Tony Danza
Recap
He originally went to school to be a teacher; he then was discovered as a boxer, which translated into 30 years of show business success, most notably on the hit sitcom Who's The Boss?. He decided, though, that he wanted to try going back and being a teacher, so he took a job as a tenth grade English teacher in Philadelphia. He talks about how incredibly difficult it was, but that at the end of the day he learned an incredible amount from the students.
Danza's journey was documented for an A&E reality show called Teach. He insists it's not a stunt, that he actually cares about trying to be a part of making the education system better. He was planning to become a teacher, mentioned it to a TV producer friend, and the next thing he knew A&E was on board to make a reality show of it. It was cool to see the clip roll of many of his students and some fellow educators speaking of what a great job he did. It was honest--he was rough at first, but grew better. One girl even said that she never had a dad so Mr. Danza was a pretty important part of her life. Danza seemed very humbled, and said this was why he did it, and that he's not trying to look good and it's hard to even see that part out on television no matter how much it blesses him to hear. Cool stuff.
Serena Williams
Recap
Despite being incredibly successful on the tennis court, both in terms of winning titles and making more prize money than any other female athlete on the planet, Serena's dream job? Doing nails. She enrolled herself in school and chats with Oprah in the Harpo spa while giving the talk show queen a pedicure. One thing that stuck out to me was their discussion about men, in which Serena describes wanting to find love, feeling like she's "a catch", but not being able to find a good man. Oprah explains that men want to feel needed and respected, and it takes a very special man to be with a woman who is as powerful and as successful as Serena. Oprah tells Serena she is carrying around a huge light, and that she shouldn't dim herself. She tells her to own her own power (right off the cover of the latest Oprah mag, no less), that it's good to be completely full of yourself so that your cup runneth over to others. But, Oprah says not to do this in an arrogant way. I will sure hit this up on the gospel filter review!
When Serena comes out into the studio after the pedicure clip, I can't help but notice that she is so incredibly gorgeous! She's seriously an incredibly beautiful woman. After some banter about Oprah not giving Serena a (money) tip, but she insists that Oprah gave her the best tip with owning her own power. We find out that Serena's ultimate dream is to have a spa in every city to incorporate her own skin care line into her salons. And, yay for the audience, after announcing her partnership with O.P.I., Serena gives them the entire O.P.I. fall collection along with nail care products. Lovely.
Angie Harmon
Recap
Last is Angie Harmon, whose dream job is to be a homicide detective. Her exact words were, "Sign me up for the blood and guts." She attends National Forensic Academy in Tennessee where she dusts for fingerprints, plays with human blood to examine the blood spatter (hello, Dexter), digs for a fake human body in the woods, and even attends an autopsy at the morgue. I just had to note the irony that she was pretending to dig up a human body which didn't faze her but she freaked out over a bug. Funny business. And... just as I finished typing that, Oprah notes the same thing. Great minds :)
Angie explains that the reason this work intrigues her is because it's like a puzzle. She says it's the most important kind of puzzle, because it's a human life that was taken probably in a violent way and solving this puzzle serves the family of the victim. After the break we see the morgue visit, and it was heartbreaking both to see what was once a human reduced to hundreds of small containers holding each body part, labeled with a series of letters and numbers (one did say "hand") was well as seeing the bones of a baby that was killed in a child abuse case. I applaud people who can do the work to help bring human justice to the perpetrators of crimes by doing something like showing how a baby had fractured ribs that never properly healed; the person in this case is in jail for a long time, praise God. However, I could hardly watch this part and it took every ounce of asking the Spirit for strength to not fast forward through it.
One cute lighter note was Angie noting how much she adores her three daughters and loves her husband. She broke into tears describing how much she loves her daughter, and that she considered leaving the show business, wanting to move out of LA to be a "full-time mommy". She did leave LA and is now on the show Rizzoli & Isles. I'm a little confused because the show appears to tape in LA though her family doesn't live in LA so I'm not sure how that works, but she did tell Oprah she's very grateful to have made the choice to move her family out of the city.
There is a blip at the end with a few other who got their big career start on Oprah. I did watch this, but there isn't a lot to say other than there are some people thanking Oprah for their career break and updating us on how successful they are now. I already a great place to dig in for the Gospel filter review, so we're going to stick to that!
Gospel Filter Review
The two episodes from last week on Monday and Friday were all about education, and I feel they do a pretty thorough job of digging into that subject. Ergo, there's not a big piece to dig into with Mr. Tony Danza, other than kudos to him and I'm glad his experience ultimately went well. I also enjoyed Angie Harmon's tenderness with her husband and children, and confess outright that I have the opportunity to dig into whether mom's should work or not; I'm willfully choosing to shelve that, trusting the Holy Spirit to bring the opportunity at another time this season, because what I do feel led to dig into is pretty long and meaty and I want to do it justice. The working mother stuff would be pretty long and meaty, too, so to do both justice I'm trusting Jesus for another chance at that later!
The piece from Serena Williams' segment that struck me was Oprah's advice. There are two parts that struck me--the idea of men being intimidated by powerful women and Oprah's advice to Serena to never let her light dim in order to get and keep a man. First, I absolutely agree with Oprah that men crave respect and feeling needed. The Bible does, too. Ephesians 5:22-24 says:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.Men crave respect because they are created in the image of God and one way in which they bear his image is to lead their wives as Christ leads the church. For the record, if you read ahead, it then tells husbands to love their wives. This is because a primary way in which women bear the image of God is to crave love from their husbands the way Jesus loves the church--wholly, completely, sacrificially, for her best. But, back to the men. They want to know that their wife trusts them, desires their wisdom and leadership in decision making, that their wife needs their support as a husband. Ultimately, women are to worship and desire Jesus first as ultimate, and then trust their husband as an act of worshiping Jesus. Men are to worship Jesus first, loving Him as their ultimate, then seeking His leadership in order to lead their wives, everything always worship.
So, then, Oprah is right that it would be incredibly difficult for the average man to have a very, very successful woman. It would be difficult for him to feel like she needs him when she's been so successful on her own. Does this mean she should either intentionally stop using her talents or fake it to make herself more attractive? Absolutely not. Men and women are equally image bearers of God and He is most glorified when we live for Him, allowing the gifts and talents He as given us to be done to the best of our ability out of worshiping Him. There was a great, great sermon about this recently at church and I highly encourage anyone to listen to it! It's called Redeeming Greatness, taken from Luke 9:46-50, and it's all about how greatness inspires us to be great, and God wants us to be great as long as it's for His glory, to serve others, and for our joy, and not so we can try to glorify ourselves. Great stuff!
So, to wrap up this part, Serena first needs to be in love with Jesus, repenting of sin and living for His glory. If worshiping Him means kicking tail on the tennis court and enjoying her dreams of owning salons and selling beauty products then praise Jesus! Then, if God brings a man into her life, I am certain he will be someone who wants her to be everything that God would have her be. A godly husband never wants his wife to stop being her best so he can feel better; a godly husband wants to see his wife worship Jesus with her gifts and talents and he rejoices in seeing Jesus lift her up. But the key point here is that Serena can't be filled up with herself; she needs to be filled up with Jesus. It needs to be love of Jesus that overflows into others, because that will inspire them to live for His glory and then Jesus fills them as well. No one is going to get anywhere useful by being filled up with Serena, or you, or me.
When we use our gifts for Jesus' glory, it's His light that shines and blesses others and we find the most joy in that. Your light doesn't do anything but provide temporary pleasure to yourself that then *poof* is gone and you're trying to get it back and you're miserable because you don't love others and you're ignoring the soul ache that cries out to live for God's glory. So, my prayer is that Serena, Oprah, and you and I would be living for Jesus' glory, rejoicing in every opportunity to be the best we can at whatever he calls us to do. I pray that in marriages wives would rejoice in respecting their husbands and submitting to them as an act of worshipful submission to Jesus and that husbands would be so in love with Jesus that they love their wives and lead them with Jesus' perfect love, both spouses humbly repenting of sin when they fail.
Good stuff today! This is a pretty controversial topic, so what do you think?
Up Tomorrow
Jenny McCarthy after her big break-up with Jim Carrey; also, author Terry McMillan and her now openly gay ex-husband.
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