Footsteps

I have been reading and participating in a few discussions taking place on other blogs about women in leadership, which has stirred up this issue within me…again. I struggled through this issue last year, and have a mound of books on the subject that I poured through seeking an answer to this contentious debate. I didn’t leave that struggle with an answer, but I did come away with the understanding that women are in fact very loved and important to God. (Sad that growing up in the church this was not something I understood).

I guess now that I am on the brink of starting seminary classes, this issue is once again surfacing as I ponder how I got here in the first place. Why am I getting a Master of Divinity degree? What’s the point? As a woman, there will be fewer opportunities for me to work within ministry, and if I don’t end up in ministry then why get this very expensive degree? I of course have ideas of what will come from this education, I have desires and dreams, but I don’t feel that I can honestly answer the question “what are you going to with your degree”. As with any single, young woman, there is the gigantic elephant in the room called “marriage and children” that must be tiptoed around in any conversation about future goals and desires. I can’t pretend I don’t desire them, and I can’t pretend that those two relationships won’t affect any course I set out on. It is not succumbing to a traditional role, it is the desire to be fully present in two of the most intimate relationships one can have – spouse and parent. Just the questions of how, what and why makes me want to give up before I start.

But now I am in Seattle, slowly meeting other students, and I am realizing that the combination of my gender and degree program set me apart in this community, as well as the larger body of M.Div. students everywhere. Part of me bristles at the thought that I was accepted by this school simply because of my gender & program (speculation on my part), but another part of me is peeking through to the glory and excitement of knowing that what I am doing is important. There have been lots of women to journey into theology before me, but it is still important that I am here, in this program, at this time. Women have been withheld from this arena for millennia, but once the door opened we have also withdrawn ourselves from this arena, choosing to believe it is not our place to know God. I have a growing sense of gratitude and amazement that I get to be a part of the ranks that have chosen to take on this endeavor.

This isn’t just about a degree though. I traveled through Germany with my mentor this past spring as she trained youth ministry workers on military bases. We stayed with a woman who is a director of this ministry, and between these two amazingly gifted and God-honoring women there were horrific stories of battle and wounds…not just with the enemy but with their brothers in Christ. These are the women in the trenches who are courageous enough to stand up and ask for opportunities to serve, to call male leaders out when they easily glide into dishonoring dialogue and behaviors toward women, to keep serving their ministries while wounded and bleeding and choosing to lean completely on Jesus to give them the strength to keep fighting and loving their brothers in the midst of the pain. These women are my heroes. They are affecting change in the day-to-day living out of their faith and gifts. Although it is sad that these ministers of Christ, whose hearts are to lead people to Christ's love, are expending so much energy to simply remain standing within the walls of the Church.

The male affirming books and programs are good in some aspects, but again my fear is where is the humility? Where is the surrendering to Christ? I know these men often believe women should not be teaching them, but I wish they could see my heroes choosing to love their brothers into Christ-honoring ministry partnership and learn a different way. We don’t need men to circle their wagons and prepare male-affirming battle against women leaders in the church. We need them to submit and serve the women and invite them into partnership, knowing they will get wounded along the way, but still choosing to fight for the kingdom of God and love those women that willfully or inadvertently come against them.

What are these reflections for? My heart is not to be one of the guys. My heart is for the Church, and specifically the men in the church, to not discount me and my contributions because I am "just" a gal. It is seeking out validation, for a real world example, that God does indeed value women, and that we are indeed vital to the ushering in of the kingdom of God. I know that it is ridiculous to seek this kind of validation from mankind, but it is still my hearts desire…a desire that should push me into the heart of my Father. I admit that my path from seeking worldly validation to God’s embrace is long and winding. But it is women like my mentor, and many others, that inspire me to keep pressing into desire. Women who seek out who God created them to be, invest their giftedness in the Kingdom, and with faith step into battles they know will bring pain, and in the battle they lean on their Christian family knowing that at times they will lean directly into a sword of betrayal, and yet they trust that in this life and in eternity there will be healing and redemption. They are women walking in the footsteps of Christ.

Romans 16:19 Says

Wow. I just spent over an hour writing an intense post that left me in tears, and then it disappeared. Seriously...just disappeared on my screen.
I am going to assume, since I am super-spiritual, that it was Satan (since super-spiritual people like me are imune to human errors, like mispelling "immune"), and therefore I will fight back and try to rewrite it later!

Everyone sing with me now!....(remember to really hit the pronounciations, or you just don't get the same effect, and if you know the hand motions, then play along!)

Ro-mans
six-teen
nine-teen
says
The Gaaahhhd
of peace
will sooooon
crush Sa-tan!
The Gaaahhhhd
of peace
will crush him under his feet! hey!

Gotta love the old church youth group songs!

Bored

I have had trouble posting lately simply because I am just bored. My days are slow and lazy as I await school to start. I am a complete procrastinator, so the more pressure I have on me the more I get done. Right now - zero pressure and accomplishing nothing. I feel like my brain is a little mushy from lack of stimulation over the past month, and so those deep and profound thoughts that blogs were created for just aren't coming. =)

So I will share a few random tidbits from my past month of being a new resident in Seattle:

• A month of sunny, 80 degree days in the middle of summer has convinced me that all people that live in Phoenix are completely insane...I am so relieved that God saved me from the insanity and provided me this lovely place to begin my recovery.
• Though I remain in the USA, I feel at times that this is a completely different culture. Case in point - there are no full-service car washes or drive-up ATM's (Seattlites don't even know what they are missing!); the streets are so narrow and hilly that I feel like a speedracer when I go over 30 mph; you have to pay to park everywhere; and the parks have big green sticks and wavy blue liquid - I learned about these things in a geography class at Arizona State...they are called trees and lakes...amazing.
• I have enjoyed many marathons over the past month: Project Runway, Weeds, Rome, Design Star, The 4400...tv marathons that is!
• I bought a very expensive camera this year in anticipation of some trips and this move, and was so disappointed with it that I lost all interest in learning how to use it. But I am starting to give it a second chance to redeem itself. Below is a photo taken from my front yard! If you look hard you will see the amazing Olympia mountains on the horizon!

More Woman

Came across this quote from the Talmud on a forum:

The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.

Woman

I love that there are many discussions, books, speakers, etc. that are engaging the question of what it means to be a man. I see that men are in a state of confusion and need to be affirmed in the masculinity God created them with. I can see just in my own family what a skewed vision of manhood we have based on the personality of my dad, and how it created so much conflict in my brother. I can see how us women really haven't helped the situation much with our lack of understanding. Manhood needs to be addressed.

But in response to the manhood discussion, there have been a few books about being a woman and femininity. I kind of hate being the sex that is the afterthought. It almost seems that in the Creation account in Genesis woman was an afterthought to God too. Woman was created in response to man's loneliness. Woman was created from man's flesh, in the image of the man who was already created in the image of God. In the new testament it says that man is the glory of God, and woman is the glory of man. hmmph.

I think that men in this culture treat women as an afterthought too. They set forth in their puposes and, if they are enlightened to the value of woman, they find a way to fit their woman into their purposes. If they are not enlightened to woman's value, they just expect women to continue to be their props - someone to feed them and birth their legacies. Uhg. I hate sounding like a freakish feminist. I really am not angry (at least not as I type this!). But are these thoughts that I have the courage to type, but not speak, really that off-base? I guess I am just confused...still...as to what my place is as a woman, and a follower of Christ, in this culture.

And that is where I get frustrated with the manhood debates, as needed as they are, because woman is not being addressed or given voice. Instead woman is expected to stand and rally around the men at their own expense. And I don't think this is menacing...I think it is, as most things are in the church culture, completely unbalanced. Even if woman was created after man, God gave mankind (man and woman) a singular command - to subdue, rule, fill and multiply the earth. God gave the first woman and man the same rule within the garden - to remember that he is God and they are not. So how can we confront and converse about the redefining of gender without minimizing the other, and the Other?

If I believe that God is perfect, then I can't believe that woman was an afterthought. So now I am confronted with the fact that either a) my understanding of God is wrong, which leaves God being wrong and out of control, and therefore woman is indeed a divine afterthought or b) my understanding of God's ways are wrong, which means God is in control and there is something about the way he created man and woman that I don't yet understand.

Even if there is some chance that God isn't perfect, he is still bigger than me, so I tend to avoid picking fights with him. So I accept b) - that I am not God.

Now where do I go from here?