Bats in the Bedroom and Gender Roles

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• Sumo

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Roses from my husband

Frustrated, I listened to the scrabbling noises in the corner of our bedroom.  Yet another mouse!  So much for sleep.

My husband, too, was giving up.  When he sat up and swung his legs out of the bed I needlessly told him to watch out for his feet, because there was a mouse.

He sighed and said, “I know,” and at that moment I saw what it really was, a bat fluttering in the dark.

“A bat!” I squealed as I dove under the sheet.

So my dear husband got up, turned on the light, and went after the bat with a towel.

I lay there under the sheets, thinking about the series of rabies shots that Miss 11 had almost completed and hoping that my husband would not have to go through it, too.

Meanwhile, he caught that bat with the towel, and after that I ventured out to get him gloves and whatever else he needed to safely get it out of the house.

Then my dear husband went back to sleep.

I stayed up and pondered gender roles, a topic we were going to discuss that night at Bible study.  Often in study groups, gender roles are discussed in a one-dimensional way, focusing only on headship and submission, even if they are dealt with in a broad and Biblical way as in our study guide, The Meaning of Marriage.

But there is so much more to it all.  We had just experienced instinctive gender roles based on the concepts of fear and protection.

Other times gender roles revolve around strength, or love, or children, or jokes, or tasks, or gifts—like the roses from my husband in the picture above.

And I realized that gender roles are as individual as the couples involved and yet as broad as the world God made.  Some are ordained and can be discussed in study groups.  Others are private and individual and are discovered only through years of marriage…or when a bat flies into the bedroom at night.