Borrowed Faith

My husband sometimes jokes that he’s a feminist.

Not the angry caricature I heard about in the 90s when the word feminazi was thrown around like a warning label. I grew up hearing that feminism meant bra-burning, man-hating, and a rejection of everything strong or masculine.

That never felt true to my life.

I was a daddy’s girl. I married a good man. Together we raised three strong sons. In our house we have always tried to walk a careful line—teaching our boys to be kind, respectful, and protective of women, while also reminding them to protect themselves from a culture that can sometimes turn accusation into entertainment. We 100% reject the idea that masculinity itself is toxic. The best men I know are strong, capable, and yes—dangerous in the sense that they possess real power.

But the best men are also the ones who decide what that power is for.

The strongest men don’t spend their lives proving how much damage they can do. They spend their lives protecting and building.

That’s the version of feminism my husband jokes about.

His looks like him washing dishes in my mother’s kitchen.

For years, after big family meals, he would quietly get up early from the table and start cleaning. Not because he was asked, but because he figured out something important: my mom’s love language is acts of service. So he showed love in the language she understands.

His looks like Christmas mornings filled with pink bags.

For our entire marriage, Mike has made friends with the saleswomen at Victoria’s Secret. Every year he waits for the big sales and comes home with armfuls of perfume, lotions, glitter sprays, and those ridiculous bright pink bags. Then he distributes those treasures to the women in his life—his mom, my mom and her sister, my sister, his niece, and anyone else who has found their way into his circle of “his girls.”

He’s always had a soft spot for little old ladies and little girls… and strong women.

Especially the strong women who don’t quite realize how strong they are yet.

One day he told me something I’ve never forgotten.

“When a woman is about 95% qualified for a job, she hesitates to apply,” he said. “She worries about the missing five percent.”

“A man might be 70% qualified and apply anyway.”

He wasn’t criticizing women. He was pointing out something he had seen over and over again: talent waiting for permission.

Then he said something simple that changed the direction of my life.

“Apply anyway.”

Years earlier I had once told him I wanted thirteen children. In my more traditional Southern imagination, I could picture a life barefoot and pregnant, raising babies and running a household. And honestly, part of me would have been happy with that life.

But Mike saw something else in me.

When our youngest went to kindergarten, he started saying it again.

“Go back to school.”

While I sat in classrooms and studied, he held the home steady. He helped manage the chaos of three boys and the thousand details of family life. Sometimes he may have even been the better “mommy” during those years than I was!

Love sometimes looks like protection.

Sometimes it looks like service.

And sometimes it looks like believing in someone before they fully believe in themselves.

There are moments in life when your confidence lags behind your calling and your ability outruns your courage. In those moments, the people who love you most do something extraordinary.

They lend you belief.

They let you borrow their faith.

Just long enough for you to take the next step.

Some of the biggest moves in your life will begin that way—with someone who sees the fire in you before the world does.

And sometimes before you do.