a most intimidating question...

Is this love big enough to watch over me? 
Big enough to let go of me 
Without hurting me, 
Like the day I learned to swim?
-Kate Bush

How would I answer this to my child?

"I really like her, but...

I don't agree with everything she says."

Rachel Held Evans recently came out with a book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and lots of friends and acquaintances have tentatively recommended her blog and book using the exact phrase above. Every time I've heard someone say this, it has rankled more and more. At first I thought it was just that it seems unnecessary - "oh really? you don't agree with everything someone says? obviously I thought you liked everything about everything." It was like someone saying they enjoy Dexter but don't approve of serial killers - is this really a distinction that needs to be made? Turns out it isn't simply the assumption that I'm a dunce and think you incapable of disagreeing with someone you like, but in fact has its roots in what I believe is spiritual abuse.

We, the ladies I love and myself, come from a background where everything recommended is "vetted." We're coming from a lifestyle where to recommend something is to say "THIS IS RIGHT" and pastors and certain writers are labeled trustworthy (and to question them is unthinkable) - this is a cultish veneration of the Leader. It disturbs me that we are assumed too weak and gullible to discern wisdom or to test the spirits. I am no longer a child in middle school. I know to be wary in this world. I've seen what manipulative teaching looks like. I don't follow blindly. I don't need your protection. My decisions are made carefully and prayerfully. I feel like this phrase is a shorthand for - be careful, she's dangerous. That in and of itself is a judgement of her salvation in my eyes - you think giving her a recommendation might lead someone astray?Of course, she and I differ on some stuff. I differ with EVERYONE on some stuff. I don't see this qualification as necessary. I have a brain and I like using it.

Rant over.

Precision

The statement "Mangoes are annoying to me," and the statement, "mangoes are annoying," are different. One is a personal "I" statement saying "this is something about ME," very clearly. The other, because of it's simplicity, says "this is something inherent in mangoes," clearly and it takes interpretation (i.e. positive intent) to twist this slightly to add the clarifying phrase "to me."

Don't accuse people of trying to make you simperingly sweet and force you to deny your inner self or your feelings simply because they want you to be CLEAR with your statements and avoid misunderstandings.

This is non-negotiable.

:pant pant:








Okay, it is negotiable, but I won't engage in the discussion right now.

gardening

Gratitude is the sun.

Love is the soil.

Patience is the rain.

Grow their roots deep.

I am.

A wound - in all its fresh intensity and dull, age-worn nature - is at all times an integral part of who you are. God's grace and healing don't change that, they don't undo the past and sometimes they don't even give you the strength you need. Sometimes they simply give you the strength you'll get and time drags you along, burying the past in other memories. You'll never forget, you'll never reverse the wrongness, you'll just end up with more and more and more life between now and then.

I was always a woman who lost her pregnancy. I was always a mother. I was always a child. I am always my past and my future. We simply have the blessing and the curse of not knowing who we fully are yet.