Press On: The fatal expectation of female faithfulness.
There’s a phrase I heard all my life in the faith spaces I grew up in: press on. Songs lyricized the concept. “Press on! “ was spoken as an admonition. It was offered as encouragement, but it functioned as expectation. A command. A cultural script. A spiritualized demand that people keep going no matter what their bodies, minds, or spirits were trying to tell them.
In these environments, “faithfulness” wasn’t really about devotion to God. It was about devotion to the system. It was about predictability, compliance, and the quiet endurance of women who were expected to hold everything together without ever falling apart.
And the cost of that expectation has been devastating.
The stories we rarely name — but every woman recognizes.
I think of the woman who had already delivered eight babies. Her doctor warned her that another pregnancy could kill her or the child. But birth control was forbidden, and “trusting God with your womb” was treated as a test of spiritual loyalty. So when she became pregnant with her ninth, she carried not only a child but the crushing weight of a theology that demanded her body be endlessly available.
I think of the woman who ran the kitchen at a religious nonprofit — three meals a day for hundreds of people, with a constantly rotating volunteer staff. She slept maybe five hours a night. Sundays were technically her day off, but boxed lunches still had to be prepared the day before. She kept this pace for two years until her body finally collapsed. The ministry didn’t fall apart when she left, but she nearly did.
I think of the worship leader who woke with a high fever and body aches but still dragged herself to church. She was the lead vocalist, and there was “no one who could replace her.” Her body was begging for rest, but the expectation of female faithfulness demanded she show up anyway.
I think of the woman whose mother had died that week. She should have been held by her community, allowed to grieve, allowed to breathe. Instead, she was expected to take her nursery shift because it was a holiday and “no one else was available.” So she and her grief showed up to hold the babies.
I think of the woman on day three of a migraine — exhausted, nauseated, sleep‑deprived — who still cut out crafts, bought snacks, decorated the classroom, and made gifts for every child because the preschool Christmas party was her responsibility. Her pain didn’t matter. Her faithfulness did.
These stories are not rare. They are not exaggerated. They are not outliers. They are the quiet, everyday realities of women who have been conditioned to believe that their exhaustion is holy and their limits are sinful or a display of spiritual weakness.
“No one can replace you” is actually not a compliment.
Women are often placed in roles where they are told they are indispensable. What this really means is that they are carrying the full weight of a system that refuses to distribute responsibility. It means burnout is inevitable. It means rest is impossible. It means their humanity is secondary to the institution’s needs or their expected roles.
And when they finally break under the pressure, the system doesn’t repent — it replaces them.
Faithfulness as a demand, not a virtue.
In these environments, female faithfulness is not celebrated because it is beautiful. It’s been demanded because it is useful.
Faithfulness becomes:
a way to secure unpaid labor
a way to maintain predictable roles
a way to keep women compliant
a way to spiritualize exhaustion
a way to avoid addressing systemic dysfunction
a way to keep families growing
Women are praised for being “faithful” when what is really being celebrated is their willingness to disappear into the needs of the community or their family. Their suffering becomes proof of their loyalty. Their silence becomes evidence of their maturity. Their self‑abandonment becomes a spiritual badge of honor.
This isn’t holiness. It’s conditioning.
When Health Becomes Suspicious: The Training to Ignore Body and Mind
One of the most damaging aspects of these environments is how women are conditioned to distrust their own bodies and emotions. Physical and mental health aren’t just neglected — they’re often reframed as spiritual liabilities. Women learn early that their feelings are untrustworthy, their pain is exaggerated, and their needs are evidence of weak faith.
So they numb. They push through. They override every internal alarm.
Women are taught to silence anxiety because “God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear.”
They’re told depression is ingratitude. They’re told exhaustion is a lack of discipline. They’re told trauma is bitterness. They’re told chronic illness is a test. They’re told rest is laziness. They’re told boundaries are rebellion.
In many fundamentalist or high-demand religious spaces, seeking mental health care is treated as a moral failure — a sign that you’re not praying enough, trusting enough, or surrendering enough. Therapy becomes suspect. Medication becomes sinful. Naming your pain becomes disloyal.
And physical health isn’t treated much better. Women are encouraged to push through fevers, migraines, postpartum complications, grief, and chronic pain because “the Lord will give you strength.” They’re told to ignore symptoms that would send anyone else to urgent care. They’re praised for “pressing on” when what they’re actually doing is dissociating from their own bodies.
This is not resilience. It’s conditioning.
When a woman learns to override her body long enough, she eventually stops hearing it. She stops recognizing danger. She stops noticing the early signs of burnout, illness, or emotional collapse. She becomes so accustomed to functioning in survival mode that she no longer realizes she’s surviving.
And the system benefits from her silence.
Because a woman who doesn’t trust her own body is easier to control. A woman who doubts her own emotions is easier to dismiss. A woman who believes her needs are sinful is easier to use.
This is why so many women in these environments end up sick, depleted, anxious, or numb. Not because they are weak, but because they were trained to ignore the very signals meant to protect them.
The spiritualization of suffering.
All my life, I watched good women worked, pushed, belief-ed, and coerced into physical and emotional states no human being could sustain. So many were sick. So many struggled with weight — either dangerously under or painfully over. So many had fertility issues or far too many pregnancies. So many were controlling or harsh with their children because they had nothing left to give. So many became quiet, compliant, small. So many volunteered at church so much that their own children became afterthoughts. So many behaved in ways that, in hindsight, were clear signs of trauma.
Yes, some of these struggles exist across humanity. But the sheer volume of them in our fundamentalist Christian circles was staggering.
My own story sits right among theirs.
I am not writing from a distance. I am writing from my own lived experience too.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had planned to lead our church’s children’s program with a newborn. But she was born past her due date, and I found myself standing at my front door — contracting, in pain, trying to breathe — handing instructions, lesson plans, assembly notes, and supplies to the pastor’s son so the program could continue without interruption.
I was literally in labor, and I was still trying to be faithful.
This is what the expectation does: it convinces women that their bodies are inconveniences, their needs are burdens, and their limits are failures.
You are a partner, not a tenant.
There’s a trend I’ve seen on social media lately: videos of women cooking, cleaning, folding laundry, or doing some other domestic task while saying, “This is how I pay my husband rent.” It’s meant to be cute or clever, but it reveals something deeper—something we’ve been taught for generations from inside faith spaces.
Somewhere along the way, many Christian women were taught that their labor inside the home is a kind of payment. That caring for their household makes them indebted to their husbands. That domestic work is rent they owe rather than a shared contribution to the life they’re building together.
What happened to being a team? What happened to partnership? What happened to the mutual submission described in Scripture where we support, respect, empower and encourage each another, not one gender over the other?
To married women, I want to be clear: You do not “pay your husband rent” by serving him. You are not his tenant. He is not your landlord.
If you choose to care for your home, that is your contribution to the family you both belong to—not a debt you owe. You are co‑owners of your life together. Your identity is not found in being his servant.
This language of “rent” is just another way the system teaches women to see themselves as secondary, dependent, or obligated. It reinforces the idea that a woman’s work, especially her unseen, unpaid work, isn’t real unless it’s framed as service to a man, her faith system or God.
And that message fits neatly into the larger expectation: Press on. Keep going. Don’t question the imbalance. Don’t name the inequity. God will bless your suffering. Just be faithful.
But faithfulness was never meant to look like servitude. That’s conditioning.
The cost is too high.
The expectation that women must press on — no matter the cost — counterintuitive to the gentleness, kindness, love and healing of Jesus. It isn’t holiness. It is cultural. It is rooted in patriarchal belief. It is harmful.
And it is killing women, slowly and quietly.
Not always in the literal sense, though sometimes that too. But certainly in the emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational sense. It glorifies suffering. It crowns exhaustion. It kills joy. It kills agency. It kills identity. It kills the ability to listen to one’s own body. It kills the possibility of rest.
Women were never meant to carry the weight of a system.
A trend I’ve seen on social media is posting a video of a woman cooking, cleaning, folding laundry or some such domestic chore and her saying the words “This is how I pay my husband rent.” What happened to being a team or having a partner? Mutual submission? Yes it’s a real example we see in Scripture which echoes that we support, respect, encourage and each other - not one gender over another. Sweetheart, you’re do not have to pay your husband rent by being his servant. Because you are caring for your home (if that is what you have freely chosen) that is your contribution to the overall family - you don’t owe your husband rent. He’s not your landlord. You are co-owners (or co-renters) of your home. Yes my dear, your identity isn’t as his tennant.
If your faith community expects you to sacrifice your health, your safety, your sanity, or your humanity to prove your devotion, that expectation is not from God.
Women were never meant to be the shock absorbers of dysfunctional systems. They were never meant to be the unpaid, unseen, undervalued labor force that keeps everything running. They were never meant to press on until they disappear.
The expectation of female faithfulness as I have described is not a virtue. It is conditioning and a strong warning sign that there is an imbalanced, toxic or abusive theology at play.
Christian women are often told that feminism is what tainted God’s design for womanhood. But what if human equality isn’t the problem at all? What if the real violation is a system that demands women keep working, serving, and submitting even when it harms them?
It’s time we name it for what it is - spiritual abuse.
