Biblical sense

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/01/2011 (5579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While her nose ring, wrist tattoo, trendy clothes and hair, and online presence might suggest otherwise, Darlene Schacht longs for a simpler time.

“I cherish the days… when women were women and men were just men,” the Winnipeg author and mother of four writes on her blog, Time-Warp Wife.

Lest that title conjure up images of perfectly coiffed and perpetually cheerful housewives vacuuming in high heels and pearls, Schacht’s passion is for a past that predates the Fabulous ’50s by about 2,000 years.

Time-Warp Wife is not a throwback to June Cleaver, but rather a “return to biblical womanhood.”

In addition to recipes for unleavened bread and spinach salad, a housekeeping schedule, and cleaning and organizational tips, visitors to the blog (www.time-warp-wife.blogspot.com) will find Christian advice on marriage, motherhood and other domestic concerns while being serenaded by a piano version of Amazing Grace.

“It’s for modern women with vintage values,” Schacht, 45, says of the website she launched last October.

The blog’s essence and its mission, she says, can be summed up by its five-word tagline: “Empowering wives to joyfully serve.”

In case you’re not up on your New Testament scripture, the book of Ephesians (Chapter 5, Verse 22) commands wives to “submit to your husbands as to the Lord… Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

And for evangelical Christians like Schacht — who jokingly describes herself as a “Bapticostal” (cross between Baptist and Pentecostal) — Scripture is not up for debate.

The founder and former editor of Christian Women Online concedes that modern women outside that religious community might have a problem with the word “submission” and so mistakenly equate it with things like abuse or oppression.

“I think that women are equal,” says Schacht, who once read the King James version of the Bible six times in one year. “They’re not of lesser importance, there’s just a chain of command, and when you live according to your created purpose, things just function more smoothly.”

Unless her cherished vintage values are backed up by her religious beliefs, she says, they become nothing more than customs or traditions.

One modern woman who shares Schacht’s perspective is actress and fellow Christian mom Candace Cameron Bure, with whom Schacht has co-authored a motivational book that offers a biblical perspective on appetite and self-control.

Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness (B&H Publishing Group, $16.50) hit store shelves on Jan. 1 and is being launched at McNally Robinson on Sunday at 2 p.m.

In the book, Bure, 34, who grew up in front of the camera playing DJ Tanner on the TV sitcom Full House, reveals her struggles with bulimia, which began after the show ended in 1995 and continued into the early years of her marriage to Russian-born former NHL player Valeri Bure.

The mother of three (who is also the sister of Growing Pains actor Kirk Cameron, another outspoken Christian celebrity) credits her current healthy lifestyle with her decision to move “faith to the forefront” and find her worth in the eyes of God.

Reshaping It All is part memoir and part wellness guide — with God as personal trainer.

“There are a lot of Bible verses and biblical quotes,” Schacht admits, “but you don’t have to be Christian to enjoy the book. The application is really common sense; it’s about patience and persistence.”

The two women met in 2007 when Schacht interviewed Bure for Christian Women Online. A friendship developed when Bure began writing a question-and-answer column, Candid Candace, for the webzine. They finally met in person on a Christian-music-themed Caribbean cruise in 2008 and decided to write a book together.

Schacht says that although they decided it made better marketing sense to focus on Bure’s story and to put the actress in the spotlight, she was never Bure’s ghostwriter.

“We talked on the phone for an hour a week for each chapter. I’d ask her for stories from her life and then I’d write up what she said, then she’d take over, and then it’d come back to me for final editing.”

The south St. Vital resident, who was recently diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, says the fact she even co-wrote a book is itself something of a minor miracle considering there was a time in her life when she couldn’t even finish reading a book.

“It’s like one of the quotes we use in the book, about how when we combine persistence and faith, we’re an undeniable force,” Schacht says.

“It goes: ‘Faith in oneself can bring you to the top of a mountain, while faith in God can move that mountain aside.'”

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca

Darlene’s Good Wife’s Guide

 

ALTHOUGH it’s now considered to have been a hoax, the widely circulated and often-ridiculed Good Wife’s Guide — purportedly published in a 1955 issue of Housekeeping Monthly — apparently resonates with Winnipeg blogger Darlene Schacht, an evangelical Christian who writes the blog Time-Warp Wife.

“The sad thing in all of this is that our role as help-meet (biblical term for help mate) is being diminished by popular opinions that would rather scoff at good family values than face the truth of God’s word,” the mother of four, who recently co-authored a motivational book with former Full House TV star Candace Cameron Bure, writes at www.time-warp-wife.blogspot.com.

Schacht decided to resurrect the Guide in her own words. Here’s an excerpt:

Take a look in the mirror an hour before your husband comes home to ensure that you are presentable. An hour allows ample time to hop into the shower if need be.

If you wear makeup, put a little on before he walks in. Your goal is to look happy and radiant — not done up.

Dress in feminine clothing. Men are attracted to women, not fashion, so do your best to wear styles, fabrics and colors that remind him you’re a woman and not another one of the guys. Dress as well for him as you would for new friends.

Prepare dinner before he arrives. There’s nothing quite like the smell of home cooking when you walk in the door — especially when you’re cooking the food he likes.

If you have problems to deal with, wait until after dinner to spring it on him. Husbands are happier when their tummies are full.