KatieLyn has some personality traits that are typical of her second-child birth order. I don't put a lot of stock in the pop-psychology birth-order articles that are found on many parenting websites, principally because, (a) too many take the 'horoscope approach' and try to use birth order as a way to predict future behaviors, (can we say self-fulfilling prophecy?) and (b) once past the broad generalizations, many articles make claims that simply do not match my experiences. Nevertheless, every child must find his or her own place in the family structure, and the order of his/her arrival does influence what he/she will have to deal with. Contingent upon the #1 child's personality, the #2 is often the opposite, a terror or a peacemaker. KatieLyn is a peacemaker. The No. 2 spot is also often the opposite of the firstborn socially; if the first has a lot of friends, the second child may have trouble latching on to a person in a relationship, and she may be content being a bit of a loner. Second-born children typically just go with the flow, but when the second-born is the same sex as the first, the competition may be rougher. Those generalities do seem to apply to KatieLyn.
For whatever reason— birth order, nurture, nature, or simple serendipity, KatieLyn doesn't like conflict and is self-sacrificing to avoid it. In other words, she gives in a lot. From time to time, she would tell Joe about things where she gave in, things her parents talked her out of— some were major, like sharing an apartment with other girls and the model of car she considered, and others were mundane, like lunch menu choices. The thing is, when you are 28 years old, paying rent to share a bedroom with your kid sister who is still in high school, and are doing more than your fair share of the housekeeping chores to keep your mother happy, your empowerment meter is probably going to hover in the single digits, if it bumps above zero at all. True to the paradigm, KatieLyn had low self-esteem.
For Joe, her self-image was one of the "complications" in the relationship. He never saw it as a problem that the Lord could not handle, but her wobbly self-confidence was sometimes a challenge to navigate. It was a tightrope walk for him, actually. On one side was the ditch of becoming a chronic proper-upper and cheerleader (and he certainly did not want a wife who needed babying like that), and on the other side was the ditch of taking over too much (and he certainly did not want to smother her the way that her mom was used to doing).
Joe's family and friends sensed KatieLyn's less-than-optimal level of self-esteem, but she would put on a cheery face and joke about herself, so we all thought and believed that marriage was part of the Lord's plan to remedy this. Marriage would give her space to blossom into a confident, more poised woman. It would unquestionably provide a better balanced environment for seeking the Lord. And even though marriage could never cure the codependency with her mother, marriage could at least give KatieLyn enough distance that her mother would lose the home court advantage.
Taking all that into consideration, I have often wondered if KatieLyn's grandstand move in calling off the wedding wasn't based in her just being totally fed up with trying to please everyone. I know it is pretty much a one-shot deal, but wow! Look at all the power she wielded in that one decision! She would have experienced a power that she had never felt in such magnitude before. She had hundreds of people talking about her action as they changed their weekend plans. She had dozens of people offering her comfort, telling her how brave she was and reciting mindless platitudes about "doing the right thing." Of course, the people who told her that probably did not know that she was running wildly outside the will of God for her life. But still, it would have felt really empowering; at least for a little while. The demons of doubt would stop bothering her now that she'd chucked God's plan for her. With them standing down, she would get, not a true peace, but at least a tremendous release from stress—that makes a pretty good substitute as long as she kept busy.
But becoming a runaway bride wasn't an empowerment that came from the Lord. It did not produce good fruit of love, joy, real peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And it did not move her ahead in the way that the Lord moves people. She regressed backward; backward is the direction that the enemy moves people. She went back to a place that had stifled her spiritual and emotional growth throughout most of her adult life. She returned to a place where she was being suffocated in the sweet molasses of codependency.
KatieLyn's godly place of power and authority is that of wife. In KatieLyn's makom (her right place) of influence and self-actualization, she would live as a spiritual co-equal with her husband. Marriage is the place where God would empower her to fulfill His call on her life. She has known this since she was little. If she has not hardened her heart to it, she knows it still.
I began this post by looking at how KatieLyn's second daughter birth order may have contributed to her lack of confidence. While decision-making is problematic for most people, especially when the decision is as big as one regarding marriage, second-born children often have more trouble making decisions than first- or last-born persons. The Bible offers some practical advice for this. In his commentary for Psalm 77:11, where Asaph writes of remembering the deeds of the Lord as a means of overcoming distressful events. Matthew Henry commented, "The remembrance of the works of God, will be a powerful remedy against distrust of his promise and goodness; for he is God, and changes not." The answer is faith, and when more faith is needed, it helps to remember what God has done in the past.
But she was in a bad place where she was not being coached to look at how the Lord had answered her prayer. She was not being instructed to go back to the last time that she was really sure that she had heard God and consider what He had said then. She had never been trained to "destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5 Nor was she being encouraged to step out in the faith that pleases God.
Yet these are the very actions that do empower a believer: remembering the answered prayer, recalling His voice, considering His ways, standing against those that oppose, and obediently walking in faith of that knowledge. This is what every child of God should do, no matter his birth-order.
The Lesson
God desired to empower KatieLyn by giving her a place of strength, the role of wife and mistress of her own household. Birth-order would lose significance as she could potentially be the one who gives birth. This is a place of virtuous power. Instead, she chose the short-lived thrill of destructive power and ended back worse than where she began because now she has a failed relationship that she created at her own hand.
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