If there's one reason I'm thankful that the campaigning season is over, it's so that I don't have to hear the "individual story" (or the "personification" of an issue or whatever you wanna call it) anymore.

You know, when an interviewer asks, "So, Senator, why are you in favor of a homeschooling tax break?"

"Well, let me tell you," Senator Smith says, "because of people like Ted Slater of Colorado Springs, a hard working man, trying to educate his kids at home, blah, blah."

Or, "So, Senator, why do you favor providing subsidies for stay-at-home Christian bloggers?"

"Well, let me tell you," Senator Jones says, "it's because of people like Heather Koerner of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who is slaving away right now on her PC, but hears everyone talking about how great Macs are. We should not be a nation of have-Macs and have-not-Macs, so I think that Heather, blah, blah, blah."

Makes we want to throw a shoe at the TV.

It's not that individual stories aren't instructive. They can, and sometimes do, have something to teach us. It's just that individual stories aren't necessarily prescriptive. National PC policy should not be made just because I want to try a Mac.

That's what made me a little hesitant about passing on this article: "Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and baking" in the Times.

In it, author Zoe Lewis, talks about how she was imbued by her feminist mother with "the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation" but that how "now, nearly 37, those same values leave me feeling cold."

Here's the thing. One feminist denouncing feminism doesn't necessarily make feminism wrong, in the same way that someone denouncing the Christian faith doesn't make Christianity wrong. What makes feminism right or wrong is how it lines up with Scripture. As Christians, we start with the Truth, God's Word. We learn what it tells us about being male and female, about being husbands and wives and about being mothers and fathers. We strive to make sure that the Word, not the world, shapes our priorities.

But, still, stories like this can be instructive to us. They can show us how even a woman who doesn't share our faith, still shares our Creator and still feels the pull of His design.

She writes:

"I was led to believe that women could 'have it all' and, more to the point, that we wanted it all. To that end I have spent 20 years ruthlessly pursuing my dreams - to be a successful playwright. I have sacrificed all my womanly duties and laid it all at the altar of a career. And was it worth it? The answer has to be a resounding no."

"...Somewhere inside lurks a woman I cannot control and she is in the kitchen with a baby on her hip and dough in her hand, staring me down. She is saying: 'This is happiness, this is what it's all about' It's an instinct that makes me a woman, an instinct that I can't ignore even if I wanted to."

"...I argue that women's libbers of the Sixties and Seventies put careerism at the forefront, trampling the traditional role of women underneath their Doc Martens. I wish a more balanced view of womanhood had been available to me. I wish that being a housewife or a mother wasn't such a toxic idea to middle-class liberals of yesteryear."

"...In the future I hope that there can be a better understanding of women by women. The past 25 years have been confusing and I feel that I've been caught in the crossfire. As women we should accept each other rather than just appreciating 'success'. I have always felt a huge pressure to be successful to show men that I am their equal. What a waste of time. Wife and mother should be given parity with the careerist role in the minds of feminists."

"... I wish I'd had the advice that I am giving to my 21-year-old sister: if you find a great guy, don't be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn't anything to miss out on that you can't do later (apart from having kids)."