The Devil Loves a Woman Who Needs to be Needed

There comes a point in motherhood when you realize that some of the things you spent years teaching your children to do for themselves are the very things you miss doing for them once they finally can.

That transition can be a challenge.

For years, your days are built around being needed.

Someone cannot tie a shoe, find a clean shirt, make lunch, drive himself anywhere, remember an appointment, solve a problem, or make a decent decision without some amount of help.

Motherhood trains your eyes to scan continually for needs, and after enough years of living that way, noticing and responding becomes almost automatic.

Then the children grow.

The husband has responsibilities of his own.

People begin learning things without you.

And if we are not careful, there can be a little ache beneath all of that progress.

What do we do when everybody starts needing us less?

I think the devil can make tremendous use of a woman who has built too much of her identity around being necessary.

She may appear incredibly selfless because she is always helping someone, fixing something, carrying something, offering advice, stepping into a crisis, or making sure nobody around her has to struggle for very long.

Everyone calls her dependable.

Because she is.

The problem begins when usefulness becomes something she needs in order to feel loved.

Then helping people can become complicated.

She may rescue a child from consequences that would have taught him something because watching him struggle feels unbearable.

She may take over responsibilities her husband could handle differently because allowing him to do it his own way leaves her feeling anxious.

She can insert herself into adult children’s problems before they have had time to decide whether they even need her help, and if they begin solving life without calling first, she may feel a hurt she cannot quite explain.

Sometimes that hurt comes out as criticism.

“I was only trying to help.”

“You never tell me anything anymore.”

“I guess you don’t need your mother.”

Those words can sound harmless enough, especially when spoken with a laugh, though there can be a surprising amount of pressure inside them.

A grown child hears more than the sentence.

He hears that independence has cost his mother something emotionally, and now he must decide whether growing up is worth making her feel rejected.

That is too heavy a burden to place on a child.

Genesis says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Genesis 2:24.

Leaving is part of God’s order.

That means motherhood eventually requires a woman to allow the relationship to change, which can be especially difficult when the years of being needed gave her a clear sense of purpose.

I am still learning some of this myself.

There are times when one of my adult children tells me about something and I can feel advice forming before the story is finished.

Years of motherhood have trained me to hear a problem and begin reaching for a solution.

Sometimes that solution is welcome.

Sometimes the wiser thing is to listen.

That distinction requires humility because giving advice can make us feel useful, while listening leaves the other person responsible for what happens next.

A woman who needs to be needed may have trouble allowing that.

She can begin confusing love with intervention.

There are burdens we should help carry. Galatians 6:2 tells us plainly, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

A few verses later, though, Paul says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.” Galatians 6:5.

Both belong in the same Christian life.

Wisdom is learning which burden is which.

If I continually carry responsibilities God intends another person to bear, I may feel loving while quietly helping that person remain weak.

There are lessons adulthood teaches through consequence, waiting, work, failure, and the uncomfortable necessity of figuring something out when nobody rushes in to fix it.

Mothers especially have to make peace with that.

We spent years protecting children because protection was part of the job.

Then adulthood asks us to stand nearby while people we love make decisions whose outcomes we cannot control.

That can feel almost unnatural.

The urge to rescue may become even stronger when we know they are making life harder than it needs to be.

Yet there are times when removing every discomfort also removes the lesson God was using.

A woman can do this in marriage too.

Some wives become so competent at running everything that their husbands gradually stop trying.

She keeps the calendar, handles the money, remembers every obligation, decides what needs fixing, plans every event, and corrects whatever he attempts differently.

She may complain that her husband does not lead while giving him very little space to do so imperfectly.

Eventually both people become accustomed to the arrangement.

She is exhausted and resentful because everything depends upon her.

He has learned that stepping back creates less conflict than stepping forward.

Then she points to his passivity as proof that she had to take over in the first place.

That circle can continue for years.

There is usually fear underneath this kind of control.

If I do not handle it, what will happen?

If I stop reminding everyone, will anything get done?

If I allow someone else to fail, will the consequences affect me too?

Those are real concerns, and surrender does not mean pretending other people’s choices have no effect upon us.

Still, there comes a point where we have to ask whether we trust God enough to allow other people to carry the responsibilities He gave them.

First Peter 5:7 says, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

I wonder how often we cast our cares upon the Lord and then immediately begin managing every person involved in the situation.

I know I have done that.

Prayer can become the first step in my plan for controlling the outcome rather than the place where I actually release it.

The Lord has had to remind me more than once that He is capable of working in people without requiring me to supervise the process.

A woman who needs to be needed can also become very busy in church.

She volunteers because nobody else will do it correctly.

She takes every call.

She becomes the person everyone depends upon.

At first the usefulness feels good, especially when people are grateful, but eventually exhaustion arrives and resentment comes with it.

Nobody appreciates how much I do.

Nobody sees how much I carry.

Nobody could manage this place without me.

That last thought should frighten us a little.

The body of Christ survived before any of us arrived and will continue after we are gone.

God is very capable of doing His work without making one woman indispensable.

John the Baptist said of Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:30.

There is great freedom in decreasing.

It means other people can learn.

They can do something differently.

They may even do it better.

Our children can build homes without reproducing ours exactly.

Our husbands can carry responsibilities in ways we would not have chosen.

Someone at church can take over a ministry we once considered ours and find a method that never occurred to us.

None of that erases our value.

Our value was never supposed to rest upon being the person everybody would fall apart without.

Christ is the indispensable One.

That truth reaches into another uncomfortable place, because sometimes being needed allows us to avoid our own emptiness.

If I am continually fixing everyone else, I never have to sit still long enough to ask why I feel uneasy when nobody needs me.

If every hour is filled with somebody else’s problem, I can postpone dealing with my own heart.

And if my identity has become mother, helper, fixer, counselor, organizer, caretaker, or the reliable one, I may discover that I know how to serve God far better than I know how to simply belong to Him.

Jesus told Martha, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.” Luke 10:41.

I have always felt a little sympathy for Martha.

Somebody had to feed everyone.

Yet Christ saw beneath the activity into the troubled heart carrying it.

There are times when service itself becomes tangled with anxiety, pride, control, or the need to prove our worth.

Only the Lord can separate those threads honestly.

I want to pause here for a moment, because I do not want to become suspicious of every desire to help.

Christian women should be useful.

Titus 2 gives older women work to do in the lives of younger ones.

Proverbs 31 describes a woman whose hands are busy serving her household and reaching toward the needy.

Love should inconvenience us sometimes.

But usefulness has to remain surrendered to God.

There are moments when love reaches in, and there are moments when love allows another person to stand.

I want to know the difference.

I want my adult children to call me because they value my wisdom, while also knowing they are free to make decisions without carrying responsibility for my emotions.

I want my husband to know I am beside him without feeling that I am managing him.

I want to serve the brethren because I love them, not because being indispensable makes me feel important.

And when somebody I love no longer needs me in the same way, I want enough security in Christ to bless the growth instead of mourning the loss of my usefulness.

That may be one of the harder parts of loving people well.

Eventually, if we have done some things right, people become capable of carrying more without us.

Children grow.

Younger women mature.

Others learn the task.

Someone else steps forward.

Our hands become less necessary in places where they were once essential.

There is grace for that season too.

The devil can do a great deal with a woman who needs everyone dependent upon her, because he can keep her exhausted, controlling, resentful, and frightened of the very growth she claims to desire in the people she loves.

I do not want to live that way.

I want to be needed where God genuinely gives me work to do, and I want to release people where He is teaching them to stand.

Some days I will probably get the distinction wrong.

I am still learning.

But I would rather have the people I love grow strong enough to need me less than keep them small enough to make me feel necessary.

And when that leaves an empty place in my hands, perhaps that space belongs to the Lord.

He has always known what to put there next.

Biblical Womanhood

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