This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
I was a “good Christian girl” until well into middle age. Then, God led me where I did not want to go, to show me what I desperately needed to see.
I was a “good Christian girl” until well into middle age. Then, God led me where I did not want to go, to show me what I desperately needed to see.
“I’m Leah!” I cried. I had given myself to a church culture that had used me and used me, while profoundly rejecting my personhood, my adulthood, my worth, me.
"A woman with the gift of prophecy has to be very careful," the preacher said. "What she hears from God, she is not to speak but to take to her prayer closet.”
“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak.” The meaning of that quote from 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is obvious, right? God silences women, and the inspired apostle Paul affirmed it. Or maybe, just maybe: The Lord and Paul both snort at the idea – and we have not known it.
The greetings in Paul’s New Testament letters – the ones translators have altered and we often bypass – affirm women, as well as men, who minister as true servant leaders.
Here’s something I did not know for a long time, because I was afraid to look: In letter after letter, the man with the reputation for putting women down, instead treats women as fully human, fully adult – and welcome into the fullness of the redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ.
You pursue truth differently when you're desperate, when your life hinges on what you find – and your spirit is released to resonate with the Spirit of God.
Thank you, Mary Magdalene, for coming to Jesus. Your story shows: REST is humbly serving the One who always treats me with high respect, entrusts me with significant responsibility and involves me in things of first importance.
Why, in midlife, did I suddenly find my boundaries battered and my adulthood denied?
Frustrated, exhausted, I realized: I would never count as an adult in my church system. Free at last, I’m embracing the adulthood God works in his own