The older I become, the more I find myself returning to the opening chapters of Genesis, not because I have exhausted them, but because I keep discovering that I have not understood them nearly as well as I imagined.
There are truths tucked into those pages that seem almost too familiar to notice.
We read them, nod our heads, and continue on, though they have been quietly explaining the human condition all along.
Perhaps that is why the Lord preserved them for us.
Every generation arrives convinced its struggles are uniquely modern until Scripture gently reminds us that our deepest wounds began in a garden.
I would like to spend some time thinking about what I have come to call:
“The Remnants of the Curse.”
I use that phrase carefully because the curse itself has been answered at Calvary.
Christ bore the curse for all who belong to Him, and one glorious day every trace of it will disappear forever.
Yet until these mortal bodies are exchanged for glorified ones, we continue living in a world where its effects remain painfully familiar.
The weeds still grow.
Bodies still weaken.
Relationships still strain.
Tears still fall.
Death still visits homes that love deeply.
Women feel those remnants in particular ways.
When the Lord spoke to Eve after the fall, He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children…”
Those words have echoed through every generation of women since.
I do not believe that sentence concerns labor alone.
It reaches much farther than the delivery room.
A woman’s body has always carried a remarkable capacity for life, and with that capacity comes a remarkable capacity for sorrow.
The very body designed to nurture life often becomes the place where she feels her deepest vulnerabilities.
Month after month it reminds her that she is wonderfully made and painfully fallen at the same time.
It prepares for life.
It sheds what was prepared.
It shifts, changes, aches, bleeds, and carries rhythms that can affect not only her strength but also the landscape of her emotions.
Some months pass almost unnoticed.
Others seem to pull every feeling closer to the surface.
A conversation that ordinarily would have rolled gently off our shoulders suddenly lingers all afternoon.
Tears appear before we fully understand why they have come.
Weariness settles over us with unusual weight.
Small disappointments begin sounding much louder inside our minds than they did only days before.
Most women know exactly what I am describing.
We have lived inside these bodies for years.
Yet knowing something is happening does not always make it easier to navigate.
There have been seasons when I recognized the shift almost immediately.
I could feel myself becoming unusually sensitive, and still I found my emotions persuading me that every feeling deserved to be believed simply because it had arrived with such force.
I have replayed conversations that needed no replaying.
I have carried offenses longer than they deserved.
I have allowed a difficult afternoon to cast its shadow across an otherwise beautiful day.
Looking back, I can often see that my emotions had become louder than my wisdom.
That realization has humbled me.
For a long time I thought maturity meant reaching a place where these struggles would simply disappear.
Instead, I have found that maturity more often looks like recognizing my own patterns before they begin leading me somewhere I should not go.
There is a difference between acknowledging that our bodies influence us and surrendering ourselves to every feeling they produce.
One requires honesty.
The other slowly hands over the steering wheel.
Our emotions are wonderful servants.
They make terrible shepherds.
God never intended for them to become the loudest voice directing our homes, our marriages, our friendships, or our children.
Left to themselves, emotions often change as quickly as the weather, and while every feeling deserves to be acknowledged, not every feeling deserves to be obeyed.
That lesson has become increasingly precious to me.
There are mornings when I have needed to stop before saying much of anything and simply pray,
“Lord, my emotions have arrived before my wisdom today. Would You help me discern the difference?”
He has never seemed offended by that prayer.
If anything, I suspect He is pleased when His daughters bring Him an honest assessment of themselves instead of pretending they are unaffected by the frailty of flesh.
Psalm 103 tells us that “he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”
Dust.
There is comfort in that word.
The Lord is never surprised by the limitations of the body He formed.
He understands hormonal changes better than the finest physician because He designed every system before sin entered the world and watched every one of them become subject to the curse after Adam fell.
Nothing about womanhood confuses Him.
Nothing catches Him off guard.
Yet His compassion never removes our responsibility.
There have been days when I needed more rest.
Days when I needed to nourish my body better.
Days when I needed to postpone difficult conversations because I knew I was unusually vulnerable.
Days when I needed to ask my family for patience.
There have also been days when I needed to apologize because discomfort had found its way into my words.
Both can be true.
A woman’s body deserves compassion.
A Christian woman’s conduct still belongs to Christ.
The Holy Spirit produces temperance, and I find myself returning to that word often.
Temperance carries the idea of self-government, of bringing ourselves under the gracious rule of God even while every feeling inside us seems to be pulling another direction.
That kind of balance does not come naturally.
At least it has never come naturally for me.
I wish I could tell you there is a point where hormones stop influencing emotions, where every month unfolds peacefully, and where wisdom effortlessly governs every response.
My own experience has been much less impressive than that.
Some months I recognize what is happening early enough to slow my tongue.
Other months I realize it halfway through an unnecessary conversation.
There are still times when I must return to someone I love and say, “Would you forgive me? I should have handled that differently.”
Perhaps that, too, is part of sanctification.
Not pretending we are untouched by the remnants of the curse, but allowing those very reminders of our weakness to drive us back to the feet of Christ again and again.
One day these bodies will be redeemed.
There will come a morning when no woman will ever wake to pain, hormonal upheaval, miscarriage, infertility, labor, menopause, weakness, disease, or death.
The curse will finally have spent its last breath, and every remnant of sorrow will disappear beneath the perfect work of Christ.
Until that day comes, I want to learn how to live faithfully inside the body God has given me.
I want to recognize its rhythms without becoming ruled by them.
I want to extend grace toward myself without excusing sin.
I want my children and grandchildren to remember a woman whose emotions were real, whose tears were honest, whose weaknesses were evident, and whose heart kept returning to the Savior who understood her frame far better than she ever could.
Perhaps that is where healing begins.
Not with pretending the remnants of the curse no longer touch us, but by bringing every one of them beneath the shadow of the cross, where even our frailty becomes another invitation to depend upon the grace of God.
Biblical Womanhood
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