MEAGHAN MAY | CONTRIBUTOR

Ministry life can feel like a strange mix of beauty and burden. You might find yourself wearing multiple hats, holding sacred confidences, and offering wisdom to others while you are weary. You truly love the Lord and His Church, but some days isolation and confusion seem more pressing. As expectations swirl— both spoken and unspoken—you question your adequacy, your purpose, your place.

You’re not alone.

Eve was the first woman and ministry wife, but she also stood in a place of tension—called by God, yet wrestling with doubt. She struggled to trust His words, to wait for His timing, and to understand her place in His redemptive story. Eve’s life reminds us: we are not the first to waver, but also not the last to be sustained by grace.

Her story, like ours, is complex, marked by beauty, brokenness, grace, and growth. And in her story, we find perspective for our own. Like Eve, we are learning to trust and are invited to listen again to the voice of God. His voice still beckons us out of hiding, clothes us, and sends us out with hope.

Eve’s Calling, Struggle, and Growing Faith

Eve was created with purpose: to live in relationship with God, to reflect His glory, to walk alongside her husband as a helper (ezer) and life-giver.

Eve’s identity wasn’t an afterthought; it was intentional. Before God created her, He let Adam name the animals but among them, no suitable companion could be found. This is the first “not good” in all of creation (Gen. 2:18). Afterward, God caused Adam to sleep and took a rib from his side, fashioning it into the woman. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed with joy and recognition:

“At last, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” (Gen. 2:23).

She was an ezer—a strong helper—a word used of God Himself in Scripture (Deut. 33:26; Psalm 121:2).

Yet Eve struggled.

“She saw that the fruit was… desirable… so she took it and ate” (Gen. 3:6).

There in the fruit-filled garden, she doubted God. In the serpent’s shadow, she reached for what she believed would bring wisdom and satisfaction. Instead, it brought shame, sorrow, fear, and exile.

This grasping echoes in all of us. Like Eve, we question God’s goodness. We believe the lie that He is holding out on us, and we reach for what we believe will satisfy us apart from God.

Grace After Grasping

And yet God did not let her story end in shame.

“But the Lord God called to the man and said… ‘Where are you?’” (Gen. 3:9).

God, in His mercy, pursued them.

He called them back together and covered their shame—not with more fig leaves, but with garments of His own making (Gen. 3:21). There were real consequences for their sin, but that was not the end of the story.

God gave them a promise—the first glimmer of the gospel:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman… he shall bruise your head…” (Gen. 3:15).

A child would come—a Deliverer—who would crush the deceiver and restore what was lost. Adam recognized that God’s grace would continue through her. In response to this hope-filled promise, Adam named his wife “Eve.” But even after the fall, the temptation to grasp didn’t end for Eve. When her first son was born, Eve declared:

“I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” (Gen. 4:1).

Eve may have tried to make God’s promise happen through her own strength. The language here implies perhaps a belief that this child was the promised offspring, the one who would crush the serpent. But Cain was not the fulfillment—far from it! Abel, her second son, was murdered by the first.

Still, the story unfolds. When Eve bore her third son, she said:

“God has appointed for me another offspring…” (Gen. 4:25).

This time there was no grasping, no striving. Just humble, dependent trust. She didn’t say “I got” but “God gave.” Her faith had grown in the wilderness. She was beginning to see that God’s promise would be fulfilled—not by grasping or in haste, but by God’s grace. Eve was learning what it meant to walk with God with ever-unfolding faith.

Eve’s Hope and Ours: Grounded Not Grasping

Eve’s hope was grounded in a promise that she could not yet see, and that promise pointed forward to Jesus. Through Eve’s line—by God’s mercy—the Redeemer did come.

 “All these died in faith… having seen [the promises] and greeted them from afar” (Heb. 11:13).

Like the saints of Hebrews 11, Eve lived and died in faith, trusting God’s words even when the fulfillment felt far away. Although Eve had grasped for the fruit, Jesus, the Promised One surrendered. Where Eve tried to secure the promise herself, Jesus waited in perfect submission to the Father’s will.

“Though He was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself…” (Phil. 2:6–7).

As daughters of the covenant, our lives unfold in a similar way—with gospel-grounded faith and forward-facing hope. We too are called to believe what we cannot yet see, to live between the already and the not yet. We must cling to God’s promises rather than grasp for control. And as ministry wives—helpers and life-givers in our homes and churches—we are not only called to live in this story but to invite other women into it too. Like Eve, we practice surrendering to God’s timing and passing on our hope from one generation to the next.

We abide in Christ, not to produce results and solve problems, but instead to bear fruit rooted in Him.

“She is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in season…” (Psalm 1:3).

This promise made to us in Scripture not only relieves the pressure; it fills our hearts with joy and our lives with praise. God gives the growth, not us.

“Abide in Me, and I in you… apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5).

This is our mission: To live as ezers and Eves (life-givers), bearing witness to the gospel through our faith, in our homes, our churches, and our relationships.

 “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:23).

We remind one another that Christ has come, and He will come again. We help each other remember that our stories, too, can be redeemed. We belong to the better Adam. Our identities are grounded in love (Eph. 3:16-19) and bear Spirit-produced fruit (Gal. 5:22-23) that glorifies God.

*Join us for the first WE Conference, October 9-10, 2026. Learn more here.

Photo by Alexandra Fuller on Unsplash