To Viv, On Your Three Month Birthday
Begin here. Weak. Fumbling. Grasping. You protest. Indignant, you whimper, and your cobalt eyes cry out, “Why this? I want to move, to walk, to run.” But running, jumping, climbing, skipping, dancing–all movement–begins here. Weak. Fumbling. Grasping. Awkward. To run, to be strong, Viv, you must first understand and experience your weakness.
It is not easy to watch you flounder. I want to press fast-forward, and spare you the frustration. I see how much you love to move your legs so fast in your chair, delighting in the speed you can move them. You are not content to lay down, and you constantly bend yourself to sit, and then sitting, are not content to sit. You grab my fingers and pull yourself up to stand. Your legs certainly seem strong and sure. You grin, and look around. The world looks different when you are standing.
No, it is not easy to watch. But Viv, this is the humble way we all begin. Weak and awkward, grasping towards an ever-distant goal. You know they say that to begin is the most difficult thing of all, but I am not sure this is true. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The act of putting on your running shoes and greeting a cold, frosty morning. To decide and then to act. The beginning is hard, it is true, but I believe the greater challenge is summoning the courage to accept press on through our weakness. To finish the the long journey when our energy flags, to keep running when the tips of toes and fingers grow icy from the chill, to follow through and finish well when our decisions lead us to unpleasant places we had not expected.
And this beginning is not the end. A thousand more beginnings, just like this, will greet you in years to come,
Viv. I pray for grace to meet you in those beginnings, there in your weakness. I pray that the twin virtues, courage and humility, will propel you forward, smiling, through the tough and sticky spaces. I love you, little girl. Happy Birthday.
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(Un)Twisted Sisters
Most of us have memories of them. Those girls on the playground, in high school, in our sorority house and even in our workplace, who were bent on making life miserable for anyone not included in the elite “clique.” They teased, bullied and alienated. These are the girls now epitomized in a slew of Hollywood teen films such as the “Mean Girls,” but it’s a relational dynamic that strings it way through human history all the way back to Rachel and Leah: the harsh reality of female rivalry.
In politics, business and our personal lives, both men and women are guilty of merciless competition, envy and cattycriticism. We don’t need to look any further than ESPN or E! to know that competition and envy abound in relationships regardless of gender, but in relationships between females, it takes on a new form because of the scarceness of opportunities for women and even the scarceness of “good” men.
Often times envy is spurred on by fear: fear of rejection, of alienation, of anonymity, of a perceived purposeless of one’s life because ‘someone else’ did it first. Unfortunately, these expectations and fears can cause women, even more so than men, to have twisted relationships in which we are constantly comparing or criticizing one another.
As Kelly Valen, author of Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships, stated in an interview regarding an incident of alienation and abandonment by her sorority sisters, “Although the incident obviously involved both men and women, it was that lingering hurt that I had from women and that betrayal … we have expectations of support from women.”
Yet, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11-14, the apostle Paul calls Christians to rise above these contentions and set an example for those outside the faith.
In this passage, Paul exhorts us to “untwist” our relationships by encouraging one another, building up one another, helping one another, and seeking the good for each other. Matthew Henry comments, “We should not only be careful about our own comfort and welfare, but promote the comfort and welfare of others also. He was a Cain who said, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ We must bear one another’s burdens, so as to fulfill the law of Christ.”
I’m learning that to truly “untwist” our relationships, as Christian women leaders, we must be willing to stretch ourselves and let go of both our judgments and perceptions about other women—as well as our fears about our own perceived shortcomings—by acknowledging and supporting the giftedness of other Christian women.
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Marriage Matters: All the Single Ladies
I never planned to get married at the early-spring age of 23. While all my friends were either pairing off or pining to do so, I was plotting how to live several years on each of the seven continents (yes, even chilly, dark, Antartica). Husbands and babies were the furthest thing from my mind, and at 23, I had room enough and time to be cavalier about my singleness. I knew my desire for adventure and my lack of desire for marriage were unusual, but I never felt insecure or ashamed.
According to the sprawling cover story of The Atlantic, had I remained single rather than choosing to marry, being a single female would no longer be that unusual. According to Kate Bolick, culture editor for Veranda magazine, more and more women are remaining single due to a shortage of “marriageable” men—men who earn more money and are more educated. The perfect storm of women’s ascent in society and the simultaneous decline in life prospects for men has led to a “crisis in gender” in which women must choose between deadbeats and players.
For Bolick, the economic crisis has split the dating pool into two camps: deadbeats who are unemployed, underemployed, or uneducated, and the playboys who eschew commitment because the demand for successful men outnumbers the supply. These changes come in conjunction with the tendency for people to marry later, marry less, and the ability to have a biological child without a physical partner.
Bolick argues that the world must come to grips about these changes in marriage, intimacy, and kinship in order to have less unhappy families. As an alternative to the nuclear family, she suggests the collaborative raising of children by a group of women who reside together—a variant of the social structure demonstrated by the Mosuo people in China.
Bolick makes some important critiques about the way society views single woman—as if they were adjuncts to society, incomplete in themselves. She urges others to not reduce women’s identity to just whom it is they do or do not marry, but to consider the depth and complexities of the network of relationships that emerge from our roles as daughters, friends, aunts, and cousins. Bolick makes her finest point when she resolves to accept her singleness. “If I stopped seeing my present life as provisional,” she writes, “perhaps I’d be a little more … happier.”
Still, a number of concerns surface in Bolick’s piece regarding the nature of marriage. First, Slate’s Jessica Grose offers an incisive critique that most of the twelve cover stories written by women have to
do with nothing more than specific women’s issues. Second, Bolick states that due to the economy, single women must choose between deadbeats and players. Given that Bolick has more experience than I do in the dating game, I can take this at face value as her experience, but I have trouble equating men who have lost their jobs or have taken paycuts due to The Great Recession as “deadbeats.” Are marriageable men only those who make more than we do? Does that automatically make men “losers” if they don’t? Do we want gender parity, or to be able to marry up?
Second, she places the blame for the shifting state of marriage in America on the broad back of the women’s movement. Due to the women’s movement, we are putting off marriage, marrying less often, and have developed biological means to have children without a man. Although she doesn’t support her claim with evidence, a connection between the two can be reasoned. However, she takes this to nth degree when she proposes to raise children in families of women, and reduce the role of male to a sexual partner. This greatly diminishes the role and identity of men and minimizes the gratifying, mutually beneficial relationship that men and women were designed to have.
Bolick’s article is endearingly rambling—one feels as though they were along on the ride with her as she comes to grips with her singleness. Life experiences are, after all, very rarely as straightforward as a three-point essay. But her perceptions about marriage and men underscore the importance of Christians providing—by rhetoric and by example—a meaningful alternative to the prevailing views about marriage.
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Hope in Time of Recession
It seems like it’s pretty hard to go anywhere lately without hearing talk of the current economic downturn. Even though I’ve been trying to reduce my daily intake of news, people are talking about it at church, at work, even at the little deli I shop at every morning. Christian universities have tightened budgets and implemented temporary hiring freezes. Churches and non-profits are buckling under the strain of reduced donations. According to one expert, churches alone will experience a 3 to 6 billion dollar loss in expected donations over a single quarter.
In a survey posted last December, The Barna Group reported that two out of every three families, including over 150 million adults, have already been affected by the economic downturn. By the time the economy starts to turn around, most of us will know someone affected by the recession – friends and family that have lost homes, lost jobs, lost hope. For many, what once seemed so stable was not so firm and sure after all.
The stark realities of the current economic crisis have caused me to think deeply about other kinds of recessions we face as believers – specifically the emotional and spiritual recessions that are an inevitable part of the Christian life.
A recession of the spirit can be triggered by a personal crisis such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, sickness, or difficulties in marriage or ministry or they can be the result of gradual, slow drift away from God. Either way it occurs, a recession of the spirit can leave us feeling rudderless, as if we are blindly groping for answers in a dark room.
So how do you maintain hope in a time of recession, be it financial or spiritual? In my life and ministry, three things have buoyed my spirit even in the most turbulent of times.
1. Telling the truth. Telling the truth means being honest about my circumstances, no matter how difficult it may be. It means admitting and accepting the full gravity of reality. Being transparent and honest about my situation brings down my defenses and allows God a window of opportunity in which to work.
2. Creating a list of “grates.” Creating a list of “grates” is counting my blessings. Everything I am grateful for goes on that list. Everything. Like having an opportunity for advanced education, a fridge full of food, a big, fluffy duvet comforter, a strong marriage, or a healthy baby girl growing strong in my belly. When I’m faced with the list of all my blessings, I realize that most of the things I worry about never come to pass–they never even happen. And all those monsters in my mind start to shrink in comparison to the sheer greatness of the blessings and gifts I have been given.
3. Blessing others. The last thing I do is I try to figure out how to bless someone else. How would I lift their depression or help them in their time of need? What would help them feel blessed, special, and give them the sense that everything is going to be okay? This could be anything from a prayer to a good meal to a listening ear. I’ll freely admit I’m not always the best on this point, but my goal is to grow better at this with time and practice.
We cannot choose whether or not we will encounter times of recession, but we can choose how we respond in those periods. As French theologian and sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote, “Hope is a firm advance toward a masked future.”
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Your Body Matters to God
Twenty-one days to the body you always wanted. Ten tips to banish body fat. Get your pre-pregnancy body back fast. Your perfect body plan. De-jelly your belly. These promises (and many more) are touted on every newsstand in North America every single day. Even though I’ve never been a person who struggled with being overweight, I’ve always struggled with the idea I might just be on the precipice of it, just one bagel away from being obese. Ridiculous, I know, but it’s there in my mind just the same. So every time I checkout at the grocery store or peruse the magazine section of my local Barnes and Noble, these headlines grab my attention and tempt me to grab the mag.
In her book, Eve’s Revenge, Lillian Calles Barger seeks to help women like me who want to resist the unrealistic portrayals of women that bombard us everyday—but she does it in a completely, revolutionary, unique way. She doesn’t follow the footsteps of the self-help books that provide women with strategies to become more accepting of their body or those that unpack the reality of media myths—from models who starve themselves to the standard practices of air-brushing. For Barger, books like this only serve as a band-aid to a deeper problem. What women need most of all is to recover an understanding of our bodies as integral part of our spiritual lives. We live, for the most part, disconnected from our bodies and unaware of the importance the role the body plays in our spiritual lives. Barger wants to remedy that. She writes, “What I am attempting to do is recover the body from its continually diminishing position in the nature of the self, spirituality, and the building of communities.
Eve’s Revenge is comprised of nine chapters. In chapter one, she challenges the idea that the body is merely a “blank canvas” upon which we can do whatever we wish to our bodies to meet cultural expectations—from botox to extreme dieting. Continually preoccupied with the superficial, we fail to understand the deeper meaning of what our bodies are for. In chapter two, Barger asks and explores the penetrating question: “whether we occupy our body or whether our body occupies us. Rather than celebrate the incredible things the female body can do—dance, nurture and grow a human life, run, or give and receive hugs and affection, we focus on how our bodies fail to meet the standards set forth by the media. In chapter three, Barger begins to unpack what it really means to have a woman’s body. Is the body just a machine? What does the body have to do with my relationship to God? In order to be really spiritual, in order to really connect with God, must I deny my body? Barger points out that no matter how much we strive to disconnect ourselves from our body, that we can never really escape them.
In chapter four, Barger discusses the social difficulties of having in a female body. In Chapter five, she drives home the point that our body is “the location in which spirituality is lived out” and that our “actions and work in the world are done through (our) body, and are the truest test of what (we) profess to be.” In chapter five, Barger encourages us to consider and deal honestly with the vulnerability the body presents to us, namely, pain, the need for touch, and ultimately, death. In the final chapters, she explores the ramifications of the actions of Eve (chapter 6), the result of the idolization of the Virgin Mary (chapter 7), how Jesus, through the incarnation, redeems the body (chapter 8), and finally, provides helpful strategies for acknowledging the importance of the body through communality (chapter 9).
Barger’s book is an attempt to spark a dialogue between feminist ideologies that raise the awareness of the importance of women and their bodies and evangelical orthodox thought. In Eve’s Revenge, Barger demonstrates an impressive mastery of philosophical and theological concepts in both fields. Barger’s knowledge and wisdom in this book is difficult to honor in a single book review. What can be said is this: that despite the messages we receive on a daily basis, our bodies are important to God, and it is only through these bodies that we are able to serve Him.
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Our Own Worst Enemy
When I think of female rivalry, that is, rivalry between women, I think of Cinderella and her step-sisters. I think of the rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. I think of the escapades of the women on Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives. What I’ve rarely considered in recent years is how female rivalry impacts my growth and development as a woman leader.
In 1990, Carolyn Heilbrun, a Jewish American, wrote a provocative book entitled Reinventing Womanhood. In this book, she claimed that the number one reason women failed to achieve in leadership positions was not because men kept barring their way to progress in achievement, but rather because of the failure of women to bond. For Heilbrun, a few women inevitably rose to positions of power and leadership, but because of the failure of women to bond, these women became not woman leaders, but rather honorary men.
Susan Shapiro Barash, in her book, Tripping the Prom Queen, takes the issue a little deeper. According to Barash, the world is still a patriarchal culture, and this fact sets the stage for female rivalry—because women feel that they have to constantly compete with one another for limited and scarce resources such as leadership positions.
Competition between females is nothing new, and it is strung throughout the biblical text, from Sarah and Hagar to Rachel and Leah. If Heilbrun and Barash are right, then the question becomes: are we our own worst enemy when it comes to striving to become better leaders? Until now, most of our attention has been focused on how men hold us back from leadership positions because men, in most cases are the gatekeepers. That is, they have the say on whether or not a woman is welcomed into a leadership position in the church. But have we looked long enough at what women do to each other? Have we been honest about how women in our churches and in our workplaces treat one another—either outright or subversively?
While I don’t completely agree with Heilbrun and Barash, and I think that their assessment of female rivalry is a little overblown, their research makes me pause to wonder what we can do to improve the relationships among woman so that women leaders feel more supported and encouraged by her female friends and counterparts.
And so I am curious, lady leaders, to hear your experiences. Have you felt supported and encouraged by other women as you seek leadership positions, or have you felt the sting of female rivalry when you achieved a great accomplishment?
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