Dirt or Diamond?

"An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels." -  Proverbs 31 :10 

Have you ever seen a ruby? Not cut and polished bobble perched on a ladies hand; I’m talking about a ruby just lying around on the ground? I didn’t think so. Rubies, diamonds, and other precious metals generally don’t pop out the ground like dandelions. It’s quite a process to get them to the surface.  The ideal condition for the formation of diamonds exists some 93 miles below the earth’s surface. When you hear about sites where you can “mine your own gems”, that’s usually the bed of an inactive volcano, which has provided a way for these precious rocks to spring to the earth surface. Then you simply dig and sift through mounds of dirt and you might find a gem.  I recently read an article by a man who makes his living this way, he sifts through thousands of lbs. of dirt weekly, and he considers it a good month if he finds one gem.  That’s a lot of sifting through crud to get to one diamond!  Yep, that sounds like dating, not much has changed in the 3,000 years since King Lemuel’s mother gave him similar advice. Dirt you can find my son, a virtuous woman though, that’s going take some digging.

Truly the process of creating a virtuous woman is much similar to the one needed to create a gemstone, ideal conditions and lots of pressure exerted on it over a prolonged period of time. I know in my own life my journey of attempting to walk in the way of this virtuous woman has been a long a winding path, and now I am raising four daughters and calling them to the challenge as well. We all spring forth our of our mother’s wombs steeped in original sin, desiring the very things that will destroy our lives and families, and now our depraved natures have been aided by the scourge of feminism and we are pretty much left with mounds of dirt. Sometimes the task of sifting through it all seems like an overwhelming task.

I’d like to talk about what have been the largest challenges in my own gemstone becoming process and the unfortunate struggles my own daughters seem to face.  My largest challenge is contentment! Hands down, don’t have to ask me twice, no need to think it over; my “thorn in the side” is not being content. How odd is that? I doubt a diamond sets around think, “oh poor me, here I am in the dirt, under appreciated, my dreams never realized, blah blah blah” No!  It’s just sitting there, doing its thing, take it or leave it in the dirt, it couldn’t care less. Not women though, we need validation, “me” time, titles, paychecks, all sort of man-made credentials. Usually these pursuits led use directly away from our God given mandate as women. Our feminist world says “You go girl!” God says stay and be still, keep yourself at home. Our world says “I am woman hear me roar! I can do any job a man can!” God’s word says Eve’s curse that she shares with her daughters will be to desire her husband’s life and position.  We are born filthy rags and then we reject the process God’s had ordained for us to walk through to become diamonds! We have the opportunity to be shining examples of God’s glory, and instead we insist on the dirt, and we will never find contentment this way.

So what pressures to we need to conform unto the beauty God has for us? What are our ideal conditions? I think each of us have different challenges, but there are some woman-wide. I believe contentment is one. One of the best decisions we ever made as parents was to out-law Barbie in the Via house, no career dolls in immodest clothing, flaunting their perfect bodies, driving their perfect convertibles, and living in their three story dream houses with elevators. That’s not reality folks; give your daughter a baby doll and a play kitchen. Teach her to find joy in the ordinary and precious tasks of life! Don’t breed discontentment, it will find her on its own, but dear parent don’t aide the enemy by esteeming ideals in movies, toys, and books, that can never be attained in real life.  Secondly we need to redefine beauty, what does God call beauty? Sacrifice, gentleness, patience, kindness, hard work, joy, care for others, even servants! The list of virtues God extols for the Virtuous woman goes on and on! In jockeying for man’s position we have been robbed of the beauty of feminine life and it’s benefits. Children teach patience, like nothing else on this earth, the raising of children will teach sacrifice and patience. Devoting yourself to the love and care of your family and home is the very essence of kindness and its hard work. Having the time to love the elderly or needy around you because you’re not consumed by your own “dreams” will not only be a blessing to your own life, but God says it’s the same as doing a service for Him.

As daughters of God we need to wake up and throw of the shackles of feminism. The business that seems of consume our lives. We have this program the kids must do, this store we must shop, this bible study we must attend. Keep at home, love your children, love your husband, be hospitable. That's ALL, A-L-L, God has asked of us, the reason we are stressed is because we are living contrary to the way of our designer. The slavery of living in our own sinful desires instead of following God’s process for us has cursed us to a life as dirt! We can be beautiful precious fixtures in the lives of our husband, families, churches, and community, but we can’t do it our own way. You can fool with dirt all you want, you can make mud and various other things, but unless a seed is introduced to it nothing of use will grow, until pressure is exerted on it the composition will not change. Dirt or diamond dear sister, which one will you be?