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{I am a Witness. I have a Voice. I Intend to Use it.} Looking Back on Year Two of Being a Writer

8728474819_71223eda2e_o There are moments when I hate what’s inside my heart, tarry and thick with things quite undesirable. Learning to be comfortable with yourself, and equally discontent in order to be transformed, is one of life’s most difficult lessons.

I’ve just completed year two of “Being a Writer.”

OTHERS

As I have received affirmation from other writers and publications it amplifies to me the incessant poverty of my soul: the need for attention. Like a sacred signal, others have the power to bestow and to validate. And the bedevilling truth is that my soul craves it. To know how others perceive your work. The challenge has been to confront that gnawing need.

I want to write from a different place—a place of purpose. I have learned to question the longing for endorsement, which is particularly challenging when we all know that it is through others that we will become more influential and be read.

As I search about for evidence of my ability I have seen signs of it. I can admit how good this feels. I feel honored and humbled to be included in projects, and I fly for a while, intoxicated by seeing my words in places other than this little blog.

LISTENING WELL & SHARING PARTS

This year has been less about perfection and more about process. As I settle in to liking my own ideas, the words collected on the page, I fight a little less with each sentence. Hold less tightly to what Anne Lamott calls “little darlings.” Precious sentences are usually over heavy, causing the reader to stumble and perhaps even give up.

Though writing is difficult work, I am learning that reading should be a delight, smooth and sweet like cream. I have also learned that editors can make you sound better than you imagined possible, if you will only listen.

The responsibility to scratch words down is about more than cleverness, more than holding truths in my two hands and hammering it down on the page, more than dazzling others and more than pride in my work. It is about letting go of sacred totems and knowing when to hold back. It is accepting that your soul truths are precious and must only be shared with intention. One’s life and experiences, the anguish and pain must (at times) be sacrosanct.

Too much spilling over, with emotions a rushing avalanche, crushes the reader. People look away if the ideas are too stark and as they do you are left alone with the sorrows. Then you must take care with what you share of your own life.

So, I was drawn to a new prayer life this year, to solitude, and came to the understanding that to be a writer is a grave, holy responsibility.

In a language of prayer then I returned, after a time. Open-handed with God first, then to the pen and page. Collecting the words pooling up from a tuition paid in the blood of one’s life, letting go of some things. My suffering is sacred to me but it is only after the dross burns away that it grows suitable for others to read.

I look ahead with eyes blazing, fiercely determined to learn from my life. And as I peer into the mist of tomorrow’s sure ache, I am conscious of how little I know and yet I find myself strangely satisfied.

To write is to be exposed. While uncomfortable this is also a revelation.

Year one was a stew of fear and childlike developing aspiration. I was a little too comfortable with my naïve perceptions. Year two has been a rich smelling curry of risk-taking and yearning but had a stench of feeling left out. For even online there’s an in crowd, the A-team, the coterie of the Elite Lists.

YEAR THREE

I hope in year three to let go of “I Can’t” and of “If Only” and face things squarely. This is who I am. This is what I have to offer.

As I set down goals, and slowly begin to achieve them, I feel purposeful and ambitious and aspiring. I will write about things that are heavy on my mind: a deepening faith, mental illness, the injustice of racism and sexism, and my ongoing sobriety.

This year has been mostly survival and “writing down the bones.” Being a mother, wife, daughter and friend has invaded my personal goals and aspirations. And, living with ash in one’s mouth all the time, you only offer the remains, hoping these odds and ends are meaningful but knowing in your deep places that they were sometimes artless and ghastly, often self-indulgent.

This year as a writer has taught me that life is to be lived well—in order to have words worth reading—which often requires that I step back and reserve the parts that are too hot and holy. This is the growing up of year two.

This year was hard.—

With lusts of envy and greed creeping in,

with personal heartaches and deepening spiritual awareness,

with “real life” weighing tragic and heavy in ways that I have been unable to express.

—All demanding balance and requiring a maturing of spirit, soul and mind. Admitting it here is the easy part. It has required honest and brave time alone, necessary no matter how long it takes.

Although I live often in the darkness, I’ll fight to write no matter the grief.

Over and over this year, I have been surrounded by awareness of Women, witnesses in the Holy Scriptures and all around me in life; the women who were and are faithful to Jesus. They went back to the tomb, were greeted and commissioned by Jesus to bear the good news of the resurrection.

I’ve struggled with my role as a woman in the Church and in my church. And out of a desire for unity, out of fear of being misunderstood, from a place of insecurity I have shut myself up. In year three I hope to become a stronger advocate for women.

I am a witness. I have a voice. I intend to use it.

MY CONCLUSIONS

Life is hard. You cannot write about all of it.

Work on internal integrity.

Learn to trust yourself and your voice.

Take risks. It is usually worth it.

Don’t let life overrun your goals and aspirations as a writer.

Listen to the places where your heart breaks and write about it.

Thanks for sticking with me in the writing, growing, and dreaming. I’m grateful your hearts, following along this journey.

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{When the Truth Hurts: “Being Broken” is Not My Life’s Metanarrative}

Rilke says to celebrate the questions.

1.

A truth has circled me like a persistent fly, zooming in close and then away again. When I stare straight at it, it becomes momentarily clear. Then suddenly it’s gone disappearing into thin air.

The truth hurts almost as much as my perception of my Being Broken has wounded me, at least at first. Perhaps that is why we sometimes stay stuck in a static and gray malaise.

Recently the fragments came together – swiftly, an epiphany—through the help of a friend. What I had struggled for so long to understand now made perfect sense and then it was echoed by several other people reinforcing what I heard.

2.

There is a sacredness in tears…They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love. Washington Irving

The last decade has included repeated seasons of depression, ongoing recovery from addiction, and spiritual upheaval. These were all things I had to pass through to become who I am today. I am grateful. Through it all I learned that I am resilient.

I have been stuck.

I’m finished with being stuck in regret, wishing that I had made different or better choices, and imagining who I might have become, and thinking of life with different parents or greater personal fortitude or less fear or more gumption. We don’t get to choose our parents or our family of origin with its dysfunctions and ghosts. It’s all too easy to look back and wish, wonder or hope for something unattainable.

I have lived long enough in the shadows of my father‘s rigid control and in the murky, gloomy regret of my mom’s life. I love them both, but I don’t want to become either of them. No matter how afraid I am, I will forge my own path.

Finally, I have admitted to myself that I am afraid of the future, of autonomy from children, and of a purpose greater than what I can plan or believe for myself.

3.

The years have left their mark on me with many gray hairs and furrowed facial lines. I turn 48 in September and we’ll be married twenty-one years in June; we have three teenaged children and an adult child, who are all learning to fly. I love being a mother, but while my children learn to fly I will also grow some wings. I will search for my voice. And find it. This is frightening for me.

In 2001 I walked away from a PR & Marketing job I was proud of and was successful at by any standard; I was thirty-five years old with three babies under four. I turned my back on my leadership and creative talents. I hid them away. Now I see that I have been like the servant in the Gospels who buried and “protected” her talent and waited.

I accepted a lie that “Being Broken” was the metanarrative of my life – the only narrative I have to offer others, as if it safeguarded me from the uneasiness of finally rising up afraid of my authority. I began to believe the lie that I was broken beyond usefulness, because of the years I spent addicted to booze and healing from the illness of depression.

The hard truth is that my brokenness has consumed and side tracked me. I came to believe in my aching places that at forty-seven years old my life was over.

Every time I imagined otherwise or began to dream fear took over.

4.

Finally it’s time to kneel hard on my father’s grave and say: Daddy, I’m sorry for many things but most of all for how I wanted to hurt you. But this bitterness became a virus in my soul telling me I am the failure you were afraid I’d become.

Only this hasn’t hurt him. It’s become my self-fulfilling prophecy—an obnoxious, stench of a lie that I’ve been living. I’ve been scared to open my mouth. I’ve been too insecure to believe I have anything unique or worthwhile to say or give. I have been waiting for validation from my dead father that will obviously never come and that I don’t need.

I thought I was no longer trust worthy. I’ve written BROKEN on my body; a lasting tattoo reminding me that because daddy said or thought so, I wouldn’t amount to anything. My father has been the Puppeteer controlling me, even now his power looming though he’s been dead eleven years.

It’s time to find another image to prick and stain on my skin! To mark myself with promise. I am a blank canvas full of dreams. I want to believe in me again, to stand up and clear my voice and shout, even if it is shaky and quaking at first. This new thing has been a long time coming.

It is also true that I have used my words and my pictures, quietly seeking to tell a story to help others. And in my little corner of the universe I have made beauty out of shards of my pain.

So I say out loud, I am worthy to speak and it matters little my pedigree or that more than a decade of my life seem to have disappeared like a vapor.

5.

“I think I need a job” I spoke hesitantly to my friend. She asked why, saying “you’re an incredibly gifted writer and a photographer.” “My life feels wrong.” I replied. “I want to contribute. Perhaps I want a paycheck. And I am lonely at home.” I added this as an afterthought.

This friend brings out the best in me. The ME she sees, I don’t see for myself. I tell myself and out loud I tell her, “I am all these bad things.” And she gently laughs and tells me honestly who I am.

I ask her, “How do you have the courage to do something new? What do you do with your fear?” Changing the direction of our conversation completely, she asked the question that changed everything.

“Melody, what do you have that’s uniquely you?” Her question forced me to peel away truth from my regrets, self-doubt and fear.

It came quickly and quietly: “I have my words and my way of thinking. That’s what I have to offer. That I know is true.”

We all get stuck or believe in our own mediocrity. Perhaps your life isn’t quite as ambiguous as mine. But I believe this is true for everyone. As we face our daily challenges, we have to keep believing that there’s a greater and enduring purpose to our life. It may not be a grand opus we’ll compose. It may be much more humble and much less exciting. But whatever it is, it is important for each of us to discover.

It’s never too late. None of us are too broken. We only have today. What will we do with this day and days ahead, together they become our life..

6

Deep into that darkness peering,
long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting,
dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe

Today has been a long time coming—growing out of distress, blunders, and discomfort. I still have a lot of spiritual work to do, but I accept that embarrassment and shame will be a part of the past and the future is a blank canvas. The uncertainty of tomorrow forces me to deliberate, knowing that life can be snatched away in a moment.

I’m uncomfortable with generalizations about gender but I wonder if this is a particularly female instinct? To have a proclivity toward self-doubt, a desire for external validation, (for me especially) a Daddy hole the size of the universe, to imagine that your life could serve no purpose and to believe that you don’t have anything unique to contribute. Male or female, I know all people experience these doubts at one time or another, Perhaps it is middle age that bring a wondering if your life could be over, when it could be just starting again.

Taking a decade long break from a career is a frightening proposition that is traditional to women. Combine that with my particulars, the idea of believing in my future takes faith.

I believe, help my unbelief.

I’m taking the first shaky steps toward a future still unwritten. My life isn’t over.

Perhaps another way to look at it is that I’m only forty-seven years old. It is time to dream. I have a unique voice and a way with words.

I intend to use them.

{This is for the Dads. I See You}

This blurry pic, a copy of a copy, is my father holding my son. You cannot see it from this cropped copy but they are sitting on the floor.

This is for the dads, I see you.

Recently at wedding of two friends it hit me. I’m past the feeling of broken-heart-ache when I see tiny babies. For nearly a decade each time I saw a newborn I’d practically lactate with longing for just one more child. My body kept telling me it needed another baby—even after two miscarriages, three unbelievable and healthy children, an exquisite step daughter, (who is now twenty-five, but only five when we met.)

and yet my body kept crying for more.

At this wedding I noticed for the first time I was no longer at risk for snatching someone’s infant from them, out of a need to smell that baby’s goodness.

I tried holding a baby that night and my mother magic was gone. I couldn’t console that child and I think that he read my fear.

This is for the dads who are afraid.

Petrified and yet cannot admit it, dads who take off work to “babysit” their own kids. But guiltily, if they’re honest, would rather go to a movie, or for a motorcycle ride or make music or read a book. Don’t feel bad, you are taking time off work for your kids. My dad never did that.

This is for the dads that shuffle meekly behind harried young mothers while they nurse. Somehow showing solidarity? I don’t quite understand it. For the dads that never quite do it right—the bottles, the diapers, the comforting. You should understand that moms don’t mean to make you feel incompetent.

I sensed your fear, even pain, holding a baby that I could not console. That I didn’t quite have it anymore.

Suddenly I felt weak, un-mothering, broken. Something inside me hurt—but more than for my lost ability to have babies, I was aware of all the Dads in the room. All the dads who perhaps feel like they don’t quite ever measure up.

This is for the dads who trudge off to work to earn an income for a family when they’d rather be making music, or writing poems, or doing whatever men do in “man caves.” While their wives have ten year nervous breakdowns, while sitting at the pool and don’t even manage to have a meal cooked at 5 pm or throw a load of laundry in.

This is for the dads who never criticize.

This for the dads who are fair and good, “egalitarian”—mindful of their partner’s thoughts, and tears, and breakdowns, when what they really want is dinner and maybe if they’re lucky sex.

My dad, he worked.

Came home and kicked us all around. He didn’t listen to my mother— no matter how he pretended. She couldn’t debate him, not about big or little things. She was never quite good enough. When she asked for help, he told her to be stronger.

As for me, I shuffled in the background trying not to be seen. I lost myself. I lost perspective of my own center, that I was a human being who deserved (just as much as him) to have opinions, emotions, and take up space in the room.

I stopped breathing.

I’m a forty-six year Old Woman who was never a child. I’m not saying it’s my father’s fault entirely, but this is to all the dads who need to know. You matter to your kids and your partner—You have power.

You can break your children. Or help them grow up into people of compassion and empathy.

You may “only” bring home the paycheck; causing your kids to think somehow you don’t care as much as mommy.

This is what I say to you Dads—Don’t buy into the bullshit of being less compassionate. There is a type of empathy that all people have and God and nature intended. It is not exclusive to women. It’s not exclusive to mothers. You may do it differently, but we need you.

This is for all the dad’s that need to know, it’s okay to let go of macho and give more hugs. To work less and BE more. To change the diaper differently than your wife. To cook dinner and throw in a load of laundry, listening all the while to your hapless sad wife.

This if for all the dads, no matter what the culture says, that step in the door of your home at the end of the day and get down on the floor—your kids need to know you. Stop rushing. Say no once in a while to external things.

Be available.

This is for all the dads. I see you.

At the end of his life, in the last months when my father was pretty sure he was dying (though he was holding out for a miracle) my Dad admitted to me this stunning truth. That his “incompetence” as a father caused his anger and raging, his disapproval, his meanness, his perfectionist expectations; they all came from feeling like he didn’t know how to be a good dad. (Here’s a poem I wrote not long after his death titled: Good Dad, Bad Dad.)

When we were very young he stopped trying.

What a tragedy. It’s too late for me and my dad, but it’s not too late for you.

This is dedicated to Tom.

Life is not Pass or Fail: A Mother’s Day Remembrance

020-20120504_0185 I have always seen “weakness” as a defect and here on this blog I say a lot about what I consider to be my own weaknesses – the narrative playing in my head and here on these pages for years has been a fear that I am too broken and weak to be useful at all.

This story starts with what has been and where I came from.

My mother has suffered most of her life. I know this intellectually and because as her children we hurt alongside her in my father’s home.

For most of my life I thought she was weak to stay with him. I resented her sticking in there with him. Looking back, I hated the way she propped him up, when his fragile ego quaked and he wanted to quit this or that ministry, or when he felt betrayed by someone, or was sure that so and so was out to get him or them. She was the strong woman behind the ministry “leader.” Only back then, she didn’t look strong to me.

After being angry at her for most of my life (and receiving a lot of therapy) I now see that she was strong all those years, and is, today. I can see how much she loved my father and was loyal and faithful and good to him. I see that she thought that she was helping us all by propping up the ego maniacal and abusive man that was my father sometimes.

But you see it wasn’t that simple. He was a beloved man who did many incredibly good and important things. He served well and long, and loyally. He loved his family. He sincerely wanted to please God. He loved his few close friends deeply. I can see this looking back, even though he came home and took out his internal demons on a fragile and devoted woman, his wife and my mom and on his daughters.

Apparently, he was only physically abusive to Mother once. So the restraint he showed to never hit my mother again was … commendable? And yet she lived with that intimidation and threat for forty-five years, knowing what he was capable of doing she was faithful to him.

Today a woman would have packed her bag the night that, in a fit of rage, he put her head through a wall. Here’s the thing. Once you do something like that your household is always terrified, no matter how you promise, regret, or apologize.

And he did often, after a fit of raging, make promises and express sorrowful regret. We experienced his rages. Things “the public” never knew. Things you wouldn’t quite believe possible from a man who could also be tender and gentle, who so often eloquently expressed his faith and devotion to God. Perhaps she should have left him. I used to think so. And I would have, I frequently thought to myself in my twenties and thirties as I was learning about feminism and independence. Though I never did choose to leave him and I even went to work for him for nearly a decade.

She stayed and so did we.

It was complex and codependent. How he longed to be perfected by God but in his lifetime this never happened. This skewed my view of men, of fathers, and especially of a Father God, for a long time.

But this is about my mother, who was loyal and strong; yes strong even though all my life I looked at her and thought of her as weak.

What kind of strength is required to endure the unyielding shouting and frequent berating over years,

and years,

and years?

Her depression was not obvious to me then but now, of course, palpable and understandable. Frequently in poor health, she stayed in bed and that became her place of refuge from the strain and stress of our home. She internalized his anger and used her illnesses to escape. She had very few if any personal friends. Abused women are often very isolated. And, she withdrew from her children emotionally. We got very little physical comfort growing up, though I’m sure there was much she wanted to say and do. She just didn’t.

Or couldn’t.

She’s apologetic now, at seventy-five and expresses openly her love, physically and emotionally, and her regrets which are many. Now that he’s dead, she has chosen to make her life incredibly simple. She likes her condo, and her health remedies, and baseball or basketball on the television. She plays memory games on her hand-held game.

She’s chosen this unassuming, even guileless life. This makes sense to me considering that my father dragged her all over the world for most of their married life; as it turns out most of the moves we made (two or three dozen) she didn’t even want to make. Today her life consists of getting a message or her nails done. She does energy work. Much of it I don’t understand completely, but I respect the obvious need for self-care and lack of relational complexity in her life, still.

I’m grateful that she is quick check in on me, if she thinks I’m disappointed or angry with her. I’m glad that she’s finally content with her life, set up just the way she likes it. And I respect her for these choices, even if I wouldn’t choose them. She’s seventy-five and is finishing life in a way she seems to like – justifiably simple and safe.

This Mother’s Day I honor my mother for surviving. I honor her for her quiet internal strength.

I honor her for her loyalty and commitment, even when I didn’t understand it.

As children we watch our parents and want them to be our idea of perfect. Each time they supposedly fail we have a choice, to be disappointed or to accept knowingly that life is made up of hundreds of these choices.

Life isn’t pass or fail.

Life is to be examined carefully and closely, to be lived openly and yet with great care for the people in it.

You never know why someone chooses a certain path.

And in the end, you can only live your own life, embracing your apparent weaknesses as well as strengths, knowing that each one makes you who you are today.

Life is fragile. Love is unimaginably complicated. Parenting is by example but no one is perfected in their lifetime.

I think life’s purpose is found in how we take the journey, in the small and seemingly innocuous choices that become important along the way.

I honor my mother this Mother’s Day for being both strong and weak – for being human.

MHH

The Writing Life, the Power of Voice

Life is pathways that become our Story; where we meet the Holy One and God renews us. These realities run parallel to one another, making life unbelievably complex.

I am a woman, a mother, daughter, and sister while being a life-partner and friend. And I’m a writer, a creative photographer, a poet, bringing logic and imagination together here, all which engender Me–this follower of Christ. I am also a sometimes runner, forever an alcoholic who is sober with gratitude and Grace, I am so many things.

I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s hand all these roles and trajectories, this my first year of being an intentional writer, finding my voice, my story, my purpose.

For me, one pathway has been as a stay-at-home parent and homemaker, a role I haven’t liked, more like suffered through, but that’s a part of my story of resistance to what is.

Another part of my story is working solidly on perfecting writing as a craft, including relentless reading and writing; finding and accepting my style, my voice, which is different from others, but these are the ways and words that God puts in me. Again, I resist this discipline.

I’m also a person drawn to studying scripture and this year I’ve been rethinking How I read the Bible, learning the big Story of the Bible, reluctantly accepting both the patriarchy of organized religion, and the most incredible fall-down-on-your-knees awe for a good and loving God. Time and again the stretches I spend, the more of a contemplative I become, brings a craving for the quiet whispering voice of the Holy One. I have sought the life of the Spirit in new and ancient ways. This is discipline.

Another path I have been on is learning what it means to be a woman in the evangelical church and being healed; coming utterly unstuck from years of bitterness over women’s roles.

I was feeling ignored, unheard, and even unimportant – lacking a voice, while being gently chastised for being so outspoken and for clinging to Feminism. I was simply keen to talk with others about their experiences as women. I felt alone, except for some community I found online. Writing “Why I Stay” (as essay in Finding Church by Civitas Press) brought a healing that I couldn’t have experienced any other way.

Being at home, being a contemplative, being hungry for the Bible, being a women, being a writer, I have had years of feeling very alone in all respects of my spirituality—Joining Redbud, I experienced the affirmation and community of women. It is a place of healing, growth and affirmation for me if I allow myself to enter in.

More than a year ago, at a time when I was crying out for my life’s purpose (or even just a job) what I wanted was to believe that my life could make a significant impact. I was challenged by my husband and a pastor friend to write, ahem, TO BE A WRITER as my vocation.

I remembered all the others over the last year or two, and over the course of my life, who affirmed this in me. I was full of arguments “I don’t know how. And you cannot just do it. You need a plan, a proposal or idea for a book or two, and connections eventually to an agent or a publisher.” This was more of my resistance.

But I also knew, before all those lofty goals, if you want to be a writing you must simply write—write often, write everything, write it all down learning to collect words and ideas, putting them together in your individual way, finding your voice.

I have learned this year too, that you must occupy your own Story and portion out your life experiences with care and discretion. You will be exposed and vulnerable, and yet you’ll learn to trust yourself and your story to others, as you engrave your story on the “page,” sharing it with a community of readers, it deepens your character.

There is an excavating of the soul as you stay vulnerable and open to the Holy Spirit, to evolving in your faith journey, to sighting places where God’s work in you—and God does and it is the most miraculous, deeply challenging thing.

There will be times of feeling abysmal, but always the promptings and the difficulties that seem to come are a part of life and if you allow them they will be your writing life.

Writers must grow! Lean in to your troubles, to your pain, to the heartache and write it all. This year of intentional writing has been one of the more difficult of my life and yet, I thank God for the panics, the gaffes, the worry, the heartache and the pain.

Even as I often feel alone in a desert of fear and solitude, and worry that perhaps my writing will be forever done in obscurity, I know that God doesn’t ever turn away from me and my story. The story still matters with or without the accolades. If you believe that you are on the right pathway.

This writing life has become about remembering and living My Story, no one else’s, and acknowledging the power of God in Me. Believing deeply and knowing with certainty in the midst of heartache, that God is good, and God is Present and God is okay with the fact that I’m quite imperfect.

And as each of these paths run parallel, of being a writer and living this imperfect yet Spirit filled life, the challenge is to not allow the writing to overtake the emerging of your Life Story.

I cannot let my writing out shout the Holy Spirit’s whispering and the narrative of scripture’s truths and all that God is doing inside me.

This is the tension filled place of living the writing life, which is less a place of perfection and more a place of being perfected into the image of God.

The writing life does this in me.

I’m Not Gonna Lie, I’m Depressed

I’m not gonna lie, I’m depressed. Not that I was lying before

when I pretended that I wasn’t. Life is a silly game, and a beautiful dance, It takes skill – to weather life’s storms.

(And we’ve been in a blow-your-mind-knock-you-down kind of hurricane!)

It’s a special skill to endure, to survive, to not

get

depressed. Even for people who aren’t inclined, as my doctor so kindly said. I’m inclined, thank you very much. My mind and body, the know well the slippery incline toward this sink hole.

Still, no matter what I know, no matter what I am told, what I tell myself or read, or have in my head from doctors, the evil voices in my head say – FAILURE.

I’m doing my best. I’ve walked fifteen miles this week and let me tell you it took me a whole month at least to gather up the energy to dust off the treadmill, plug it in. To only do that. Just to start, to begin again when I’m so damned tempted to give in to this beast,

the dark nights, the soulless thoughts, and the depravity which is my companion,

depression.

It’s a sinkhole.

Lordy, if there weren’t so many counting on me, I think I might collapse. You see I don’t care about myself and that’s a big part of the problem. I don’t care about me.

I live for others, mostly my kids, my mother, this house, and our life. I know this is wrong. And I’m not lazy, though the voices tell me I am. I know money doesn’t equate success, or my value as a person, and yet still, I quake in my soul as I lie in bed, hiding away under the heavy down comforter, with quick glances at the clock.

4:30 am is too early to get up, 5:00, 5:40, finally dragging my sorry self out of bed.

I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to take care of everyone. I don’t want to be an enabler.

And I am angry. Angry to still have an adult child ~~freeloading~~ living in my house sleeping till noon. Angry to have a teenager whose beautiful life is spiraling out of control into a major anxiety disorder. Angry because my husband still enjoys things, wants to be with friends and in this case spends a few minutes of music making downstairs. I don’t enjoy anything right now. I am angry that we cannot figure out what’s going on in my little boy’s brain. Angry that my teenager cannot, will not, does not read books. Angry that everyone gets hungry, on schedule, three times a day. I’m even angry that I have the space and freedom to go the three-hour doctor appointments with my mother up to three times a week. I’m angry about my priviledge. I am so sick of being angry.

This is simply part of the thermometer of my spirit telling me I’m

far gone, depressed.

And so, machine like, for a week now I have put on my workout clothes and the beautiful running shoes I earned this summer. I walk downstairs, set the machine to three miles, turn on the book of Hebrew, or Luke, or Matthew. and I listen for themes of Jesus seeing or hearing women.

I listen hard, I listen angry about this too, feeling that this is also something stupid that I accept, something about not caring about myself. Angry that the Church pretends women aren’t fully human, made in God’s image, just like men. I’m angry as I quickly jot a note on a piece of tape I’ve attached to the treadmill, looking for themes from the creator God, the Holy One.

It is a scribbled prayer,

Jesus sees me.

Jesus hears me that I’m angry

and depressed.

Jesus cares.

And people care, so many good people who reach for me. Know me. Care. And I’m not so far gone that I’m oblivious or ungrateful. And I’m not so far gone that I won’t get up when the alarm goes off and continue. I’ll continue to pray, because the anger is the depression speaking and I need to know

what it’s going on and on about. I know this — it’s not the kids, it’s not the so called problems, it’s not my hubby (for sure). It’s not a friend sick with cancer, or a child with mental illness, or an aging mother, or an elderly neighbor being committed to a home, or the sexist church.

This is about me. I’m not gonna lie, depression has come knocking. Now I have to listen.

Melody

Thanks, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, for this.

Shut Up for Once and Listen! Please.

Yesterday I read with disbelief as a flood of women replied on Tony Jones’ blog, when he asked the question “Where are the Women?” Hundreds flooded his blog expressing how frustrated they were with not being listened to by him, by men, in the Church, in the blogosphere.

They also said they didn’t have time for blogs where they aren’t listened to carefully and respected for their ideas. What I couldn’t believe was that he got his feelings hurt and ended up petulant, going away to lick his wounds.

I believe Tony Jones meant to ask “why aren’t women commenting on my blog?” Which is actually quite nice of him to notice that women are silent there. And fascinating, really, that women don’t comment though it is clear that they are reading. Especially since women are talking to each other within the community of other blogs, like CT’s blog for women, her.meneutics and Rachel Held Evans blog and other places.

What Tony Evans got when he asked, was vitriol and anger and I heard pain from women’s experiences in the Church, but mostly I think the underlying response was would you “shut up for once and listen. Please?”

These women are frustrated.

I don’t know your church experience, but I’m guessing if it is conservative, or evangelical, or Bible based, women don’t have much of a voice. They may do lots of work in the church, and may even have subtle and quiet influence, but most women don’t have influence the teaching or theological grounding of the church, because women aren’t being trained theologically, encouraged into those studies, or leadership, or speaking or teaching.

Then a fellow Redbud, Jenny Rae Armstrong wrote a great article Women, Theology and the Evangelical Gender Ghetto. She commented about how James W. McCarty III expressed concern over the lack of female voices in the theological blogosphere in Stop, Collaborate and Listen. He said: “Listen to women. And listen in a way in which you can learn from them. Seriously… And don’t argue with them right away… Listen deeply. Meditate upon those things that don’t resonate with your experience and give them a charitable interpretation. Think about the questions that women ask which you never think to ask. Take those questions seriously and recognize your need to learn from women to answer them.”

It reminded me of something I wrote this last year:

When our Traditions and Tired Beliefs are Calcified into Orthodoxy (Brief Thoughts On Women).

And this: What is lost when the Church echoes with the sound of women’s silence?

And it reminded me that the work is incomplete. As Jenny said, books could be written on this topic.

The evangelical Church with a big C (not all churches) is still stuck in petty bickering and totally useless, entrenched ideas about what women can and cannot do. (That much is clear from the response to Rachel Held Evans new book A Year Of Biblical Womanhood.)

As one thoughtful blogger Joy asked, where are the optimistic feminists? She said won’t you dare to hope?

Food for thought.

Do you listen to the women in your life, truly listen, slowly, deeply, open-handed and humbly asking what their experiences and feelings have been being a woman in the church? Do you think about the things that don’t resonate with your experience? Think about the questions that women ask which you never think to ask. Do you take those questions seriously and recognize your need to learn from women in order to answer them.

When was the last time you felt heard at church? Are you a optimistic feminist? Are you angry. If you’re angry I’d challenge you to consider the ways, if any that you can be a voice for change.

What did Jesus say about what women can or cannot do? What does the Bible show women can do, as Scot McKnight asks so well in The Blue Parakeet. Read that book it will change the way you read the Bible!!

Tony Jones was disconcerted by the responses of women. This disconcerts me because what I heard was women wanting to be heard. That is all. That is a beginning. That idea gives me hope. Shut up for once, and listen.

I Found Love {The Challenge of “Eat This Book”}

I’ve never read the Bible from end to end. I grew up in the church but biblical literacy was not encouraged, until Blackhawk. Reading the ancient books I wondered—does God love me? Who am I to question God? And yet, I regularly bring questions and doubt to my reading of scripture.

I cringe reading the Old Testament, at times embarrassed that it is a part of my religion because the God of the ancient stories seemed appalling to me. As I open up the text, doubts loudly dominate as I wonder: Is God full of wrath, as ruthless and destructive of cultures as these stories seem to convey? More vital personally, does God look down on and limit women, or simply ignore women’s existence like so many of the Old Testament stories do, or worse, does God consider me less worthy because I am female? This is a topic I’ve dedicated a lot of time and thought to, with questions I bring to the text because of their application today.

As a result, for months I quit reading the selected texts for Eat This Book. Dejected, I felt heavy-hearted, even bogged down with discouragement, that this ancient, patriarchal, violent religion was connected to my faith and church, thoughts I have dodged for most of my adult spiritual life.

A wise friend suggested I read it differently, and listen for themeta-story of Yahwehwhich is told and retold over many generations. Still questioning and wondering, still doubtful, I tried to understand what the God of the Old Testament has to do with me, or you, the 21^st-century followers of Jesus. In time, through God’s gracious gift of connections, I saw that we, followers of Christ are part of this innumerable family! The Story matters because of the character of God whose faithfulness and love is clear throughout the generations. We are a part of a community of faith — the whole line traced through the Old Testament. Believers are connected, continuing forward. This is our inheritance. This story, the promises and covenant and love of God is for us all, the Story a continuum, toward Jesus. And now I see grace, even back in the ancient stories with the care for the poor, the alien, the widowed, the barren, even the environment.

All my life I’ve been yearning to be a part of something, and finally I understand fully that I am! I know; I see in the Story that God’s faithfulness is infinite, and as it touches each of us, God’s love transforms us through atonement of our sins, actively reconciles people to God and one another. That’s the promise for you and me.

I read the ancient stories with different eyes now, knowing that we are each a treasured part of the Story. I have intimacy with God in a new way, for the first time.

Strangely this came from knowing the Story. This is utterly awe-inspiring. Yes, God is formidable, to be revered and feared. But “fear of the Lord” is a reverence that strengthens and fills us through our dependence on God. I am significant to this God, who is and was and will be, for all time and outside of time.

Frequently in the ancient texts I noticed people fell on their knees before God when in His presence. I believe this is to be our posture too, awe. Revel in His presence, His affection. I have been both wrecked and healed.

The religion that caused me pain as I began to read the text over time has healed me, bringing reconciliation and restoration to my life. I am part of that story. It is also my Story, which is breathtaking and devastating, from beginning to end. Soaking in the big story of the Bible faithfully, as I was truly listening, truly pursuing understanding and wisdom, the Holy Spirit revealed a gift, God’s love. It was there all along, but I was so caught up in and caught off guard by cultural differences and my assumptions, out of ignorance and naiveté. How difficult it is for us to hear the Truth. And this limits God’s work in me. Now, humbled and convicted, I open the word of God differently—on my knees. Sure of his acceptance and love, in faith that there is something in it for us all no matter our background, our brokenness, our gifts or abilities, or our gender. There it is, hope for us all.

MHH

This article was originally published in Illuminate, a magazine of Blackhawk Church.

Something else on Eat This Book: Imagine my surprise, I read the Bible Wrong

Why So Silent? (And My New Superpower)

I have a super power — Invisibility.

I’m having a difficult time sorting things – knowing that I want to be writing, but accepting life, which includes very little time for creativity. My camera has fallen silent and well as this blog.

I have done a little writing, including a piece for my church on the Eat This Book challenge this year, which I will share a link to soon. It’s a beautiful little magazine, entitled Illuminate and I’ve written and offered my photography for it often.

These days our lives are all topsy-turvy; more than you could know. I cannot write everything. I can barely process it myself, before the next day begins and we do it all over again, sometimes worse, sometimes with a little reprieve. It seems it has been this way for months and I do not know when things will end. Some days I feel as if I might break in a thousand pieces of sorrow.

And then a dear friend gets cancer and I’m thrown into a whole new perspective — at least we have our health, at least we have one another.

There are some stories that are not mine to tell. Somehow telling my story (or the impact of my dead father on me, which I have done a lot of) is okay. But writing about my kids is complicated and I wonder whether I even have the right? I want to protect them – to make life safe and to not talk about them. But their needs are necessitating that I write less, work a part-time job, schedule and attend a million appointments for their academic and emotional and physical travails.

I feel invisible sometimes. I live now for my children and I don’t know if that’s right? It doesn’t feel entirely right, but I know no other way to do all this, for now. I just don’t want to become invisible. (This setting aside of my dreams feels decidedly unfeminist, to say the least.)

All the while, my mother is aging and I am helping her, more and more. A widow, she lives independently and happily on her own but she doesn’t want to go to doctor by herself. It falls to me, the daughter who is close by and doesn’t have a “career.” I don’t mind. My relationship with my mother has never been all that strong so I am grateful that I know her better than I ever have. Her stories, her endless remembering which once annoyed me, are treasures to be stored away. It’s a gift to be here for her.

In the meantime, I’m having a hard time being disciplined. I haven’t gone for a run in two weeks, or is it three and it’s not just because the cold of early winter has set in. It’s because I’m exhausted and confused. I’m crying a lot which is so ironic because for years I longed for the ability to cry. It was shut off by emotional pain, medication, and God knows what else. Now I just hope I don’t embarrass myself with the level of emotions that are bombarding me, flowing free for the first time in my life.

I’m sleeping very little which makes me certifiably crazy!

And in the midst of this I hunger for and lean into God; depending on and knowing the unknowable God better than at any time in my life. I pray for deep belief, evidenced through my actions, through my life. Belief in the Holy One’s faithfulness, love and peace.

But I’m so tired. And honestly I’m just surviving.

I’ve alluded to some of the challenges in recent weeks, but I cannot say specifically what we are dealing with. Not just to protect others, but I don’t want this to be a place of emotional vomiting. I want it to offer the hope that I depend on, and to express my dependence on the Holy One.

One day I will find the moments, enough hours in the day (or night) to tell my stories and put them in a manuscript, one day. One day I will become a solid form for others to know and read. But not today.

These days are about invisibility — mostly silent, these days are serving and giving. And in many ways about receiving (learning to do so) from the amazing community of people we have in our lives.

In the meantime, thank you for being faithful readers and friends, for your occasional comments and for staying with me through a busy and mostly silent summer and fall. As I learn I become more visible, prodded by the Spirit and growing. And I hope to have the energy to share it all with you.

{When Did you First Believe that God is Male?} #mutuality2012

Where do we form our ideas about God? And more importantly when? How young does it begin to register in your head and heart, your idea of God as a masculine figure and that your daddy is also male? How did they become so mixed together, mingled and intertwined?

And I asked myself today. How do you pull them apart, which you must for a variety of reasons but most of all because you don’t know how to pray to that God. You don’t know that God.

What if you grew up feeling that you will never measure up, never have a day in your small, inconsequential life of being good enough, no matter what you do. What if you grew up believing that your life, whatever you become, whatever you might

Hope for, dream or wish, whatever you might be today isn’t enough?

What if you have believed since you were a very young girl, that all your striving will make Daddy love you more and yet it doesn’t work? Did not work. What then?

What if you learned that God isn’t male? What if God isn’t just a daddy or a father but a mother, a healer, even a lover? God is something beyond our comprehension, wild and incredible, beyond imagination.

How are we to pull those ideas apart, with their

Deep Roots that have grown up all over us, entangled

with one another, clinching our chest tighter year after year – strangling,

smothering,

killing you.

I know that I cannot separate these things. In my human effort it’s impossible to make my shouting, critical, mean-spirited, controlling, effortlessly (it seemed) horrible and cruel daddy to stop.

I have to throw that idea away. I have to toss that idea of human daddy being God or or God being like my daddy, toss it far into the ocean with all the other idols I have collected in my life. I’ve got a few, but this one is a huge Monster of an idol and in my power I cannot even lift it, to toss it away into the vast murky universal ocean.

I cannot.

So I sit here, on the beach. My feet sandy, my toes getting wet just a little, I pick up a pebble and fling it as far as I can. I do not see how far flies, but I know that it is gone.

My hand is empty.

I imagine that I hear it fall, then swirl down into the waves, the tide pulling it out, further and further away

from me.

That’s how far I toss the idol of my human daddy being my God.

Out of my mind.

out of my heart,

out of my life,

daddy’s gone. Human-daddy-formed-god, to be replaced with …

Something New, that I do not know yet.

“God is not limited by gender because God is Spirit.” – Mimi Haddad

I want to know that God.

So I am going to stay here on the beach a little while longer waiting, hoping, dreaming, believing that this God, who I cannot even comprehend yet, wants to know me.

Melody

“The point of the incarnation was that Christ represents your flesh and mine. Perhaps for this reason, Christ’s self-appointed name was most frequently Son of Man (anthropos—humankind) not Son of Male (aner). Gendered deities were part of the Greek dualistic system, which Jesus, as your flesh and mine, stands against.” – Mimi Haddad, CBE

{On Staying in My Wonderful, yet Complementarian Church}

I’m pleased and immensely honored to have an essay included in the upcoming book, Finding Church, a Civitas Press community project.

This particular essay was difficult to write as it addresses the choice to stay at our wonderful and yet Complementarian church. Suffice it to say that I sweated blood, shed tears and lost sleep writing this one.

The estimated publishing date November 2012. I will let you know how to order it as we get closer.

{To the Elders and leaders of X Church, fellow believers in Christ} #mutuality2012

I believe this letter to my church’s Elder Board could have been written to almost any Complementarian church’s elder board.

To the Elders and leaders of X Church, fellow believers in Christ:

If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. The old had passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

I am writing today in response to the request for Elder submissions. Understanding that your responsibilities as elders are to guide an enormous church made up of a diverse population, I want you to know that this letter is ten years in coming and has been written with respect for the authority of scripture and for your roles as leaders. Your responsibilities, I am certain, cause you some “fear and trembling” and I believe that you have a sincere desire to listen well to many people with unlimited perspectives. I have utmost respect for “authority” both within the church and in life and I hope that you will consider these thoughts prayerfully, before God and one another, and with the full congregation of X, both men and women, in mind. Young and old, educated and less knowledgeable, Conservative and liberal, Black, white, Asian, international and US citizens, we all make up the beautiful and complex church of X. What a daunting task you have.

I am writing about the roles of women at X. I have been in dialog with Pastor about this topic for years and always appreciate his frankness and perspective. I respect the need to be aware of the climate in X, the Church at large, as well as within our culture.

As you know, many Christian denominations continue with the practice of male-authority. And others are open to change. Though a clear, Biblical viewpoint was preached recently about how men and women are to treat one another, I know there are many at X, perhaps some of you, who believe in the universal male-headship principle. Obviously if it were simple, things would have changed with cultural and societal changes.

But it is a complex thing to parse through scripture to find what is Core Truth and what is cultural truth, of a time. There are dozens of perspectives on the place of and roles for women in the church.

I appreciate the women who do serve at X church, though support staff in the church is dominated by women and the leadership is dominated by men, which I find strange and a bit backward and tells me that things haven’t progressed as much as I would wish. What speaks loudest is that there are no women on the teaching team. And, though perhaps this is even more difficult to change, women are still not considered for the leadership of being an Elder (who lead, manage, govern) and Deacons (who serve, care, guide) are invisible and do what? I don’t know.

In my conversations with pastor, it has been clear to me that some of you over the years (I realize you’re a revolving door of men) do feel empathetic to the changes in the Church at large. Perhaps you have even studied this on your own?

The New Testament church thought that the Lord was coming in their day and therefore did not very courageously attempt to speak to the injustices of their time. Paul backed away from it so much that he prefered to be single than complicate his life with a woman and family.

But today, more than 2,000 years later, it is quite clear that Christ is yet to come, and I find it imperative that believers in Christ individually and corporately, with the power and influence each has been given by our Lord, speak to the injustices that plague humanity — war, poverty and hunger, and sexism are just a few as well as prejudice, bigotry and racism.

I ask therefore: Do you believe that women must not teach Biblical doctrine? Do you believe that women are unacceptable for Church governance or pastoral and preaching roles? Because that is the current example being set at x. And I would press back saying, if women are not to be in teaching and in authority over men, why are women encouraged to be missionaries and managers at x? This inconsistency implies that women can have authority over men in certain circumstances, just not over men of their own race and in their own church. This I do not understand and ask if you see the conflict?

I urge you to consider the message you are sending to young people in the church, men and women who are considering how they might serve God with their lives. And this has rampant implications for the relationships between men and women, boys and girls, as they see this conflict of ideas.

Church historian Janette Hassey, in her book No Time for Silence, talks about the fact that American evangelicals before the turn of the century and after, advocated and practiced women in pastoral ministry. My own grandmother, a missionary in the 1930s, was an evangelist and preacher in upstate New York, alongside my grandfather. Together they were missionaries in Tibet before the war. Returning home because of WWII, they continued their work here. I don’t think my grandmother would have been encouraged to use that gift if she were at our church. It is sad that the twentieth century took such steps backward for women in the church.

I would like to ask you, individually, if you prescribe to the concept of male headship – or not — as heard in the recent sermon? Whether you think headship is a part of the created order or merely a necessity in wake of the Fall it is not good thing for women. And perhaps you say, “So what? The Bible says what it says. Live with it.” I would push back asking whether you knew that next to alcohol and drug abuse the most reliable predictor of wife battering is “zealous conservative religiosity?” This is just an example of how this policy within the Church at large has hurt women.

As I said before, I believe one call for Christians is to resist chronic injustice – to speak out when it is seen. I see women being subjugated in the church, being kept from being elders when their full gifting, experience and knowledge is toward leadership. I see no women being encouraged toward teaching, serious scholarship and study of theology even when God has given them an ability, a passion for and a call to scriptural truth and teaching. I see women who outside of the church are being affirmed and are leading faithfully and well, within the Church not even being considered to serve with the full capacity of those God-given abilities.

It seems to me that the current perspective takes parts of scripture and holds to it as if it were a Universal or Core Truth, while rejecting many other parts of the Old Testament and New Testament, that are cultural rules and are obviously outdated.

I don’t think women’s subjugation is any part of the core Truth of scripture.

The Church has changed its stance on many important things in the last 2,000 years: like strict or flexible observing of the Sabbath, pacifism vs. a just war, Christian’s cultural involvement or separation from culture, but gender roles remains set in what has “always been” especially in denominations, especially in ours.

Change in something this important is difficult and tumultuous, I understand. To be different than your denomination, to think for ourselves, to study Scripture openly looking at original text with a heart for all people — all this is messy and painful and even unfortunately divisive. It is much easier to ignore it until the culture and climate change so much that you don’t have to risk. I get that. But it breaks my heart.

I would agree that on gender roles, the Bible is less than clear. Just like the NT church was ambiguous about slavery, but we never question that change on Biblical grounds. It is obvious today, that slavery is an ugly and abhorrent part of the Old and New Testament times. And in the fifties it was believed in the church that women are better suited for parenting and that idea has been rejected over time ,seeing clearly that children need both parents involved in their upbringing. There are many things that we reject, as the culture and as times change. But though the Bible isn’t clear it isn’t silent either about gender in the church.

And Jesus was not silent, he was constantly affirming women.

As Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen so beautifully describes, it is more like an …

“… unfolding drama in which salvation is made available to more and more groups that were previously considered marginal. Salvation and equality of access to its privileges and responsibilities, is not just for Jews, but for non-Jews; not just for free persons, but for slaves; not just for men, but for women – and so on, in keeping with the principles of Paul found in Galatians 3:28.”

So, if the Bible is ambiguous about gender roles and headship, how can I be confident and so sure that my belief in changing the roles is sound? For me it comes down to our hermeneutic.

Willard Swartley in Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women asks the following questions, which I most respectfully pose to you, asking you to consider, as it relates to the issue of Women in the Church:

How are the two Testaments related to each other?

How is the authority of Jesus related to all Scriptures?

What is the relationship between divine revelation and the culture in which the revelation is given and received?

Does Scripture mandate, regulate, or challenge certain practices such as those associated with slavery, war, and the subordination of women?

Does the Bible say only one thing on a given subject, or does it sometimes show differing, even contradictory, points of view?

What does it mean to take the Bible literally? Is that a vice or a virtue? Does “literal” signify the intended meaning of the author or a meaning that seems natural to us?

To what extend does an interpreter’s predetermined position, even ideology (such as patriarchy or feminism) affect the interpretive task?

I think we can all agree the Bible is the incarnate revelation but one should also be taking into serious consideration the audience, time and place to which each book is addressed. Would you not agree that the Bible tailors its message to real people in real, culturally diverse situations? This is the strength of, the power found, in Biblical revelation.

According to Willard Swartley:

“Scriptural diversity is the natural result of the one true God’s graciously relating to humans, drawing humans into a relationship, inviting free response and full engagement … Biblical truth is concrete, shaped usually by specific contexts, needs and opportunities. Interpretation should affirm and celebrate this feature of divine revelation, communicated through many different writers in different linguistic, cultural and political contexts. The variety itself becomes the missionary’s textbook [for] the biblical text spoke God’s word in a variety of cultural, economic, political, and social settings.”

And then Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen whose book Gender & Grace has profoundly changed my perspective on men and women and the Gospel says this beautiful and profound statement:

“For the sake of the advancement of God’s kingdom in a given time and place, temporary compromise can and often must be made with the societal status quo. … Therefore Scripture is accommodated to the cultural setting of its varying audience, constantly being augmented by a move toward the vision of God’s coming kingdom. Indeed, Jesus’ elimination of the sexual double standard was so surprising to his disciples that they concluded it was safer not to marry at all! “

Van Leeuwen continues that “the basic impulse being the Fall – the wish to be independent of God – is no respecter of persons. Feminists and patriarchalists are equally in need of redemption.”

Again, theologian Willard Swartley with a good test of the degree to which our ideologies warp our reading of Scripture.

“Our willingness to be changed by what we read, to let the Bible function as a “window” through which we see beyond self-interested ideologies, and not a “mirror” which simply reflects back to us what we want it to show. Biblical interpretation, if it is worthy to be so called, will challenge the ideology of the interpreter. It can and will lead to change, because people do not come to the text thinking as God thinks, or even as the people of God thought in serving as agents of divine revelation. Interpreters [must] listen to the text carefully enough not to like it. [When they do so] it powerfully demonstrates that the text’s message has been heard and respected.”

This is challenging because I am full of self-interest when it comes to being a Christian woman — that is a tribe that I belong to and feel a responsibility to care for — not because I crave authority, but because I long to see women carrying out every gift from God in their lives, not just in the marketplace, but within the church! I am hopeful that this will happen in my lifetime.

I must ask you, individually, whether God is challenging you to reconsider your thinking on women’s leadership, governance and teaching roles at X, and whether the time has come to face that the current roles are stifling more than half of the church to be heard fully and uniquely.

But even more important (to me) is that this stance just may be holding back the fullness of the Kingdom of God from being revealed in our generation. And my heart weeps with that thought.

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, in her book Equal to Serve sees Scripture as pointing toward equality and mutual submission between the sexes and I’ll leave you with this quote from her book:

“Today, like James and John, so many people pluck at Christ’s sleeve: dogmatists, traditionalist, egalitarians, feminists, liberationists, all sorts of activists. They all say the equivalent of “Seat me nearest You, Lord; show those other people that my system is best.” As they pluck at Christ’s sleeve, thinking that places at His right and His left will bring them honor and power and worldly recognition, He looks at them – and at all of us – and still asks: “Can you drink my cup? Don’t you see that whoever stays nearest me must … go where I go, serve where I serve? Don’t you see that, loving the world as I do, I must serve it to the uttermost?”

It may come down to this: Can you personally serve under a woman, at work or at Church, and why not? Could you accept that your wife, sister, mother, friends have gifts that make her more visible, knowledgeable, or experienced than you? Could you dare to be like Joseph, step-father of Jesus, playing a lesser role than Mary? What prevents you from rethinking, studying anew these things?

Fear? Ambivalence? Prejudice?

I am incessantly asking myself over the last ten years at X, would I put aside my perspective if the time isn’t right for this church? Would I work for change in a patient and loving way, rather than sinking into anger or bitterness? I do feel that as an active participant (not a member) at X Church I have done that, meanwhile praying for the timing, the hearts of the church members, that God’s revelation on women would come. And asking what part I should or shouldn’t play in that.

I have participated in women’s ministry here and seen women teaching who do not have the confidence that they been given the authority to speak definitively about scripture. This undermines their ability to open scripture and speak prophetically. This saddens me. I have seen many women serving in various roles and respect them and know that they are listened to, but I still am not hearing anyone speak to this central issue.

I don’t know why God has given me such a burden for this but I carry it.

Over the years I have written and sought clarity about why this practice of male elders and teaching team continues? And since I do not feel confident that the issue is being discussed fully, openly or seriously (being sidelined for many other important issues of the church) I send this to you, asking for you to consider it now.

Each of us must ask ourselves, male and female alike, are we living as an old person or a new creation? In the flesh or in the Spirit? And what are we being called to, as we serve together?

I hear God’s call as a voice for certain voiceless populations, including women in the Church.

I am constantly clarifying, are you sure Lord? And at times I have been unproductive, and not very Godly, allowing myself to be anxious or angry or even bitter. I have experienced a lot of pain.

In these years, I have come to a certain amount of peace with simply speaking up from time to time, meanwhile to be in study and prayer. And then to been in a place of seeking the rest of the time. But as the spirit seems to speak (or as elder nominations come up) I ask God what I should do, again — do this time.

So thank you for reading this and hopefully giving it serious consideration. I have purposefully not tried to write a treatise for the Biblical interpretation of all the key and most controversial verses — I’m no biblical scholar and you have one on staff. I would ask you to free him up to study this if he hasn’t already. Listen to him. Then give space and time for your own study and careful deliberation.

God will speak. God has a plan.

With respect and gratitude for your sacrifice of service,

Melody Harrison Hanson

October 7, 2010

The major ideas that persuaded my thinking and inspired this are from Gender & Grace: Love, Work & Parenting in a Changing World by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, ©1990, IVP. She did the scholarship, I just happen to agree with her. Also, Call Me Blessed: The Emerging Christian Woman by Faith Martin.

Other things I have written on these topics search for Women in the Church or Feminism. I have written a lot.

I have intentionally removed the name of my church, though it wouldn’t be hard to figure it out, because I think these issue are relevant to almost any Complementarian church.

OTHERS

LISTENING WELL & SHARING PARTS

YEAR THREE

MY CONCLUSIONS

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This is for the dads, I see you.

This is for the dads who are afraid.

This is for the dads who never criticize.

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This story starts with what has been and where I came from.

This Mother’s Day I honor my mother for surviving. I honor her for her quiet internal strength.

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Food for thought.

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I have intentionally removed the name of my church, though it wouldn’t be hard to figure it out, because I think these issue are relevant to almost any Complementarian church.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Like this: