I had a fascinating conversation with my husband yesterday in the car on the way to confession.
As a part of my midwifery studies, I have been seeking out a method or plan for incorporating the concept of discipleship into my practice. I wanted to see my own midwifery practice in the context of ministry to women.
My goal is pure enough, I hope--- if I am to be a Christian midwife, a large part of my role is certainly to encourage wives and mothers to seek God, and I wanted to know how best to pour into them. Should we meet weekly or monthly? Should I be available by phone? Should we have group meetings or one on one? What types of things should we discuss? Was there an order in which to teach these things?
The process of discipleship has always been very fruitful for me. It usually involved an active relationship with a person who had a vested interest in my spiritual well-being and who was willing to take time each week or month to check in and encourage me along the journey. Put simply, a Christian disciple follows Jesus, and takes on intentional relationships that encourage others to follow Jesus as well.
In non-Catholic Christian circles, we were always encouraged to seek out other lay members of the church who seemed to be doing spiritually well to meet for discussion. Could this person be called to disciple me? Conversely, we were encouraged to seek out people we felt called to help who seemed to need it. Could I be called to disciple this person?
Although we were called to evangelize
everyone, it was clear that we were also called into unique mentoring relationships with each other, as led by the Holy Spirit.
It was also crystal clear that discipleship happened in this relational context--- as a couple we sought to be discipled by another older, wiser couple. As a woman, I sought an older, wiser woman to befriend me and be a guide towards Jesus. As a mother, it was a given that I was called to disciple my children.
Usually, the person who discipled me required something of me: trust, and obedience. If they were going to take the time out of their own lives to invest in me, they wanted to know that it was having an effect. For that reason, they requested that I be open enough with them to share my true thoughts/feelings (unlike in other relationships where you can certainly gloss over some of the hard stuff.) This was challenging for me especially at first, because I am accustomed to giving people what they want to hear. The person who discipled me needed a lot of patience, grace, and wisdom to get past my outer shell.
They also requested that if we both agreed something needed to be worked on (attacking a particular fault of mine, for example) that I would actually DO what they recommended. If I didn't, they reserved the right to question me honestly, and to withdraw their help -- but not their love or prayers-- when they saw that I was determined to stay on the bad course that I was on. This was also particularly challenging in my case, because I had always struggled with a deep-rooted rebellion against God and any type of authority.
So there is always a place within discipleship for authority and submission. One person leads, and the other follows and submits. There is much potential there for misuse and abuse, which is why the details are so important-- who provides it, and what is their motive?
Also, there is the concept of spiritual parenthood involved. I often say that the woman who primarily discipled me throughout college and beyond is my
spiritual mother--- in many ways, my heart is closer to her than to my own mother, because not only did she teach me many of the practical aspects of womanhood and wifehood (care of the body, care of the husband, care of the home, and children) but also the spiritual aspects (she taught me to pray, taught me to war in the Spirit, to fast, and to exercise my faith daily.) For many years she was not able to have children of her own, and I was moved whenever I prayed for her to think what a true mother she actually was to me. Similarly, her father was my first real pastor-- a person whose own faith and public teaching led me directly to confront my own sins and the majesty of God, and to begin in practical ways to not only accept the reality of the Cross but to embrace it. When her father saw that I wanted more, he recommended that I speak to her because he knew that I needed a woman to guide me in ways he was not called to, and the wisdom of being willing to relinquish the authority and trust I had given him is not something I will ever forget. Like her wise father, his wise daughter-- who had been an authoritative guide for me throughout my adult single life-- similarly relinquished the trust and authority I had given her over my life when I became a married woman.
An important side note here is that I don't believe we NEED that human interaction to be able to discern God's voice to us. Those living in solitude are able to commune with God and take positive steps towards godly living solely by reading the scriptures and praying in the Spirit. BUT there is a vast benefit to having faithful people around us to confirm a word or thought, and also to help us when we stray the path and cross over into places we ought not.
We have to remember that this relationship of discipleship is not ultimately a means of creating carbon-copies of individual people (that would be a misuse of authority) but rather a means of living our best lives, imitating the disciple of Christ
in his seeking after the face of God.
Even so, there is a practical aspect that comes into play. If I am being discipled by someone, I come to conform very much to their way of thinking and doing. If they have "put on the mind of Christ," (1 Cor 2:13-16) this is a good thing, but some people in their own sinfulness might want the person they are discipling to conform to the way
they do things (Be it how they dress, talk, eat, pray... whatever). This can be very harmful, so a necessary virtue of a person doing the discipling is
humility. This is a protection for the person being discipled AND the person doing the discipling. Just as a parent raising a child does not seek to create a carbon copy of himself, but will still see himself reflected often in the interests and mannerisms of his child, so a person in a discipleship relationship must be aware that the disciple belongs to Jesus.
I remember often calling the woman who discipled me to ask for help (the same way people call their mother!) when in need of clear, spiritual thinking and advice for most of my adult life, but one day after I was married, I noticed that instead of giving me a clear answer she began to say to me: "what does your husband think?"
At first, this frustrated me to no end. If I wanted to know what my husband thought, I would have asked him. I wanted to know what she thought, because I felt
she had the answers. She was closer to God, and more spiritual. Plus, she was a woman, and just understood me better. Right? Hehe.
But she knew this was wrong. Ever so gently she continued to encourage me to ask my husband, and as she did it dawned on me that this was God's will for my life. I had married a man, and in doing so, given him spiritual authority over my life. I was called not only to respect and love him but to submit to him, and though I had been quite quick in my choice of a husband, I knew it was in God's hands now. Her encouragement, though it "weaned" me into a different type of relationship with her, was priceless in that it led me to confront a reality of married life I had not spent enough time understanding previous to becoming married: it was now my husband who was going to primarily disciple me. Many thoughts flooded me. Was he spiritual enough? Would he be able to guide me? Would he satisfy that craving I had for more relationship (which was ultimately a craving for more of God?)
And these ideas, sadly, took the back burner while I learned to be a wife to the particular man I married and faced the challenges of the practical aspects of wifehood and new motherhood. Although we prayed, this period in my life was mostly marked my trials and error in the keeping of the household.... learning to build family culture. However, I felt strongly that we kept failing at it--- mostly because we often were at odds in our ideas about HOW to run the house and what God's will for us was. We were also often at odds because children can get in the way of a marital relationship if you let them, and we have lots of them. Mostly we were at odds because I wanted him to change and be more like me, and he wanted me to change and be more like him. What we really needed was to both change and be more like Jesus.
I often returned to the idea of discipleship to help me. I knew that my husband was supposed to disciple me, but it still felt helpful to have someone outside of the marriage to lead me, mostly because I felt that my husband had only his interests at heart in what he wanted to lead me in. This wasn't true, mind you, but came out of my own innate rebellion against his God-given authority over the family. And though I looked and looked, no one offered to take on this role of discipling me, so I felt that God had clearly spoken about it.
To add to the confusion, we returned to the Catholic Church a few years into our marriage, and though it was wonderful and right because we believed the Bible teaches the doctrines of the Church, these clear lines of what discipleship WAS became slightly blurry and confusing for me, instead of a normative process.
First, because the Catholic Church, like Ancient Israel, is a mess. The most sublime of divine truths are taught and promulgated by her, as a sacred heart beating wildly with love for God and for His plan for mankind pumping life into the world, but the most hardened and rebellious of people clog through her tired veins. It is easy to understand why in Luke 18:8 Scripture asks us:
"When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
And second, because two new words began to be introduced into my Christian vocabulary as a Catholic:
Catechesis and
Spiritual Direction.
Catechesis is the process of handing down the faith. In a formal sense, a catechist gives lessons on true doctrine. At first, I understood catechesis to be sitting down with a catechism-- the tool of the catechist-- and learning / confirming what we understood from reading sacred scripture and studying the lives of the saints and fathers, etc. Over time, I began to understand that catechesis happens not only when I am sitting around the table with an open bible and catechism and my children, but also when I am praying with them at night before bed, or having a right response before them, etc. In short, I began to equate catechesis with this idea of discipleship--- a lifelong, relational process.
Similarly, Spiritual Direction is the receiving of catechism in a personal sense. A spiritual director is a person with whom you have a clear relationship for JUST the purpose of direction (these relationships do not blur the lines of friendship in a traditional sense) and who is invested solely in your spiritual well-being, in guiding you towards holiness and sainthood in a concrete sense. Typically, a spiritual director is also your confessor, the person to whom you confess your sins, because traditionally, spiritual directors are priests. This is because priests have been given the authority by the apostolic Church to teach the "true faith" and to guide souls. (which isn't to say that there aren't some awful priests out there, because they are. But it is the Bishop's responsibility to ensure that the priests in their diocese are up to the task. And not all priests are spiritual directors, nor do they want to be.) These mentors are also found in monastaries and hermitages-- there is a long Christian tradition of looking for and receiving profound spiritual answers from holy men and women living in these places. I have hiked up some of these ancient mountains and visited some of these ancient caves and I can attest to the fact that even centuries later, these wise saints are still speaking to us and giving us spiritual direction.
Spiritual directors have a responsibility to be open to the Holy Spirit, but they also have a responsibility to follow certain methods which have been handed down throughout Christian history, and not to innovate. We have no need for innovation, because truth be told-- there is one path towards sanctity: a personal relationship with Our Lord, and character built by the acceptance of our vocational duty. Some spiritual directors are lay people, but those lay people have had the authority to call themselves spiritual directors vested upon themselves by the Church--- in Catholic teaching, no one is advised to just start advising people because they think they should. Dwelling on that for a minute, it became clear to me that there is a vast difference between the idea of discipleship in protestant circles and in Catholic circles.
In other words, discipleship is tied in with the concepts of authority and submission. Because the non-Catholic Christian concept of authority in the church is fuzzy, as my husband spoke I began to see it as the image of divorce--- we *give* authority to a person until they no longer do something we accept, and then we take it from them and might give it to another. The Catholic concept of authority, on the other hand, is the image of marriage and family-- either we are born into the Church and accept it's authority from infancy or we enter into courtship with the Church and study her doctrines, accept them, and come UNDER her authority, accepting it as we do in marriage. Forever.
Now, I have had several spiritual directors as a Catholic, and met with varying degrees of success. The most fruitful have come from a parish priest, from a carmelite nun, and from an Opus Dei priest. I have also taken on a saint as my spiritual director, devoting myself to studying their spiritual writings and their lives for a time. My general impression of the face to face is that it was no where near as effective for me as the protestant discipleship model because my spiritual directors don't know me or my family and friends personally and therefore has a limited scope and view of the situations I relate.
On the other hand, this can be beneficial, too--- sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees, and distance helps. But more often than not I have left spiritual direction frustrated. Following a saint's life, however, has been very fruitful. I don't have a spiritual director at this time, but I have also received unexpected spiritual direction that was excellent from many priests, often just after confession. I find that when I return to them for more at another time with the intent of seeking direction, they often disappoint me. In other words, God has been at work but when I tried to take the reigns, I was prevented.
As I said before, in protestant circles, everyone was always abuzz with the word discipleship, and it was a given that at any moment we should be in discipleship relationships with one another, both discipling and being discipled.
In contrast, Catholic circles, everyone I know WANTS a good spiritual director, and no one can find one. Seminarians and priests are strongly encouraged to have one, but lay persons tend to struggle to find one that fits. Catechesis happens successfully in different contexts but is a given IF a Catholic wants it-- but those who don't can go through life free of doctrinal constraints quite easily. We sadly ALL know Cradle Catholics who are indistinguishable from their pagan or atheist counterparts in the world in thought, word, and deed.
So reflecting on all of this, I set to work attempting to build a model in my mind of the ideal midwifery discipleship model. What does discipleship look like for women who are called to be
with women?
Certainly, midwifery encompasses "women's ministry," but because it involves childbearing and marriage, health and fertility, it also goes deeper. There is a quote about midwifery that states: "Birth is as safe as life gets." It is so profound, because birth and childbearing is a perfect analogy for life. We labor in pain and toil for a seemingly unending period of time, and just when it looks like things are at there worst, a most glorious event occurs: birth, which includes both deliverance and perfect joy. From our innermost secret parts we bring forth something that melts and gives hope to the whole world. Not only that, but we then co-operate with God to raise this baby--- forcing us to LIVE the principles which we speak of and preach. When we don't, our sin goes before us and is visible to the whole world. Life and death hang in the balance. The entire process, from beginning to end, is rich with spiritual meaning.
Before midwives practiced obstetrics, they relied on faith, herbalism, and their spiritual formation in all things pertaining to womanhood. An OBGYN can see a stalled labor and pull a baby out with forceps, using his understanding of anatomy. And sadly, this type of behavior has been known to have adverse effects on both baby and mother.
But a midwife can see a stalled labor and coax a baby out using spiritual means-- by encouraging the mother to bond with the baby and speak to it, or to let go of whatever fears she has about motherhood, or by crying out to God on her behalf. This isn't to say that anatomy and physiology don't play a role in midwifery-- they absolutely do. But a midwife operates holistically, connecting dots between the mind, body, and soul of the laboring mother, educating her, and providing a culture of encouragement that allows the MOTHER to take responsibility for her own choices and outcomes, whereas a doctor simply "knows best" and does "FOR" the mother what she is often better suited-- but unable at the time-- to do for herself.
This causes me to reflect on the role of God when we call him "the Divine Physician." For certainly midwives and doctors are both healers in the truest sense of the term, but in today's usage while midwives encourage education, growth, and self- care, doctors use physical intervention and mechanisms, until last we hear from them we this common phrase: "We've done all we can. It's up to God now." In the past, both roles were necessary, but more and more women are being asked to chose one or the other.
However, God does both, and for that reason what we learn from Him as "healers" should be reflected in our discipleship, whether we are on the giving or the receiving end.
All of this led me to ask my husband what he felt was a good model for discipleship in the context of midwifery. I explained my thoughts, and he listened, but during the course of my explaining, he became slightly frustrated with me. Confused, I asked him what was wrong with what I was hoping to generate.
And once I got past my usual bristling when he corrects me, I realized he was saying something deeply important-- that though there was a time and a place for the type of "discipleship" I had experienced in the past, in similar settings, there was a deeper layer to the requirements of discipleship for Christians.
"We aren't protestants," he began, "and we don't need to re-invent the wheel. The model you are looking for already exists. It's called duty."
Ugh, I thought,
Here we go.
"You don't need a model for discipleship," he began. "The Gospels themselves provide us with the model."
"Women achieve sanctity through a personal relationship with God and primarily through doing their duty. They have no real need to have a committee with each other about how to do it, because none of them can tell each other how to do it, and all it does is cause confusion at best and strife at worst between them. If you are a wife, your husband has the God-given authority to disciple you, and anything another woman might tell you about how to live just doesn't matter.She might have insight for you, but learning is more caught than taught.
You don't NEED to sit down and talk about it."
Easy for you to say, I thought.
At the time, I became angry and indignant because I felt that my husband had not ever really embraced this role as discipler of his wife, but in doing so, I failed completely to see the irony that even as I asked myself that question,
he was doing just that! He was giving me spiritual advice, and I was rejecting it on the grounds that he couldn't possibly understand what women go through! Again!
He continued to explain that unlike in other ecclesial communities, the Church grants authority to a person who has been tested and found true who can offer spiritual advice. These are usually priests, and a good one is hard to find, but we should persist in seeking these faithful priests out until we find them. They are our only spiritual authority. In the home, discipleship for women and children was clearly laid out as an example in marriage. Look at the holy family-- Mary listened to Joseph and followed his lead, praying all the while and meditating on the things happening to her. Jesus, the bible tells us, was obedient to Mary and Joseph, growing up under them.
Then he asked me: "How many women do you know who faithfully do their duty to God and their families, and never sway from it into selfishness and self-serving behavior? How many faithful, impeccable, heroic women do you really know? Are you perfect? Then why do you think it's your job to disciple other women? And what can you receive from them that you do not receive from the Holy Spirit and from me and from your priest?"
Many things went through my mind. "Fellowship," was the answer I gave in my head. But fellowship is not necessarily discipleship!
Of course, he and I both know that discipleship is a requirement of the Christian life and he certainly wasn't saying that we aren't ALL called to be disciples AND to disciple others. At the same time, I couldn't help but agree with his emphasis on diverting my train of thought as he continued to speak.
He pointed out that usually meeting one on one with other women several times a week took time away from my "real" alleged priorities--- the ones I claimed were at the center: my family's needs. I felt justified in doing it because it seemed from my perspective to be a normative part of christian ministry, and felt self-righteous and indignant when he pointed it out because HE takes time out to spend an hour with friends here or there each week.... with us around, granted, but he was
just playing with his friends, wasn't he? While I had a
spiritual agenda with these women, Right? So shouldn't MY needs take the priority in a Christian house until he started doing that too? Hah.
And yet, he was right on, I realized with a sting. Here I was ignoring my family under the pretense of helping these women to not ignore their own families, while here he was wordlessly creating a powerful example of faithful family life by incorporating friends and acquaintances
into our family life so they could see it themselves... in action... and not just talk about it. The reality was that I was bitter about it because my way involved quiet, enjoyable one on one time in a setting I controlled and therefore "looked good in," whereas his way involved me remaining in a state of servanthood and the possibility of my own sin going before me at any given moment!
Ugh.
I also thought vicious thoughts about his own imperfections. I felt that he had failed to disciple me and therefore do the very duty he was promulgating because he doesn't usually carve out time each week to ask me how I feel about where I am at spiritually. Oh, my deceitful heart!! Every day that my husband provides an example for us is a day he disciples me. And every day that my husband reminds me of my duty is a day he disciples me. Every day my husband prays with me , reads his bible, encourages me to introduce myself and the kids to a new mom at church... is a day he is discipling me. Even in the stressful times in life when he had failed to do any of those things, just by being with him and listening to him and sharing life with him, he helped make me a better person.
Discipleship under my husband didn't have to look like him and I sitting and drinking tea and searching the scriptures, although it could.
No, discipleship under my husband was instead a very different, much busier and more
ordinary type of picture: cooking a meal side by side for unexpected guests, or tag team parenting an unruly kiddo, or taking turns reading bedtime stories to the family, or seeing him get up early to read his bible before heading off to work.
What's more-- when I recognized that for what it was instead of trying to re-invent ways to make my own voice heard, my children began to grasp the same concept and to TURN to us for their important questions. And, for the record, those times he does speak sharply, or forget to pray with us, or whatever other failure he might have, he disciples us when he turns around and repents. Just like when we both have failed, our children will bring us back to a repentant place. Like a perfect circle, our family disciples each other, each taking turns to spiritually feed and direct the other.
In the end, REAL discipleship for the married woman is completely tied into my duty--and it's a lot less glamorous than I had envisioned. Good bye cute coffee shop and hello boring sink full of dishes. Goodbye weekly bible study and hello messy morning devotional around the kitchen table. But though I had begun to see the beauty in that, as I sat in the car and listened to him, slowly dying to myself and my ideas about what discipleship "must" look like, I was sad and upset. He was calling for more service, and more loneliness or separation from my friends, and not at all the type of bond with other women that had brought me to the place I held now as wife and mother. But as I listened, I discovered that the fruit of that type of hidden life was something I had witnessed all along! In fact, the longer I reflected, the more I saw this bright picture becoming clearer and clearer in my mind... my husband was right on.
In the picture, I saw myself, being discipled by the faithful
daughter in the family I described above. we met often, and in the quiet space between our words I did a lot of growing. It was a model that had worked very well for me,
at the time. But there were other things happening to me too back then, things that were being built but that I hadn't picked up on.
In my minds' eye, I saw the other women in the family who had sort of escaped my notice. One was a sister who was married, and very kind. I had babysat for her and really enjoyed their family. But as she was married and had a home of her own, I rarely interacted with her in the context of learning about Christian living in the family home she had grown up in. When I had babysat for her, I supposed I actually
had learned about Christian living by what was expected of me... praying with the children. Caring for her son and her daughter who had down's syndrome with great love and attention. Keeping things neat, and orderly. Giving nourishing food and nourishing thoughts to her children. Serving her husband.
She was discipling me!
My mind moved to another person in the picture: the mother in the family. I had met her the first day I attended at bible study in their home. And I had found her insufferably silent.
Yes, her house was impeccable, her children were polite and faithful, her husband was an obviously deeply spiritual man with a quiet, but deep, love and affection for her.
But instead of animatedly engaging us in the bible study we held every week at her house and taking the spotlight right next to him, she sat on the steps in the back of the group, getting up only to help someone find the restroom, find a seat, or find a passage in their bible. She attended to the needs of their other sons. She was beautiful, and clearly loved and Godly and was important to her family and to the group, so I wondered why she was so.... meek.
Over the years, I came to know her a little better. The family brought me on vacation with them, and blessed me tremendously by allowing me to share in their life a little, which painted a very different picture for me than the family life I had experienced. A life centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Kingdom life. Her personality began to be more known to me, and I realized I had been completely wrong-- she had a LOT of it! She often opened her home to her daughter's friends and together they helped us learn to keep house, to pray, to raise a family. But always she remained at her husband's side, quietly encouraging her children as they blossomed. What a faithful woman! What a glorious example, I realized.
She was discipling me!
I am married now, with a family of my own, and though I have spent countless wasted years trying to escape the requirements of married life, the reality is that what I want--
discipleship that leads me to the quiet peace of God's presence-- is completely tied in to my duty. When I was a single young women, my duty was completely different than my duty as a wife and mother!
With deep love for him, and a repentant heart, I looked over.
My husband finished by pointing out that this wrong idea about discipleship being anything less than doing our duty and living by example was like the last frontier of feminism that has infiltrated the Church, and that women in the church everywhere were completely deceived and deceiving.
We have all these good, godly women trying hard to live lives submitted to God and family, and yet they are running all over the place and exhausting themselves at best, ignoring their families at worst, trying to build relationships over and under each other and attempting to take what is not theirs to give but God's-- power. Under the pretext of "helping women."
They are reading and writing books about how to run households and make schedules and raise children and have loving marriages and powerful women's ministry but they are not DOING the one thing that shows by example without a doubt that they have understood what is required of them: to obey their husbands and to love them, to educate their children and to live by example, and to teach and train the younger women, beginning with their own children, to be faithful, prayerful, and dutiful by example. Which isn't to say that there ISN'T a time and a place for doing that, but rather to point out that discipleship takes many different forms, and is
always tied in to our vocational duty.
Catholic wives and mothers and midwives don't contracept, and many of us are likely to keep having very busy family lives for quite some time. Keeping our families TRULY first is really the only way to ensure a fruitful ministry.
And I had been falling for it, hook, line, and sinker, seeking to focus my duty towards other women and my own self, without the greater context of my foremost duty towards my husband, and my family. Why? Because I want to be in charge, and I like coffee shops and talking loud. And because I like friends, and people who ask me how I'm doing. Duh. :)
So for me, what that looks like practically was that my midwifery needs to have room for my family, needs to come after my family, and needs to be lived by example, daily. It didn't mean I was going to stop blogging or holding workshops or anything like that, but it did mean that I was going to feel a little bit better about having "tea" with my kids instead of my girlfriends each day. And it did mean that folding laundry, a drudgery I cannot even begin to describe, suddenly had great significance, even with regards to other women. Over time, I've learned that God is very involved in the ordinary things of life. Discipleship was like a last frontier in my spiritual life that I thought was supposed to remain extraordinary, but now I see that it is glorious, although mundane.
But we urge you, bretheren, to excel still more, and
to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own
business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need. - 1 Thessalonians 4:11
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
Matthew 5:5.
