On September 12, just two days after her husband’s shocking assassination, Erika Kirk made an incredible statement about the mission and legacy that Charlie left behind. “If you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country. . . . The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
Her voice sent chills across my skin. She spoke to the power that women everywhere feel within themselves—a strength that God built into the deep parts of the wife, the mother, the virgin, brought out most when she is protecting what she loves.
We see this archetype through history’s myths and stories. However, it is most accurately reflected in Scripture.
In her book Goddesses in Everywoman, psychiatrist Jean Shined Bolen uses the stories of Greek goddesses and the female archetypes they reflect to help women process the powerful internal responses they have to the world and people around them. She explains that the patterns seen in these ancient myths reflect timeless truths about women and how they function. Similarly, Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes explores what she terms the Wild Woman archetype in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves. She states, “These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females.”
This feeling of deep, hidden ferocity can be awakened by a variety of events. Perhaps one of the most common is in the experience of becoming a mother. While giving birth, a woman is pushed to the edge of herself and discovers that she is capable of much more than she ever knew. The raw, carnal path of pregnancy, labor, and delivery often leaves her with a newfound confidence in her ability to raise and, if necessary, defend that baby. There’s a reason that the type of bear people most fear to encounter is a mother with cubs.
Although most commonly portrayed in mothers, all women have a strength of mind that can move them to incredible feats. The feminist movement is so appealing because women know that they are capable of greatness, but they have been deceived about how to tap into it. The world tells us we must leave our femininity behind, like Lady Macbeth, who cries, “Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty” (Act 1, Scene 5). This deception leads women to abandon the nurturing and self-giving they were made for, thinking they can find their inner strength only if they abandon their womanly instincts.
However, in the saints and the truth of Scripture we see that women are most powerful in the fullness of their womanhood. Judges 4 tells us the story of Jael, who secured the peace of her land by allowing the enemy general to rest in her tent and then driving a tent peg through his head as he slept. In Esther, we see an example of a woman who, due to her staggering beauty, was taken from her home and made the wife of King Ahasuerus. Rather than giving in to bitterness or sin, she submitted herself to God’s will and sought him in prayer. Because of this, God used her to save the Jewish people, and their enemy was hanged on his own gallows.
My favorite story of a powerful woman is the widow Judith, who, rather than accept the sinful resignation of the elders of Israel, seeks the Lord in prayer and devises a plan to save the nation from the army of Holofernes. She and her maid infiltrate the enemy camp and spend four days securing their trust. The enemy army is so impressed by Judith that they say, “Who can despise these people who have women like this among them? Surely not a man of them had better be left alive, for if we let them go they will be able to ensnare the whole world” (10:19). They never have a chance to kill the men, though, because on the evening of the fourth day, Judith and her maid secretly cut off Holofernes’s head and escape safely back home, where Judith instructs the elders to display the head on the parapet wall. In Judith 16:9, the people sing her praises, saying, “Her sandal ravished his eyes, her beauty captivated his mind, and the sword severed his neck.”
Of course, I would be leaving out the most impressive woman of all if I failed to mention the quiet heroism of the Virgin Mary, who, through her submission and self-giving, brought forth the savior of all of humanity and battled for her children against Satan himself (Rev. 12).
Scripture reveals the truth about God and his design for women. We are strong and capable of great heroism, but that greatness will always be achieved as a woman. It is in submission, self-giving, and often intense suffering that women are empowered to defend their homes, families, and nations.
We see this archetype through history and Scripture, and we see it lived out in our nation today in Erika Kirk. Jael drove a tent peg through the her enemy’s skull, Esther saw Haman hanged, Judith severed the head of Holofernes and hung it on a wall, and Mary crushes the head of Satan. With this in mind, it seems wise not to find ourselves on the wrong side of a God-fearing woman’s prayerful battle cry.