“I am married to a fierce woman, in a good way.” In Bible college, many of the pastors associated with our college were powerful men with big personalities, and often a big personality marries someone who is kind of the opposite. So many of the pastors’ wives associated with our college were very quiet-natured, and my wife was almost feeling, “Man, God, You messed up when You made me, because I am built different.” She felt she could not fulfill the Scriptures on being meek and quiet and also be what God made her to be. In today’s video I am going to go through a book called Fierce Women. We have it at our church’s resource desk, and it was so helpful to see the strengths of a really fiery personality rather than seeing that personality as some kind of weakness. Hi, folks. If you are new here, I am Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. I do weekly videos here to help us bring the Bible home, and we have been going through resources from our resource desk. Just last week we crossed 800 subscribers, so if you are new here, welcome to the channel. We are very glad you are here. Let us jump into this book.
The Author’s Testimony
The first thing I really appreciated about this book was the author’s testimony, her own story of how her marriage was struggling because of her fierceness. It had turned to control, manipulation, and domination in the home. She did not intend for that to happen, but she points out moments in her marriage when she turned to nagging or anger or emotional pressure, and throughout the book she highlights several areas where the fierce personality can turn into a weakness. She got to the place where she could not trust God to let her husband run the home, or be biblically submissive to her husband. She names several issues throughout the book, and each chapter focuses on a different one. It is really good on the topic of fear: “I do not think my husband can do it right.” Or the topic of pride: “I am the only one who can do things right around here,” a kind of self-reliance. It even touches on bitterness, pains from the past brought into the present. But it came to a head, and she came to the place of embracing actual biblical femininity, which is true biblical meekness, strength under control: learning to trust God with His design for marriage and for her home, and learning to respect her husband even when, at the time, she did not see anything respectable about him. So it is really a great treatise on humility. The objection would be, “Well, you are just trying to make women passive, to make them doormats, to silence and suppress women.” That is not true. What I appreciated so much is that she is still fierce, but she is bringing that power under the control of God.
This book does not deal with the husband’s side very much. It takes two to tango, and problems at home go both ways. So I am not dismissing his side, and neither is she, but the book is admittedly out of balance on purpose. She is writing her own story to people in situations similar to hers, and I appreciated her honesty. My wife’s testimony is that when she came to realize, “Look, God is not trying to stifle my personality; God can in fact use that fierceness for His glory,” it unleashed the lioness in her. Our relationship works so well precisely because she is so fierce, in a good way. She has found true power through meekness, power in the right places within the marriage. She used to think, “I need a husband who is more aggressive than me, somebody who would overpower my energy and bring me into submission, because the Bible says I have to submit, so I guess I have to submit.” It was almost a dread of getting married, because then she would have to limit herself. But when we got together, there was such a sweet relationship, and I never had to overpower her fierceness. I cannot compete with her energy, her mind, or her competitiveness, who she is as designed by God. She is too much for me in that sense, but that is God’s perfect design. I am perfectly suited as the opposite of her, and that is the idea of Adam and Eve. She was an help meet for him, somebody designed to be the counterpart of Adam, and that is a beautiful design by God when He puts them together. It is kind of like Apple’s noise-canceling AirPods. When you turn on noise canceling, it takes the frequencies of the sound waves and counters them with the opposite frequencies. It is not that it overpowers the sound waves with louder noise going into your ears, drowning out the other sound. No, if the sound wave goes up, the noise cancellation goes down, and when they match, they cancel each other out in a good way. That noise-canceling sound wave is actually a balance, a harmony. Fierceness can be out of control, and the Bible describes out-of-control women in the Scriptures as clamorous or contentious or meddling. But when she has submitted that fierceness to God, all the care and concern she is pouring into life can turn into care and concern for people. What once might have brought bitterness in a husband might actually bring increased dependence, love, and nurturing care toward her. It can turn into care for the details, or care for people, and when it is that, it is an incredible trait.
Walking on Eggshells
The book is heavy on exposure, exposing the issues and needs through her story. The author points to many things as the woman’s fault, and I realize there is nuance there; obviously it is not all her fault. That is the obvious caveat to the book. But I appreciated so much that she recognized that much of what people call passivity in men sometimes comes from the fierceness they are met with at home when they are just being men. You have heard of men who have to walk on eggshells, and she attributes some of that to the fierceness of the wife’s responses. My wife and I have been married for seventeen years, and we are always learning new things about each other. Just a few weeks ago my wife and I were talking about this, and she had a revelation about what goes on in my mind. She said she had no idea, and she is really, really good at learning me and at trying not to be the terrible version of a fierce woman. She is incredibly good at it, even in driving, for example. We were driving at the time, and I forget what brought it up, but she is really careful not to be a backseat driver while also helping me notice which turns are coming up, and not being controlling. She is extra careful about all of that. But because of something that came up while driving, she asked me, “Do you ever think I am being controlling or anything like that?” I said, “No, you are great at it. But still, even when we are driving around, there is a constant dialogue in my head about what you are going to think. When we are together, I am filtering everything I do, everywhere I go, every turn I make, anticipating what you might say about it. If I drive past a parking space, I am thinking about whether you are going to speak up, whether you would have liked that one, or whether you will ask me why I drove past it. I am thinking about how close it is to the restaurant or the store, how close it is to the car next to it, and whether your car door can open. If I am by myself, I just pull in, figure out how to squeeze my way out of the car, and go into the store. No big deal. But when we are together, I am constantly thinking about why I am taking this turn, or explaining that I went through this green light so I could turn into the restaurant the other way, or that I like moving forward rather than waiting at a red light, or whatever it is.” So it is not bad at all. I am just saying that when I am driving alone, I am just driving. I am a fine driver; I get places all by myself, and I do not need any help. But when we are together, I told her, “I am never not thinking of you.” And she said, “Really? Oh, I cannot believe it.” It led to a fun conversation. I said, “I think that is where a lot of arguments come from. He thinks he is deferring to her and giving so much to her, and he does not think she even realizes or notices it. He is thinking so much about her, and she thinks she is doing pretty well at not nagging, and she is thinking of him all the time and serving. Both people think they are giving the most.”
From the wife’s perspective, the author exposes the idea that a wife may not even realize how much her words influence him, how many little comments affect his attitude, his demeanor, the things he thinks about, this matter of walking on eggshells. All that is to say, when you hear it from a man, from me, then, “Man, he is a chauvinist.” But if you hear it from a female author, maybe it helps you go, “Wow, I never knew that.” So I encourage you to read this book if some of those character traits might show up in your life. My wife enjoyed and appreciated this book; it was helpful to her. My wife loves learning new things about me, and I guess I just do not share new things with her very often, but we are closer today as a result of talking about silly things like that. When none of those things are said out loud, she makes the case that if he walks on eggshells, he retreats. He does not want to start an argument, so he backs away, and the wife starts to become the de facto leader of the home. She makes all the decisions: “He cannot make a right decision. He is not informed enough. He just does not know what is going on.” So she jumps in and runs things, and then she is bitter because he is being passive. So there is a great point on passivity.
The Language of Respect
To counter that, she spends some time saying, “Well, if I do not want him to be so passive, maybe I need to learn the language of respect.” She does as well as I have ever seen from a lady author in covering the topic of respect. I think the book Love and Respect does it best, but she is as good as I have ever read on this topic. She gives practical suggestions and real, clear language. There is a language of respect that men speak, and women can speak it too, but it is a foreign language that can be learned but never fully understood to the level that he and other men speak it. That is the language of respect, and she does a good job of laying some of it out. One last thing I will mention about the book is that I appreciated its good Christian foundation. She calls for confession and repentance to the Lord. She calls on us to give this over to Jesus Christ and ask God to change her heart, to give her a heart for her husband and for learning these things. So even with some doctrinal differences we might have with the author’s theology, I appreciated the help it can bring to marriages that need it, and for that, I recommend this book to you.
I am excited about some other resources coming up at our church, and I am excited about my own wife’s new devotional; I will share more about that in the near future. I have been working on it in all my little off times. I was working until about ten o’clock last night, just in bed, plunking away at her upcoming Ezekiel devotional, and we totally changed the design last week, so that is coming in the future. I cannot wait to share some of it. That is the result of a wife who is passionate about the things of the Lord, and we just want to help other people in the same way. So that is it for today. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
