Transformation, not Conformation

By Taisa Efseaff Maffey


It was one year ago, on an ordinary day in the middle of an ordinary week in the middle of the extraordinary month of November, that I emerged from our home office, flounced into the living room, and excitedly informed my husband, Ethan, that I was going to start a blog.  Ethan thought this was a great idea -- just like he thought it was a great idea each time he suggested it to me over the course of the previous two years.  He knew that, as a college graduate with a degree in English, I had always harbored aspirations of writing... something.

When I was a kid, I decided I was going to author children's books, and my mom was going to be my illustrator.  (I couldn't write that without smiling, but it's true.)  As a middle school and high school student, I thought I would instead create a young adult book series.  (Sure!  How hard could it be?)  In college, my ambitions turned to writing a novel.  Any fellow English major can guess what came next after graduation.  REALITY.  I can't count how many times I sat down to write; how many private brainstorming sessions; how many first chapters of "books" I wrote.  I had tons of ideas and no idea what to do with them.  What's more, the prospect of creating a lengthy, significant, cohesive piece of writing -- namely, a book -- was daunting to the point of inducing paralysis.  So, I did what any modern, recent English graduate would do.  I turned to Facebook.

It may sound silly, but Facebook freed me up to write again.  After all, there are no special criteria to consider when writing status updates, no requirements of length or quality; there is no fear of being compared with writers of other Facebook status updates and not measuring up.  And so, I wrote status updates.  Even before Ethan came along, some family members and friends began encouraging me to start a blog.  I appreciated the faith they showed in me, but I didn't want to blog unless I had a reason to, unless I had something worth writing about.  Which brings us back one year ago.

I had been married six months.  I was also working full-time in an exceptionally stressful environment at a busy law firm in town.  Maybe this sounds completely unremarkable.  After all, most middle class couples consist of two people who both work full-time jobs, which can often be stressful.  But for me, the new responsibilities that came with being a wife brought on a pressure of their own, and I couldn't seem to handle the strain of both roles together very well.

I wanted to be a good wife.  I felt impelled to create and maintain organization within our home, our paperwork, our finances.  Life seemed entirely chaotic if the dishes weren't done or the bathroom was a mess.  I needed to ensure that we had clean, wrinkle-free clothes to wear each day; to make sure there was an extra toothpaste in the drawer before we ran out.  I wanted to be a good cook.  Good cooking required menu planning and grocery shopping in advance, aside from the trial and error time added to the actual meal preparation when cooking unfamiliar foods or recipes.  Beyond my self-imposed wifely duties, I wanted to be physically in shape and feel and look good, which would mean devoting virtually the last remnant of my personal time to working out, not to mention summoning supernatural strength to abstain from habitual stress eating, while still managing to get to bed on time every night.  In short, I felt like I went to work every morning and then came home -- tired, anxious, and already discouraged -- to my second job every evening.  Meanwhile, I was a newlywed who of course wanted nothing more than to just spend time with her husband.

A conviction began to grow within me that I was not living the kind of life that God intended for me.  It ate at me that the bulk of my energy and time each day was wasted on people who didn't care about me or appreciate my work, at a job that rendered me weary and frustrated for my more important and preferred job as a wife at home.  I felt like I was giving away my best at the law firm, and Ethan just got what was left over of me at the end of the day.  Moreover, I suspected that other women were in similar situations and could relate to my feelings of frustration and defeat.  And so, I decided I wanted to write about THAT.  Not necessarily about being a wife or mom and balancing a work life, but about focusing on what God has called us to do and being the best that we can be at it, whether it's being a wife, a mom, a single girl, a woman with ambitions, all of it.  What does our own, individual roles as women look like?  Is it right?  Would we like it to be different?  Can it be different?

Romans 12:2 says, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."  From time to time, I've found myself captive to expectations, sometimes internally and sometimes externally imposed, that I have to deliberately examine and evaluate before deciding whether to allow their continued hold on me.  I've come to the conclusion that it can be quite easy to allow our environments and the people in them to dictate what our lives should look like or who we should be.  Perhaps this is especially true for women.  Similarly, there's also a tendency to take it for granted that our status quo always was and always must be.  But Romans 12:2 reminds me not to conform when I'm feeling that gnawing in my gut that something isn't right.  Instead, I need to be transformed by opening my mind to other possibilities that the Lord may be preparing for me.

One year ago, my status quo remained and I continued working in the same stressful environment, all the while feeling hampered from truly being who I wanted to be in my personal life.  But the Lord was indeed preparing another way for me.  Two months ago, I was able to quit my job, and I am now able to focus my time and energy on what I actually feel called to do, not least of which is to write.  Eventually, books.  For now, a blog.