A few days ago I came across an article on MSN.com in the lifestyle section called "Real-Life-Stay-at-Home Husbands."  You can check out the article here. As a wife and mother this article caught my attention.  As a girl's ministry leader it concerned me.  About half way down the article there was a particular quote by Diane Sollee, who is the director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education and smartmarriages.com, which really set off alarms in my mind.  Here it is: "Not only is she the breadwinner with a great job, but she's also got this highly evolved male person - a feminist, father, and husband who doesn't care what the gender roles are. It's really an elevated life-form."  An elevated life-form?

Before I go any further, I just want to say one thing very clearly: I am NOT judging the heart or motive of families who have a mom who works full time and a husband who stays home.  There are a million and one reasons why a family might choose to do this, and most assuredly not all of them are unbiblical.

What I would like us to take notice of, however, is the secular acknowledgement of male and female roles (which were assigned by our creator in part at creation and in part because of the curse, see Genesis 2:15-24 and Genesis 3:1-20), yet the unapologetic celebration of their reversal.  It's stunning and alarming all at the same time to hear a woman say that role reversal is "an elevated life-form."  As if to say that living with in the roles men and women were assigned by an all knowing, all loving God who created us is like driving a beat-up '81 Chevy when we could be rockin a 2010 Ferrari.  Scary.

It makes me consider deeply the importance of our commitment to the aspect of discipleship within our ministry to girls that helps them understand what our biblical roles as men and women are to be-and why living within these roles we find the real "Ferrari-life."  Am I saying that we need to teach all of our girls to be stay-at-home mom's with apron's and heels?  Absolutely not.  I'm talking about an issue that goes so much deeper than whether as women we have the privilege to stay at home with our kids (a lot of single mom's never even get this option!).  I'm talking about an understanding of who God created us to be as women.  And I'm talking about an understanding of who God created our husbands, dad's and son's to be as men.  Living within the role's God has given us offers us fulfillment and joy -- we are living as we have been wired to live!  Our selfish sin nature always fights against this, though, and causes us to grasp for something we see as "more" ... isn't that what Eve got her and her husband kicked out of the garden for doing in the first place?

My question is: how much time are we as girls ministry leaders spending on this topic with our girls?  Or are we addressing it at all?  It's a sticky topic but one we must step up with courage to address.  Agreed?