The large room was packed full of African women drawn from various
countries. This was our time to flee from our daily responsibilities and come
together for a couple of days to be refreshed in God’s presence. God knows we
needed it. As Christian women, we often find ourselves pulled in multiple
directions all at once – by church positions and responsibilities, husbands,
children, careers, running a clean and peaceful household (with food in it) …
The list is endless, and every year, in my experience, just gets busier.
A one-hour prayer session began. The usual prayer topics I’ve come to
expect at this sort of gathering. We prayed for our children, for our homes, for
our health, for our spiritual lives, about family finances … As we dwelt on
these topics, the prayer in the room was collectively maintained at a nice, polite,
even tempo.
And then, we were led in a prayer to ‘unseat the strange woman’ in our
husbands’ lives.
This prayer point had a poetic ring to it, I thought, as I turned the
phrase around in my mind … “unseating the ‘strange woman’.” I fought to hide a smile as the phrase
suddenly seemed comical to me. The point was to pray against women that were
serving (or that could potentially serve) as a distraction to the husbands of
the Christian women represented in the room, that were coming in and invading
Christian households, that were appearing on the scene and snatching women’s
husbands away. The polite tempo of the prayers in the room immediately shifted into a
frenzy that rose until the room was literally shaking. Women around me
screamed, cried, yelled. I could sense some fighting physically with the air,
contending against invisible 'strange women.' Others clapped their hands
forcefully, and stomped their feet in anger and indignation, binding the ‘strange
woman,’ and commanding the grip of this mysterious, evidently powerful, and
seductive woman on their husbands to be released.
I eventually found myself overwhelmed with sadness, and weeping on the inside in reaction to all I
could hear and feel around me, my eyes tightly closed. My heart broke with
every rising octave of the corporate prayer, as I witnessed (or sensed) ordinarily dignified
Christian women, whom I greatly respected, morph into something I can’t adequately describe. ‘Was this
really happening?’ I wondered. Were Christian marriages really this fragile? Had
we really been reduced to this as women of God?
I battled with waves of embarrassment brought about by this pathetic
scenario. Although no longer married, I tried to keep myself focused on praying
for God to protect and intervene in the marriages of those around me. I was
jolted out of this prayer attempt, though, by multiple cries of ‘Every strange
woman in my husband’s life, I unseat
you, in Jesus’ Name!’
Where was this paranoia stemming from? What on earth has happened to Christian men? How on earth did we get to
this place? What is the church doing about all this? Surely, the solution can’t
be in yet another annual women’s retreat to encourage faithful Christian women to
hold on for one more year, for the next meeting, for the next renowned visiting pastor,
for the next prophetic word, for the next dab of anointing oil.
Who on earth is working with Christian men? Why is there an assumption
that men automatically ‘know’ how to be men, while women need constant,
intensive Christian training throughout their lives? Where is the parallel annual men’s retreat? The
parallel men’s prayer meetings and special bible studies? Why does it seem like
the preservation of a Christian marriage is solely a woman’s burden to bear?
It
would be sooooo refreshing to see a room full of African, Christian men, crying out
to God for their wives and children (perhaps even rebuking ‘strange men’), and crying out to
Him to establish them as true men of God.
I was heartbroken that it had come to this. Heartbroken because I instinctively
knew that these same women would return for the retreat in 2013 and pray just
as fervently over this same prayer point all over again.
Does the solution lie in intercessory prayer, I wondered, or in finally
making men a major project of the church?
Another approach I’ve seen Christian women rely upon to protect their marriages
involves shunning their unmarried peers. I could never understand this
approach, as it has always seemed really un-Christ-like to me. After an
unmarried friend of mine ‘took up’ with my former spouse, I finally ‘got’ it (J),
but I still didn’t (and don’t) embrace the mentality. If I have to live in perpetual
fear of my Christian spouse’s infidelity, then there’s a problem.
If this is what it takes to keep a Christian marriage together, then
what’s the point of marrying a believer (not that I’m even remotely suggesting
that a Christian shouldn’t, but you have to wonder …)? Why should a Christian
woman who married a fellow believer have to invest so much time offering prayers meant for the ‘unsaved’?
If we’re
not ready to invest time preparing men to be Christian husbands, then there’s
no point emphasizing to Christian women that they must marry believers –
because if we don’t prepare a generation of believing husbands, then there are none.
