I had a pretty stark reputation as a 3-year-old: one of strong will and defiant acts of bullying, to be exact. Stories abound of how I'd take toys from other children who were too afraid to say "no" to my insistence or my attempts to take every single book off the pastor's shelf or the day I plucked all the flower heads (just the heads) that lined the meticulous Austrian driveway. The word you'd certainly never hear me described as was "gentle."
As I got older, I did develop a more compassionate heart though I wouldn’t say my roughness disappeared. I just learned to channel it into a heated debate or to plaster over it with kind smiles. I wasn’t mean-spirited, but I certainly wasn’t timid if I was passionate about something. Add to that being raised in an era when girls were being told to break the mold and be anything but soft or gentle, and you end up with a Christian woman trying to walk that line of confident boldness that came naturally to her and yet seeing in Scripture a call to gentleness. How could I possibly be both?
I’ll be honest: I spent years passing over references to “adorn myself with a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3) or the “blessings of inheritance for the meek” (Matthew 5), thinking those were calls for a different time and place. It became a little harder to ignore when the person being described as "gentle" was God himself. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Jesus?! The same guy who drove merchants from the temple with a whip? What exactly does he mean by “gentle” then?
While in quarantine, I came across a word study of that very word and had my mind slightly blown. The source* said, “gentleness is that temper of spirit in which we accept God’s dealings with us as good and therefore without disputing or resisting. It’s about those who rely on God rather than their own strength to defend them against injustice. … The gentle person is at peace because he is not occupied with self at all.” They make the case that the call to be gentle is less a character trait and more about relinquishing control, about turning aside from self-interest because you can be fully confident that someone greater is actually working on your behalf.
For the first time I can see a melding of two sides of me I’ve struggled with. Trusting God more and abdicating control (when I rarely have it anyway) is indeed a sanctifying process that he leads me in - a fruit of the Spirit, if you will (Galatians 5). It also affirms that being wild, confident, and a bit on the severe side by nature doesn’t have to be a fault I need to rid myself of. I rarely have a problem standing up for myself and want to strive to work on behalf of others and for what’s right, as Jesus did, even as I keep asking the Lord to adorn me with a gentle, meek spirit, as Jesus had.
*Navpress 1 Peter study, citing Wolfgang Bauder in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Volume 2
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