FamilyLife Today® Podcast

What About Single Women?

with Abigail Dodds | October 2, 2019
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Abigail Dodds teaches on the beauty of God's good design regarding gender. Women, Dodds explains, are absolutely just as fearless as men, but their physical reality naturally makes them nurturers. If women are created to bear life, then what about single women? Though singles are excluded from child-bearing, they aren't excluded from anything essential to God's kingdom. Hear how single women can be nurturers and life givers in their homes and communities.

  • Show Notes

  • About the Host

  • About the Guest

  • Dave and Ann Wilson

    Dave and Ann Wilson are hosts of FamilyLife Today®, FamilyLife’s nationally-syndicated radio program. Dave and Ann have been married for more than 38 years and have spent the last 33 teaching and mentoring couples and parents across the country. They have been featured speakers at FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway since 1993 and have also hosted their own marriage conferences across the country. Cofounders of Kensington Church—a national, multicampus church that hosts more than 14,000 visitors every weekend—the Wilsons are the creative force behind DVD teaching series Rock Your Marriage and The Survival Guide To Parenting, as well as authors of the recently released book Vertical Marriage (Zondervan, 2019). Dave is a graduate of the International School of Theology, where he received a Master of Divinity degree. A Ball State University Hall of Fame quarterback, Dave served the Detroit Lions as chaplain for 33 years. Ann attended the University of Kentucky. She has been active alongside Dave in ministry as a speaker, writer, small-group leader, and mentor to countless wives of professional athletes. The Wilsons live in the Detroit area. They have three grown sons, CJ, Austin, and Cody, three daughters-in-law, and a growing number of grandchildren.

Abigail Dodds teaches on the beauty of God’s good design regarding gender. Hear how single women can be nurturers and life givers in their homes and communities.

12 Things You Didn't Know About JesusAs believers, our eternal hope rests in Jesus Christ conquering the grave and rising from the dead. But is this a blind leap of faith, or is there compelling evidence proving that Christ’s resurrection is a historical reality?

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What About Single Women?

With Abigail Dodds
|
October 02, 2019
| Download Transcript PDF

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, October 2nd. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson; I’m Bob Lepine. There is a right kind of empowerment and a wrong kind of empowerment for both men and women. We need to make sure we’re focused on the right kind of empowerment. We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. What did you just say? [Laughter]

Ann: I just said, “This is going to get some backlash.”

Bob: And what did you say?

Abigail: I said, “Oh, I’m getting used to it.” [Laughter]

Bob: Okay; the person who is getting used to backlash is Abigail Dodds, who joins us again on FamilyLife Today. The woman, who says, “This is going to get some backlash,”—Ann Wilson. Why? Why?

Dave: Yes; why, honey? Why do you say that?

Bob: Why do you say this will get backlash?

Ann: Because some women are going to be really angry about this—

Bob: Yes.

Ann: —these episodes—of saying: “I totally disagree. Women are just as strong/just as a fearless as men”; and so, yes; there are going to be some people that don’t like this.

Bob: —or don’t like your book, which is called (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called In Christ.

The thing I love is that Abigail has taken on the courageous task of saying, “Okay; let’s look at how the Bible helps us understand that womanhood and manhood/that gender is God’s good design and is to be celebrated and embraced rather than rebelled against and done away with.”

That’s been what we’ve been trying to explore because, as we’ve said this week, Abigail, to try to get to a cohesive definition of femininity is a daunting challenge. There are words I have heard used: “So, a woman is life-giving,”—you’ve heard that expression; right?

Abigail: Yes.

Bob: In a biological sense, women can give birth. Men can be life-giving to other men; right? When we say life-giving is a quality of womanhood, but men can still do it. Help us understand that distinction. Isn’t everything—men are courageous; well, aren’t women courageous? Women are tender; well, shouldn’t men be tender?

Abigail: Right.

Bob: How do we deal with all of this stuff?

Abigail: Right?! Well, that is what makes it all so difficult is—and even just what you said, Ann, at the beginning—about women feeling offended because they think they also are just as strong and fearless. I’m thinking, “They are just as fearless.”

Ann: I was going to say—yes.

Abigail: And yet, I do think that the physical reality gives an essence or a shape to even the spiritual reality or the nurturing reality. It’s not so much that we don’t have certain qualities and we do have others and men don’t have certain qualities and they do have others in the spiritual realm—let’s say—but there is a matter of emphasis that happens. As someone who hasn’t often thought of myself as particularly typical, becoming a mother did show me that I was, maybe, a bit more typical than I had thought.

For instance, I learned that my husband really does take a lot more risks than I do. Even though, going into being a parent, I thought of myself as pretty laidback/pretty open to risk. In some ways, I am more than other women; but when it comes to me next to my husband, I’m not!—I’m not. I’m the one who is like, “Oh, let’s slow down.”

Ann: Or it becomes—I realized that too; like—I felt like: “I’m a risk taker. I’m an adventurer. I will take any risk that Dave will have”; but then you put my kids with Dave—

Abigail: Right; it changes.

Ann: —and suddenly—

Dave: She said, “My kids.” Did you notice that? [Laughter] They are my kids too!

Abigail: I know how that works. [Laughter]

Ann: But suddenly, I thought, “I am not a risk-taker with my children/with our children”; but Dave was. That’s where I thought that, too—like: “Whoa.

Abigail: Right.

Ann: “I guess I don’t have quite as much.”

Abigail: I can see some more innate differences coming out; and it’s like, “Oh, some of these stereotypes make a little more sense to me now.”

Dave: So, what’s going on in our culture, where nobody wants to address that? I mean, you know, I’ve been preaching for 29 years. Ten/fifteen years ago, I could stand on stage and say: “Men and women are different.

Abigail: Right.

Dave: “Here is how…” People laughed; they enjoyed it. Now, you say that; and there’s like: “Oooh! They are not different. We’re really similar.” Tell us what’s happening.

Abigail: Well, when you’ve completely deconstructed biological sex, then saying what you just said isn’t just a small thing to say; it’s a gigantic leap because the general hive mind of our culture/the general mindset is so, so far down the road from that. It really is a deconstructing of everything—it’s: “We’re self-makers. We say what we are—full autonomy. We get to choose how this all works.”

Bob: You mentioned that, when you became a mom, all of a sudden, some of the innate woman-ness started to emerge. So often, when we talk about what it means to be a woman or what femininity is, we define it in comparison to men or in the context of marriage—how husbands and wives are different or moms and dads—we put it in that family structure.

I’m thinking: “What about the single woman? How does she understand her woman-ness as a standalone?” Certainly, there are other men in her world; and so, it’s not like we’re absent of that.

Ann: Can a woman be complete if she never marries or never has a child?

Bob: Yes; can she be fully a woman?

Abigail: Absolutely; yes—no equivocations—yes in every way. Because, while there is a reality that God has made the world in such a way—that marriage must exist for this to all go forward/children must be had—there’s such particular provision in the Scripture for the single people and the intense value that they bring to the body of Christ.

It’s like a very distilled dense value that they bring to us; because as Paul says, “They are able to be single-minded in their mission for the Lord.” The church desperately, desperately needs them—and not just as a babysitter—we need their minds. We need—yes—we need even their physical bodies to come and labor among us.

Ann: —their gifts—their spiritual gifts.

 

Abigail: Yes; we need their spiritual gifts to be enhancing in so many ways. For a single woman, I think Elisabeth Elliot probably said it the very best when she said that “Singleness is a gift, and we don’t choose our gifts.”

Bob: So, in the question of embracing your womanhood—certainly, you bring value, and you bring gifting, and you bring who you are to serve; but you’re not called to be a specific helpmeet to a man, you’re not called to be a biological life-giver and a nurturer to your child. If those are off the table for you, you can understand where a single woman would go: “It does feel like part of what it means to be a woman—I’m excluded from that. How do I process that?”

Abigail: Right. I don’t know that I’d deny that: “Yes; you are excluded from something but not from anything that is essential.” For some women, that might not be a grief; they might be very content in their singleness. For others, that might be a gigantic grief worth grieving over, and moving forward, recognizing that, again, those spiritual realities are still there in terms of what it means to be a woman.

Like I said—Elisabeth Elliot being a mother—or just because your body can’t nurture and grow life as a home doesn’t mean that you can’t nurture and grow life in the church, and in your home, or your apartment, or your dorm room, or wherever you are. Making a home can still be a massive priority with incredible kingdom impact in terms of hospitality, and ministering to the needs of the saints, and doing all the things that Paul even talks about when he’s giving qualifications for widows. He talks about how they washed the feet of the saints, and they’ve done these things well.

Well, you may not have children that you’ve raised; but there are great many things that you can still do in serving the Lord Christ and in sharing Him with everyone you meet.

 

Bob: So, here is a question. This—I’ll be interested to see how you answer this. A woman, who is married, is to be a helpmeet to her husband. Should an unmarried woman seek to be a helper to the men in her world, or is that not a requirement for her? Is that not a part of her femininity, to look around and say: “Well, I’m a woman. I am here to try to be a helper to the men around me”? Some women will hear me say that and go: “No; I’m not here to be their helper. I’m their peer.”

Ann: That word—see, that word just grates at you—like, “Well, I don’t want to help him!” because I looked that up one time. As I was looking that up in the Hebrew, I thought, “I need to get a better definition; because I first looked it up in Webster’s Dictionary. That word—it said in the dictionary: “A go-for, a person that does the dirty work. Someone important tells them what to do.” Of course, any woman would grate at that word.

Bob: Yes.

Ann: However, what do you think, Abigail?—would a single woman—is that her place to help a man?


Abigail: I still think it is, but I want to be really careful with my qualifications; because what some people might hear when I say that is that, somehow, there is some sort of weird husband/wife thing going on, where all women are submitting to all men; and I don’t believe that one bit.

Bob: I don’t either, and neither do you guys.

Ann: Right.

Dave: Nope.

Ann: None of us do.

Dave: Nope.

Bob: Let’s just be really clear. It is not the responsibility of women, in general, to submit to men in general. When the Bible talks about it, husbands and wives, yes; men and women, no.

Abigail: Right; exactly.

Bob: Okay.

Abigail: With that very clear, I feel very comfortable; thank you.

I would just say, “Yes, I still do think there would be a disposition to help.” I don’t think that’s degrading, and I don’t even think that that means she can’t be a leader in certain ways or in many ways even; but that’s a God-glorifying disposition. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Like I said, rightly-oriented about God, understanding Him as a loving Father, who made His creation and called it “very good,” then I think it’s a good thing, then, to want to be an easer/a helper.

Bob: We were out at dinner the other night—Mary Ann and me. We were at one of these restaurants that has TV/flat-paneled TV’s going on. There were sports on the TV. There were two women, who were—I don’t know if they were cage fighting or boxing—but they were going at each other. Mary Ann looked at me and she said, “Is that something you’re interested in watching?” [Laughter] I thought, “This is a—

Dave: Bob, what was your answer? I want to hear this!

Bob: I thought, “This is a trick question.” [Laughter] I understood the bigger question at play in terms of things that we think of in traditionally male categories. We don’t typically think of a four-year-old and a two-year-old daughter in the living room, wrestling with each other.

Abigail: Right.

Bob: That might happen; somebody is going to write me and say, “That happens all the time.”

Ann: Yes; I did that with my brother; yes.

Bob: Okay; that’s right; but if it had been you and a sister, would that have happened?—or were you doing it with your brother because your brother was looking for another guy to play with, and you were the closest thing around and—

Ann: Probably.

Bob: —he just—and you were happy to join in because you wanted to be one of the guys?

Ann: Yes.

Bob: Right.


Ann: And my sister was very feminine. I would have probably liked to do that with her because I would have beat her; but you’re—[Laughter]—yes, that’s a great question.

Bob: So, in the midst of these kind of—typically, guys wrestle and girls do something else—

Ann: —play with dolls; yes.

Bob: Right. In those kinds of general categories, if a woman/a young woman, who is growing up, goes: “I want to be the kicker on the football team. I just have always wanted to play. I’m a good kicker; I should be able to go out there,” and “If I get tackled by the guys, I can get tackled by the guys.”

Ann: Let’s take it to Abigail. Would you let your daughter be the kicker on a football team?

Bob: If she said, “That’s what I want to be, Mom;—

Ann: Yes, and she’s good at it; and she’s a great soccer player.

Bob: —“I’m really good.”

Abigail: I would say: “Aim higher, daughter. Let’s get a new dream.”

Ann: Really?

Abigail: I mean, “Aim higher,” in the sense of: “This, too, shall pass. This doesn’t need to be your ambition.” 

Ann: —“or identity”?

Abigail: Right; I mean, there is nothing wrong with kicking a ball. Don’t hear me say that, because that’s silly legalism; but to be on an all-male sports team is a whole other thing—to put yourself in a position, where you could potentially be tackled by men. First of all, we’re training our men, then: ”That it’s okay to tackle women.” That’s just not okay. If my son were on the team, I would hope he would say: “I’m sorry. I’m not playing, because I won’t do that.” To have a daughter, who would want to put herself in that position, I would just say, “You were made for more, dear.”

Ann: I think I would ask, “Tell me about that.

Abigail: Absolutely.

Ann: “Tell me what you long for in that.”

Abigail: Absolutely; because there are other ways, then, of directing her.

Ann: Abigail, in the last part of your book, you talk about being fearless and free women in Christ. When I hear that, I think every woman longs for that. She wants to be fearless, but she also wants to be free.

What I’ve encountered, over the years, is women are not free. I think they are shackled by shame; they are shackled by comparison. There is a part of us that, as women, it’s hard for us to celebrate each other because of our own insecurities. What does it mean, as we finish up, to be free?

Abigail: Yes; I think you said it exactly right. That’s also what I’ve seen—is a huge amount of insecurity in women. Where all that comes from—of course, there are external forces that can play into that—but primarily, I think we need to say, “Insecurity comes from not trusting in Christ, who is our security.” The more we can get our footing in Him/the more we can identify, fully, and wholly in Christ, the more secure we will be; the more free we will definitely be; and the more freedom will be conceived of appropriately.

Sometimes, you use a word like free, and people think, “Oh, well, free—that just means I get to do whatever I want”; but that is not the definition of freedom in the Scripture. When Christ sets us free, it’s so that we can be unshackled from the chains of sin and death. It is not freedom to be autonomous and go on sinning.

Bob: Yes.

Abigail: Defining it appropriately is so essential right now in our culture because we’ve completely misconstrued the idea of freedom. Unless we make sure we’re telling women: “This is what Jesus means by freedom: He wants you free from your sin. He wants you free to walk with Him toward holiness,” then it will end up becoming a little mimic of what the world says, “Real self-empowering,”—where we don’t want to be self-empowered; we want to be empowered by the Holy Spirit of the Lord.

Dave: I love what you wrote—it was back in the chapter about single women—it was: “Jesus doesn’t complete the incomplete,”—you know, like “Jesus will be the one to complete you.” You say: “He utterly overcomes and swallows us up in Himself. We are made new and whole in Christ, not merely completed by Him.”

Ann: That’s really beautiful.

Dave: Beautiful truth of the redemption of Christ; right?

Bob: And I’m thinking about Galatians 5:1 as you’re talking, where Paul says, “For freedom, Christ has set us free.” Then you go, “Free from what?” Well, he answers it: “Don’t go back to the yoke of slavery to sin.”

Dave: Right.

Bob: That’s the slavery. Then, later on, in verse 13, he says: “You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; but through love, serve one another.”

That verse, in the midst of the free grace culture that I see, sometimes, in the church, where people say: “Well, you know, there is grace. I’m free in Christ,”—it’s not freedom to indulge the flesh—it’s freedom to love and serve your brothers and to be free from the yoke of slavery and from the bond of the flesh that kept you in that.

I just want to ask you, as we kind of draw this to a close: “If you were pointing your daughters/young women to verses in the Bible to say, ‘This is going to help you understand what it means that God made you a woman,’ do you take them to Proverbs 31?”

Abigail: I wouldn’t start there.

Bob: Okay.

Abigail: But, yes; absolutely; I would. Where I would start and where I started with this book was, simultaneously, two passages: Colossians 1:15-20 and, then, Genesis 1:1-2. Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn that Paul wrote about the supremacy of Christ. What it tells us is that—not just is Christ our Savior, who enters the world sent by the Father—but that Christ was before all things. That word, “before,” really is what prompted so much of this thinking—that He was before all things and that all things were created through Christ and for Christ.

Then go back and read Genesis. Then go back and think about the fact that we were made male and female through Christ and for Christ. It starts to put a little bit of a new dimension on how we think about what we were made for. It just—it gives me tons of hope.

Ann: It’s an anticipation—

Abigail: Yes!

Ann: —of what He has done and what He has created in us.

Bob: When you brought up Colossians 1, I thought of the key verse for the Passport2Purity® series that FamilyLife® produced years ago. The one verse that starts that off—when you want to help your kids understand what it means to emerge in adolescence—the birds and the bees, peer pressure/all of those issues they are going to face—we take you to Colossians 1:18: “He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He, Himself, might come to have first place in everything,”—in everything.

When you think about your femaleness and your maleness: “Does Jesus have first place in those things?” It’s the Lordship of Christ over every aspect of your life: “Are you surrendered to that, or are you rebelling against that?”

Abigail: Yes.

Bob: I’m watching Abigail nod vigorously—

Abigail: I am nodding my head.

Bob: —“Yes.”

Abigail: I am “Amen”-ing in my heart.

Bob: Absolutely. Abigail, thank you for your work, for your courage, for your thinking, for tackling hard issues; and all of the letters we get, we are sending to you; okay?

Abigail: Alright. [Laughter] I’ll frame them and put them on the wall.

Bob: Thanks for being on  Today.

We’ve got copies of Abigail Dodds’ book, (A)Typical Woman, in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. You can order the book from us when you go online at FamilyLifeToday.com, or call to order: 1-800-FL-TODAY is our number. Again, the title of the book is (A)Typical Woman—and the “A” is in parentheses—(A)Typical Woman. Order online at FamilyLifeToday.com or call 1-800-358-6329—that’s 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.”

We’ve got the president of FamilyLife, David Robbins, joining us today. You’ve been listening to this conversation this week with a different grid, because you are raising a daughter.

David: That’s right. I’m raising a daughter who is soon becoming a teenager. All the conversation about insecurity for girls growing up today just prompts me to think about how I’m potentially missing her heart right now in some things and how so many parents miss their little girls’ hearts. Do I really know and am I in tune with what’s happening and the emotions going on in her heart and in her head? Too often, I think I try to meet her emotion with logic and try to convince her of something. You know, logical words will not adequately speak to the emotion going on inside her heart.

I’m convinced that, if parents provide security for girls to be safe and be able to process what’s surfacing without rushing to fix the problem, it’ll provide the security and safety to step into who God is really making them to be.

Bob: I think that’s wise counsel. I think we’ve got to pull back and not just ask the question, “What are our daughters or our wives thinking?” but “What are they feeling?” Then process that and make that a part of that conversation. That’s a good word. Thank you, David.

I should also let our listeners know—we’ve been making Abigail’s book available this week to any FamilyLife Today listener who—maybe, you’ve been listening for a while; you’ve benefitted from this program; you believe in the mission of FamilyLife; you want to see us effectively develop godly marriages and families, who change the world one home at a time—you resonate with that mission; and you’re ready to join the team of monthly Legacy Partners, who make all of this ministry possible.

A Legacy Partner is somebody who makes a monthly donation so that FamilyLife Today can continue to sustain itself—can grow, and expand, and reach more people, providing practical biblical help and hope for marriages and families. If you become a new Legacy Partner this week, we want to say, “Thank you,” by doing two things.

First of all, we’ll send you a copy of Abigail’s book, the book we’ve talked about this week: (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ; and we’ll send you a gift card so you and your spouse, or another couple you know, can attend one of our upcoming Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways. This gift card covers the registration cost, and it’s our gift to you when you become a Legacy Partner.

If you’ve been thinking about going to a Weekend to Remember, or you know someone you’d like to send as your guest, become a Legacy Partner today. We’ll send you both the book and the gift card for the getaway. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click the button that says, “Donate.” All the information about becoming a Legacy Partner is available there; or call 1-800-FL-TODAY and say: “I’m ready to join the team. I’m ready to become a Legacy Partner.” The number, again, is 1-800-358-6329—that’s 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.”

Now, tomorrow, we’re going to hear about which aspect of the fruit of the Spirit may be the most important aspect to engage with if you’re part of a blended family. We’re going to hear from a husband in a blended family, Pastor Rob Bugh, who has got some thoughts on this subject. I think you’re going to appreciate what he has to say. I hope you can tune in.

I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Bob Lepine. We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas; a Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.

 

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