Being a full-time mother is so extremely counter-cultural that sometimes the work can feel lonely. I don’t know what I’d do without my “co-worker” friends who encourage me to pursue this labor of love. I am discovering that I need frequent doses of encouragement in order to “swim upstream”; in order to recall that it’s wise – and not wasteful – to invest my life in two sweet children (and their daddy!).

If you or someone you know needs some encouragement concerning motherhood, you might want to read the transcript of Janet Parshall’s 3-day interview on Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s Revive Our Hearts. (Be sure to read Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s interviews!)

A snippet:

“If He made us male and female, none of us are a biological mistake. If before He hung that first star, He knew us by name and knows the number of hairs on our head, then our gender as we walk around in this costume known as flesh is not a mistake but a divine fingerprint.

You have to start with understanding that principle because if you don’t then what’s going to happen is Satan will absolutely fertilize that little seed of what I like to call victimology. Now let me unpack that a little bit because I told you that I’ve had the experience of debating some of the most renowned feminists in the world.

Let me tell you a quick story. I was asked to go to New York to debate a feminist. In fact, I was asked to debate Gloria Steinem; the actress, Dianne Lamb; Patricia Ireland; Eleanor Smeal and Susan Fleet—all five against one. I thought, “Oh, how in the world am I possibly going to do this?” Well, I have to tell you, God used that moment as a profound, profound tutorial in my life.

Well, long story short is there was a live studio audience. As the women would speak, Nancy, what happened is the Lord just took the earplugs out of my ear and He moved aside the cloud in my heart and He was saying, “Listen. I want you to hear.”

As I listened to these women get angry and angrier and angrier, I just thought that’s the catapulting, that’s the energy. The fuel in this movement is hurt and anger. What I really began to hear with these women as I was doing this debate in New York was they’re hurting. They’re broken, and they are very, very unsatisfied.

Now their same issues, the same idea of victimology, the same idea that “I deserve something better,” ” I deserve something more,” “I haven’t been satisfied” has not gone away. It’s just multiplied, and it is an insidious issue.

So when I heard that you wanted to have True Woman ’08, I thought, “That’s what we need in the church today are true women of the Word.” Women as defined by Scripture. Women who reflect Scripture. Women who don’t see themselves as victims but as servants. Women who understand the role that God has defined for us as women.

I’ve never questioned the fact that God says, “Janet, you’re never going to be allowed to be a pastor.” Yet God’s called me into the oval office to pray with the President. I never got short-changed. I got exactly what God had planned for me, got to step in exactly the role that God had defined for me.

So what I’m excited about is this idea of women radically becoming counter-cultural and rediscovering again exactly what the role of women is.”