences each child has.

Secondly, a daughter’s value as a woman is based solely on what God has already done not on anything she will ever do or not do.

We hear much talk today within homeschooling circles about “militant fecundity,” ie a daughter beginning her child bearing early in life and pursuing the goal of having as many children as possible. While I would be the first to encourage families to see all their children as gifts from the Lord, exploiting the gift of motherhood by describing it in militant terms is, frankly, appalling to me. (Note: major thread about this topic coming up in near future.)

How much worse could it be for a daughter who is taught that this is her “natural use” and that “she will be saved in childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15) actually means that her eternal standing before Christ is literally based on whether or not she gives birth? We would do well to have each of our daughters memorize “Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5) and that bearing and raising children is a reflection of the work God has already done in our own lives when He brought us to Christ. (In Isaiah 42 God describes himself as laboring and delivering His children, breast-feeding us, and nurturing us on his knees!)

How important it is to confirm to our precious daughters that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139), that they are “chosen before the foundations of the world” (Ephesians 1), that they are “lively stones in a spiritual house” 1 Peter 2) and that “they were bought with a price so that they may glorify God in their bodies and in their spirits because they belong to Him.” (1 Corinthians 6)

God has a purpose, a plan, and a calling for our daughters. Let’s help them know that the beginning of their journey with the Lord starts with recognizing how valuable they are to Him!

Next, I will be looking at the choices our daughters have for role models and examining which ones are the best choices.

*I wanted to add an addendum to this post at this point by noting that the Vision Forum toys for children come in both a catalog for girls and a catalog for boys and, sadly, stressing the company’s personal preferences for what should be gender appropriate for children. Everyone knows the boys catalog is the most fun!