Fierce Woman Trophies — A Deeper Cleaning

Victory in the clothing department! 

I am not sure what took me so long, but as you will see from the previous post, a load is gone!

How freeing to know everything fits and matches

and will not be wrinkled from being jammed with too many other items.

Whew – that’s done, but God wasn’t done with me.

It was onto deeper cleaning – from the Fierce Woman.

– If you are a woman, and particularly if you are a wife I feel safe in saying you NEED to read The Power of a Soft Warrior by Kimberly Wagner. I am usually a very fast reader going through 3-5 books a week, minimum. This book is different, in that I felt each step needed to be dealt with before I went to the next.

It has been a painfully long process to read, apply, put it down and repeat – since last Spring.

The book is a very personal journey of the author and her husband. She relates each area of a woman’s fierceness to the reader and gives plenty of can’t-miss-the-point illustrations.

Kim states that “You may not see yourself as beautifully fierce or even slightly strong, but what if God has placed a powerful fierceness within you, within every woman? Kim admits her fierceness became a source of conflict in her marriage, but the relationship dynamic totally changed when she discovered her fierce strengths could be used to encourage and inspire her husband.”

I promised to finish the book by this year’s True Woman Conference, (Oct. 9) so I’ve been getting convicted, ah, I mean reading more each day. Finding things about me the mirror doesn’t show.

One surprising example was a chapter about how men love a challenge. I can relate that to the sports enthusiasts in our family, but not Ken. I did not understand how the point of the personal story of some guys getting stoked about a physically exhausting opportunity to help some friends move in a very short time-span related to us.

My hubby came up from his basement workshop just as I finished this story and was trying to process what it had to do with me or us. He had been working on a cabinet he designed for church. A cabinet that was taking weeks longer than it should have (in my opinion) because he decided to design a roll-top cabinet closure. Something he’d never done before, and something totally unnecessary (in you know who’s opinion) to create a utilitarian cabinet. I pondered the story again as Ken showed me detail of the wooden strips, and tiny intersecting links to the strips, and how he would glue them to fabric and create the rolltop (he was fairly confident). I noticed, perhaps more than before, how excited his voice grew as he shared his project.

I thought over other projects Ken had been teased about. Like the roof where he measured and put in so many nails, that an incredulous friend who came to help suggested if they added a few more nails he could have an aluminum roof! In several ways he became known as an over-achiever, making things far more intricate than expected. It irritated me but he just joked about our different approaches and gave me the nickname Puddlejumper. In turn I called him the Bridgebuilder, because if we approached a puddle with a pot of gold on the other side, I would jump (or try to) quickly get over the puddle. His version always had me falling in the puddle (ok maybe there was a little reality to the story) but I always got things done faster. While I imagined myself on the other side of the puddle, very likely muddy and dripping wet, but grasping the gold, Ken would still be drafting a drawing of a very exacting and beautifully detailed bridge to get over the puddle. Then he would complete the imaginary competition revealing that while he built the bridge it continued to rain. Without his bridge I couldn’t have crossed the puddle grown into a dangerous white-water river. We laughed at our exaggeration, but then I grew sober, realizing all the times his persistence and dedication to detail had gotten us out of a lot of scrapes.

I looked up at Ken thoughtfully and asked the big question: When you build crazy things like the roll-top cover to that cabinet, do you feel like you are not just building something but conquering a challenge?

His eyes lit up and he was pleased that I’d finally figured it out. My trophy of figuring things out faster —like propping different height sticks between our bedroom windows rather than his lengthy method to remove the wood, replace the mechanism, re-stain and replace the wood. I finally saw it – the roof covered with nails precisely every 1.5”, the windows, beautifully stained and still functioning decades later, the stained glass with hundreds of pieces. How many times had I only reluctantly admired his completed challenge?

My apology was welcomed. He loves humble pie…

I hope I have saved you the trouble.

Dusting off those emotional trophies can get pret-ty dirty. Do you relate?

Do tell!