reframing femininity
There was one Halloween in elementary school when I dressed up as a bride. I had a long white dress and a lace veil covering my face, though nothing about my costume could cover the beauty I felt while walking down the concrete aisle to every front door in my neighborhood, building myself a candy…
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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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It was opening the gate that did it. As the vinyl slats scraped across the cement sidewalk, like fingernails on a chalkboard, I felt the layers of irritation that had piled on over the past weeks expose a crack in my intentionally cheerful veneer.
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No baby has blessed my womb Disgrace my lot, disgrace my doom Never feeling the growing inside I said I was OK with it. I lied. Never feeling touch, skin to skin No offspring from me, no next of kin Never seeing eyes open in wonder No baby, my heart asunder Never hearing cries in…
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A few months ago, my Pastor gave me Reinhold Niebuhr’s version of the Serenity Prayer, and I have been praying it every day since. One line that continually catches my attention is, “…taking this world as it is, not as I would have it.” Talking with a friend the other night, she was expressing her…
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I don’t do needy. Which means, I don’t do sick. I don’t do broken bones. And I don’t do hospitals. At least, I didn’t do those things until four months ago. In late March I was bustling around a friend’s kitchen, blending graham crackers and dumping crumbs; all to whip together a graham cracker crust.…
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“I’ve decided God is about the things that come really easy or really, REALLY hard. Everything else is just me believing if I give the right amount of effort, I’ll get the result I want. Life is a lot of me pretending I have my act together.”
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There is a place near my home that I am drawn to on days when I am in need of respite. It is a place that feels sacred to me, hidden as it is in a sprawling neighborhood.
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I am a single woman, I do not have children, and I live by myself.
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September reminds me of “back-to-school,” return of routine, and the re-ordering of life.
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