It was 1970 something. In a packed pizza parlor with a country band playing, the little red-haired girl walked up to a bearded singer and requested the song: Put Another Log on the Fire by Waylon Jennings. The bearded singer broke into a smile, broke into that song, and all the women in that pizza parlor broke into a collective, “NO!” as men clapped and cheered.

“Put another log on the fire
cook me up some bacon and some beans
and go out to the car and change the tire
wash my socks and sew my old blue jeans.
Come on baby you can fill my pipe and then go fetch my slippers
And boil me up another pot of tea
then put another log on the fire babe
and come and tell me why you’re leaving me.
Now don’t I let you wash the car on Sunday
and don’t I warn you when you’re gettin’ fat
Ain’t I gonna take you fishin’ with me someday
Well, a man can’t love a woman more than that.
Ain’t I always nice to your kid sister
don’t I take her driving every night
so sit here at my feet ’cause I like it when you’re sweet
and you know it ain’t feminine to fight.
So put another log on the fire…”

Back at a table covered with pitchers of beer and half eaten pizzas, my dad crowned me, the little red-haired girl, with a grin of approval (he’d asked me to request that song for him), before a frowning woman pulled me down beside her on the bench and whispered in my eight-year-old ear, “That’s a terrible song. Let me tell you the truth about liberated women.”
I don’t remember all she said after that, but I do recall feeling conflicted over what she told me. Later in life, particularly in my college years, I learned more about liberated women.
In my English major classes, I wrote essays about the cause, and by the age of 21, took a particular disliking to a line in my marriage vows a priest insisted I say, “I promise to love and obey my husband.” The love part was perfume, but the word ‘obey’ struck my heart like a hatchet. The last thing I planned to do in my life was obey a man. So I lied at our wedding and said I’d obey because the priest refused to marry us unless I did.
Ten years into the marriage, I was ready for serious liberation. Dreams of divorce descended on me night and day. This is too long a story for too short a blog so I’ll just cut to the God part: in the midst of divorce dreams, the Lord revealed Himself to me, and here is what God demanded: Obey me and do not divorce your husband.
Because God spoke to me when I hardly knew Him, and even though He said exactly what I did not want to hear, I began reading the Bible. And there it was all over the place. That word: Obey. Not only was a woman called to obey God, she was also commanded to obey her husband.
Barf. But I was too sick of myself and my own failings to even barf anymore. Instead, I swallowed those liberated woman beliefs that went down kicking and screaming like banshees as I read the Bible and became a wide-eyed woman of God’s Word. Once God became real to me, I was too afraid not to obey Him. That was the year the tide of my conflicted life turned and God’s truth surged in. Along with truth came hope and healing: A restored marriage, my body delivered from autoimmune disorders, and four more babies bringing our brood to seven, which, when I see pictures of all those kids together, still astounds me.
Today my life isn’t what I imagined nearly a quarter of a century ago when I lied to a priest and a church full of people, promising to obey a husband I had no intention of ever obeying. Funny how God held me accountable to that promise anyway, changing me into a woman set free to love God and my husband and how that love plays out in obedience in both these relationships.
When I talk with other conflicted women, I gently try to tell them the truth about liberated women: that every liberated woman I know is, if not openly, secretly lonely. Not only are they lonely, sometimes they are bitter and plagued with health issues as well.
Lonely, bitter, and sick is no way to live. When Jesus walked the earth, He healed women, delivering them from sickness and evil spirits. Some of these now truly liberated women then followed Him, even financially supporting Jesus.

“Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities — Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for Him from their substance” (Luke 8:1-3).

Today, Jesus still heals women. I am living proof of this, and I’m blessed my husband is the one who puts the logs on the fire at our house. Here is baby Cruz enjoying his first day home by the fire in 2011.