You are her daughters

This blog has been a long time in the planning process. Actually 'planning' is far too grand a statement for what the process has been so far. I am a woman who is loved by God. He knows me, he 'knit me together' before I was born, he planned my days. He knew the day I would meet him and had planned the angels singing party for that incredible moment. He loves me. He also put a fire in my heart for the oppressed and marginalised. For the groups on the edges of the church. For women, for the LGBTQI community, for groups suffering at the hands of institutional racism and oppression. Psalm 82:3 "Defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and oppressed". This verse has been a cymbal in my brain since my early 20's. My early interpretation of this call was to go on overseas missions and join local homeless charities and these are so important and I would urge anyone to do it - I would love it if any of my children chose to go. 

However seasons of life change and my Psalm 82 calling impacted my professional life as I went into social housing - all my boxes were ticked for social justice and I loved it. I trained as a debt advisor and loved to support residents through what seemed to be insurmountable financial problems. I later trained as a Christians Against Poverty advisor and continued the work in my local church. Combining Jesus love with complete practicality was just amazing. Time passed and we had a family and through this I discovered midwifery. It was like a light came on in my life and I knew that this was my next path. I prayed about it and to put it simply it was like the path broadened in front of me. God made his plans so clear to me through this. 

Midwifery showed me women. This sounds like such an obvious thing to say but it has brought me on an extraordinary journey. I thought I was 'for' women when I started my training. I had been brought up around incredible women - world changers, political landscape changers, strong single mothers. But in midwifery, my studies illuminated the barriers facing women every second of every day. The 'issues' I had with men were cast into sharp relief when I viewed them through a lens of women 'at large'. It was not just me. Psalm 82 tugged at my sleeve again and I threw myself into working with women, advocating and being the midwife I wanted for myself. Collecting sanitary products and creating packages for homeless women gave me another outlet and I was overwhelmed by the compassion of the maternity workers I practised alongside and their desire to get involved. I had found 'my people' and also found what I thought was satisfaction and a sense that I was fulfilling my calling.

The funny thing with satisfaction of course is that when we start to look for it in human endeavours, the shine goes off it somewhat and I was left again with a sense that there was more to come. God answered my thoughts in ways I would never have imagined and my journey into education as a midwifery lecturer answered my prayers on a variety of levels, restoring a home life balance and giving my (at that point broken) body rest.

Again, time passed. The world is so different now from when I was born again and is seems to be accelerating in many ways, including the way that women are viewed in all paths of life. Personally I don't go looking for leadership roles, the fact they find me feels more a testament to the fact that God loves to use the most unlikely vessels and broken pots for his work. I started to have some encounters which centred around the position of women in church. It had not fully occurred to me at this point that women were not routinely in leadership in church. More astonishingly I stopped and examined my own beliefs about women and found that I had 'accepted' that women cannot lead and if they do, then they must have the 'covering' of a man. I started to try and have conversations about this and about other issues including race. These conversations didn't go too well. I was reminded that decision making was reserved for the 'head' of my family and that 1 Timothy might be a good place to start.

The safest thing to do seems to stop thinking about it. The problem with this of course being that God had apparently not stopped thinking about it.

More time passed and as a family we moved onto a new community. It was here that I discovered that questions are there to be asked and not shied away from. Deep questions I wrestled with about Gods heart to the LGBTQI community were able to be vocalised and we formed a group to grapple with the scriptures and hear the lived experiences of those for whom it was not just an 'issue' to be worked out, but life itself. 2020 has been a year of extraordinary revelation for many people and so when George Floyd was murdered by police officers in the USA, it provoked a new moment of self-interrogation in our community. Our pastor started a book club to serve as a vehicle to open the conversation about race. It's been challenging but to be a part of such an open hearted church family has been the most incredible revelation to me.

And then in the midst of all of this, the issue of women came back for me. It had never gone away really but I had to confront some really deeply held convictions and beliefs about the position of men and the position of women in relation to God. And these beliefs ultimately bring me to the question - What does God REALLY think about women? How do I reconcile the truths I know in my heart to be true... that I am loved, valued, worth dying for even... with some of the verses I read in the Bible about women. About their place in society, in marriage, in church. There are a number of 'apparently' dehumanising passages which seem at odds with the God I know. And of course the verse in 1 Timothy which tells women to be quiet, not to teach and be submissive. Where does that leave me as an evangelical, bible believing Christian?

Which leads me to my next question. Why does God keep bringing me back to this? I even asked him to take it away one evening. Why do I have to carry the burden of oppression for women? Its painful and it's heavy. His response? Read 2 John. (I blog about that here)

It has become abundantly clear that I have had very disordered beliefs about this and what Gods vision is for women.

Talking about it with my pastor has felt exposing to the point that I want to hide forever and then liberating to the extent I don't want to shut up about it... all at once. Being 'allowed' to talk about it and ask tricky questions and challenge what I see as the status quo has probably been the key. This is totally alien to me. I have never felt like I had permission to even think about this before

So I decided to start this blog. For me. The name comes from 1 Peter 3:6 - "You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear". The verse refers to Sarah, wife of Abraham. She was an incredible woman and she was called on at multiple points in her life to trust that God had it in hand. She really needed to because for all her husband Abrahams godly attributes, he was also just a man, given to fear and pride, on more than one occasion 'giving' her away to foreign kings. God thankfully had it under control. You have to hand it to Sarah, she was a brave woman. A small chuckle is forgivable when she was told well into her 90's that she would have a child. She wasn't perfect, you only need to look at what happened with Hagar to see that she was still a flawed human. There may even be lessons to be learnt about internalised misogyny in those passages (along with an awesome tale of redemption and covenantal promises for Hagar). Tunnelling into what God has to say about women and about His extraordinary love for us as a human race, together WITH men, is the right thing to do.

These thoughts are by no means complete and I expect they will evolve over time even. As an adult educator, I know there is something very powerful about seeing people reassess their beliefs - seeing people stuck in intractable ruts of knowledge, unable or unwilling to move, is the educators frustration. What can you do with those people? My prayer for myself if that I remain soft-hearted and open to what God has planned for this journey, uncomfortable as it might be sometimes.