My job this summer has consisted of steel-toe work boots, dust, paint fumes, a daily does of sweat, greasy braids and ponytails. A fair bit of heavy lifting (I think my arms have actually toned from work!), pushing and pulling carts, occasionally trying to sand tape off a veneer or trying to peel paint off of a veneer thinking that it was tape (oops). Big safety glasses that fit uncomfortably over my real glasses (six-eyes, six eyes!!). Calloused hands and feet. Scraped up, scratched up legs because, truthfully, I am a klutz and prone to run into and trip over just about everything (including my own feet). Clock in, clock out…
If we’re being honest, not a very feminine, graceful kind of job. And confession: I have complained about it A LOT this summer. My Mom can testify.
But among many other graces and gifts that God has given in that job, there is one in particular I am inclined to acknowledge. I have had the privilege of working with men, young and old, who have treated me like a lady and enabled me to be one. Even in my dusty, furnace-like work place, as unfeminine and ungraceful as it feels, the courteous considerations of gentlemanly co-workers have made me feel time and again like a valued lady. It has been simple things. Help with lifting a heavy panel. A gentleman getting the tape down for me to tape edge banding onto a toe-kick (literally every day). Helping me push/pull a heavy cart of panels over to shipping, or simply taking it off of my hands altogether. Volunteering with cheerfulness to do the hard and heavy work that is truly just better suited to a man’s strength. Holding the door open from the lunch room…
There are more examples. These have been to me some of the sweetest little gifts throughout my summer. To be treated as a woman, to be enabled to be a woman. It is not that I am not “capable”, or that they have demeaned my ability to work hard. No, quite the contrary. In their graciousness and service to me I have seen Christ. These men, who stand apart from most that I have met, have shown in their work and gentleness a noble manhood that is found in few. And as I am an advocate of the glorious masculinity of God’s design, I relish, encourage, and support such manly conduct. I try to say ‘thank you’ every time such an act of courtesy and consideration is done for me.
Men, take it from a sister in Christ. I know there are many women who despise and degrade your attempts to serve and honour them. On their behalf, I am ashamed and humbly ask your forgiveness. But I encourage you: keep doing it!! For those of us who cherish the opportunity to feel like and behave as a woman, it is a gift so precious! Even in dusty, dirty, ungraceful circumstances like a cabinet factory, a woman can be made to feel like a lady by how the men around her treat her. Please keep striving for a higher standard of manhood. Don’t do it for me, or for the praise and adoration of the ladies, or for your own self-esteem. Do it for the one who created us male and female. Do it for His glory, His fame, and His delight.
Here’s gratitude for God’s glory on display in His men.
songs of stippled stardust 