Below, the world a wash of cloud and sky and wing and me, belly and leg in airplane seat wiping tears and she, a mother of six, wiping face also, on the screen. A reality show, the one where they do good by fixing up houses and her, a mother of six, crammed into an attic with her husband and children and two rooms are all they have.
They call her the backbone, the one who holds them all together—her boys, who love to wrestle; her daughters who dream of being marine biologists, and her husband who did crime but now wants to turn life around and she, the one who breathes love into them all.
And I think of my home with its kitchen and its living room and its bedrooms, and how she and her husband sleep on blanket-floor, and the world below a wash of cloud and blue and everything in me wanting to be the person I see in her.
A different kind of woman. The warrior-kind. The kind that fights for faith and home and birth of spirit.
I crumple Kleenex and the show is done and I open the book Zondervan has sent me, the book called Half the Church, and in it, Carolyn Custis James tells me how to be this kind of woman. The woman who is content with nothing except being God’s image bearer. The woman who stretches hands wide to hold up the sky.
I look out my window, and what a big sky it is. It will take a lot of women. But we, as half the church, can do it. We can keep the sky from falling. We can become more than wives, more than mothers, more than Bible-Study goers and sisters and daughters. We can be leaders, backbones of society who stand up against injustice. Who make our children believe in their own image-calling. Who breathe destiny into our families and neighbors and who love on the unlovely and who create heaven on earth.
The plane swoops, white bird against horizon-dark and I swoop too, my wings un-clipped, my hands outstretched, begging to be free. Begging to be the kind of woman God has made me to be.
(I have a book to give away, friends… This ‘Half The Church‘, it took my heart and twisted and made me see myself in a way the mirror never showed. We can be more—we can usher Christ to earth with the soft of a hand, the curl of an arm, the broth of beef and the tender of a kiss… we can be more than we ever imagined. Tell me why you want this book; tell me that you want to be this kind of woman. The kind to make a difference. And at the end of the week I will choose a name and send this gift from Carolyn James)
And now, with Ann, giving thanks…
301. son who recognized and loved me after eight days away
302. old world sliding away in puddle of snow and sun
303. seedlings high-stretching
304. the taste of toast (how we missed it in mexico!)
305. the feel of the familiar (sheets/pillows/carpet beneath tired sole)
306. sticky honey kisses
307. the call of robins
308. squeak of stroller tire on way to church
309. slide of mail key in slot
310. watching father and son playing in spring