You Can't Spell Women Without Me

I attended my first ever women's conference over the weekend. It was actually a conference I got to be a part of planning. I am a woman. I enjoy being around my women friends. So why does women's ministry scare the skin off me???

Well,if there is one thing I CAN NOT stand, it is letting fear get the best of me. So, back in January when I brought up that perhaps incorporating a service project into the conference would be a good idea and the response was, "yes...and thank you for volunteering to head that up as the service coordinator," I was simultaneously terrified and excited. Terrified that I would working in a realm - women's ministry!eek!- that I had no experience in; but excited for the challenge.

Women's ministry has become a paradox for me. On the one hand I strongly dislike a lot of the material, curriculum, and teaching that is out there. I often find myself disagreeing with the entire idea of the need for genderized study material. Not the need for separate spaces for men and women to gather within the body to share fellowship, but the need for actual bible study curriculum to be tailored for women or for men. It is, after all, the same bible, the same word of God we are all studying. The knowledge seeking, theology-driven part of me huffs and puffs and stomps around and makes a big scene about it all. She acts VERY childish and unforgiving especially about the Bibles printed for women. VERY. Publishers (patriarchal run companies) are now exploiting the gender gap that they themselves, along with a Christian patriarchal system, have created and are running all the way to the bank with it. And most of my sisters are helping them! Willingly! Whole-heartedly! Buying those study Bibles for women (because a regular old study Bible, well, it might not make them a good enough Christian lady). Flocking towards the study materials for women in lieu of the good old inductive studies. Why? I don't know. I really don't. Please tell me. I want to understand.

So while one part of me wants to throw my arms up in frustration at the whole system, the other part of me, the bigger part, the growing part, the more part, desperately aches to minister to these same women. To encourage them to be more. To want more. And yet at the same time to know that they are enough. To know that they are, independent of ANY other earthly relationship, important, valuable, gifted, able. To be whole in themselves once in Christ. To tell these women about all of our sisters living in oppression around the world, facing injustices around the world, suffering solely because of their womanhood. To tell them about all the mothers who die while giving birth simply because of the lack of medical supplies, and then about all the sweet babies, all the hungry children left behind orphaned. To tell them about all the women who are dying of AIDS, and about all the children they are leaving behind in abject poverty. To speak to them about the kids down the street who were taken away in the middle of the night; that those kids are only three of the two million kids in foster care who need families to love them forever. To tell these women that if we are truly ezers, truly man's greatest ally, than man is our greatest ally as well. A team. We are not here simply to serve men, but to serve God. And serving God sometimes means leading men.

So I can't walk away.

Because if I walk away, will the word gentle continue to be used to describe the ideal Christian woman? I spent YEARS of my early walk agonizing over the fact that I couldn't discipline my spirit enough, tame it down, to be gentle. To be quiet and meek. To be that pretty, good Christian girl who didn't form opinions (that's for my husband to do, after all) that all the boys would want to date and then marry, etc... I had never heard of another kind of way to be an acceptable Christian woman. It was only after EXCESSIVE failures that I gave the non-opinion thing up :) Then, years later, I started learning all about Eve and her calling as an ezer kenego; how this meant that God was calling her a mighty battle warrior, equipped in every way for front line duty, and I wept and cried through this affirmation. I have Eve in me after all! It was glorious news. And I want all those years back I wasted not living in the fullness of my calling. Trying to fit into a mold the church had prescribed for me, for us, that though might work for some, certainly doesn't work for all of us. My dream is that gentleness would fade and warrior would be our new ideal. Sure, we have prayer warriors. But I dream of mission warriors. And warrior moms. Warrior girls. Warrior pastors! Worship warriors. Warrior wives.

And while it was nice to be away from the kiddos and the hubs for a couple of hours over the weekend, the thing with a women's conference is that you are constantly reminded about your husband and children. In every talk. Wife. Mother. Daughter. I really really wanted to be constantly reminded about God this weekend. Defined in relation to Him. Saved. Child of God. Adopted.

So, you see, I can't walk away. There is a battle up ahead, and I am a warrior girl.