Proverbs 31 Woman

There's a book that I've loved reading since I was 19 years old. I continue to read it at least once a year. I worked at a camp as a cook for 5 years in a row (and loved it!) I found this book in the little house that I would stay in for the summer. It wasn't a new book at the time, and it's definitely not a new book now. It was published in 1984 (I was 2 at the time) and its called "The Proverbs 31 Lady and Other Impossible Dreams." It's by a woman named Marsha Drake.

I don't know Marsha Drake and I don't expect to ever meet her, but her book is such a great read. As the title suggests, she wrote about the passage in Proverbs that talks about "The Virtuous Woman." The book is not written in any way that you would think. She writes it from what I assume is her own life, and her struggles with becoming like the Proverbs 31 Lady that she reads about. It's filled with a number of humorous stories from her life.

I love this book in the fact that it relates to me. When she reads what this virtuous woman was like, she criticizes how she lives her life. Now this is a woman I can relate to. A woman who desires to be like the woman in Proverbs 31, but has not gotten it down perfect at all. This is how I feel like my life is. I want to be like that virtuous woman, I try really hard to be, but daily I feel like I fail.

I'm not a morning person and if you read the scripture, this woman is described as getting up early to start her work. I've tried this and not only do I just hit the snooze button until the alarm literally shuts itself off, but if I do manage to get up, my mood stinks and the work I do is not very good. I am a night person, so when the scripture mentions her staying up late to get her work done I can relate to that. I'm not a Bible scholar and I won't even pretend to have studied this scripture and looked up every word in Bible study books. I just know that some things I can do and some things I can't.

It's also very hard for me to keep my house as clean as what my mind thinks it should be. I've learned that when you have a baby in the house, you just have to lower your standards a bit, for your own sanity and for the sanity of your children.

In the book, she takes the whole Bible passage literally and tries to apply it to her life. She tries to take up sewing and it ends up in disaster (much like what might happen if I took up sewing on a regular basis). This book is filled with so many humorous stories of trying to take the passage literally.

In the end of the book, her husband praises her and she finds out that even when she thought she was failing everyday, her husband saw her efforts, he saw her to be that virtuous woman from the Bible.

That's just it, Ladies, God calls us to use this woman out of Scripture to be an example. He knows we can't be exactly like her, every moment of every day. But He calls us to strive to be like her. Just like He calls us to be Christ-like. We can't be perfect while we live on this earth, but He sees our hearts, He sees our motives. He knows when we are truly trying to be like the virtuous woman.

I recommend reading this book if you can. And let's all try to be the best "Proverbs 31 Ladies" we can be. I will continue my journey to becoming more like her, even if I feel like I fail everyday.