reframing femininity
I haven’t been deployed to another country for battle but have been in my own combat zone. I’ve had to run, hide and plan ingenious strategies to survive. I was not trained for this war. I was thrust into it and like a savage I had to build my own artillery.
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This is what people say the most after meeting my infant daughter: “She’s so attentive!” “Such eye contact!” “She’s very aware!” “She’s looking at me so intensely!” I remember the first time Glorya Joy looked at me. Really looked at me.
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She was so young, so naïve. Face smooth, laugh lines just beginning to form, and eyes pooling with tears as she wondered, “what shall I do?” Her good friend, Fear convinced her that no matter what she did, she would as easily be wrong as right. It might have been a parenting decision or the…
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Mark Nepo, in The Book of Awakening, page 205, writes: “…finding where I fit in the world feels a lot like spiritual fishing. The vast, mysterious ocean of experience keeps calling, and…I keep hauling up food…from a common depth no one can see, and then I spend time cleaning what I’ve found and hearing what…
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The second full sermon I ever preached as a part of my preaching class in seminary was based on the book of Jonah. I had spent an entire semester learning the book in its original language. Up until then, my knowledge and even experience reading the book of Jonah was minimal and superficial to be…
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“Mally!” He said, excitedly, “It’s a girl!” My husband broke the news to me after delivering our baby himself as the doctor stood a step away, coaching him on what to do. I couldn’t believe it; a second girl! Almost exactly 19 months earlier, I had given birth to our oldest daughter. We knew her…
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Tension pressed in around my shoulders as I grabbed a large, silver spoon and plunged it into the thick, creamy mass of pasta and cheddar coming down from a boil on the gas range. Much of my culinary expertise has devolved into mac and cheese. Blame it on three small children, a husband in medical…
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“Don’t go,” I plead as I nuzzle my head into my husband’s dress shirt. I feel like I’m 3 years old and my daddy is leaving on a long trip. My chest feels achy as he grabs his brown leather shoes from the shelf in his closet.
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I heard the tires on the gravel driveway and called Dan to hurry! We rushed out the door and we greeted four year-old Grace and I swiftly rushed to the other side of the car and unbuckled five-week old Parker Anne for the first time! I gently held her in my arms and helped Grace…
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Just as we sit down to dinner, her screams pierce our ears. Our daughter is not happy. She has been fed, diapered, and laid down to rest. This is not okay in her mind, and she is making that clearly known. Her cries seem to translate into “Where did you go? Someone come get me!”…
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