Back to the beginning

Howdy! It's been awhile. How's it going?
I keep telling myself, "Self, you need to get back to blogging."
I apparently don't listen. For nearly 5 months, I have not listened.

All my writing energies have been going toward writing a book. A devotional, to be precise.  I got stuck in my Bible reading, and the devotional is about how I got unstuck. It's been a pretty great experience and I have a great writer's group helping me, encouraging me and keeping me accountable. My goal is a complete first draft by June 1st. While I have been writing consistently, it occurs to me that if I want to be a writer when I grow up, I need to, you know....write more. All the time. I journal and I study and take notes and I work on the book, but I feel like I want to do more. So...here I am. Back at the blog.
I am a bit rusty- you can tell by all the weird formatting issues I am having, 
I digress.

Much of what I have been pondering over the past couple of years is how the Bible approaches gender. I have been meditating on the concepts of calling vs. conditioning this year. I think a lot of what we consider "calling" is actually cultural conditioning, whether that is society at large or the church. To say that women in particular receive mixed messages about identity and value seems to be a bit of an understatement that I suspect we can all agree on.  

As women, our value is often tied to our appearance, our marital status and our children. We often feel damned if we do and damned if we don't. We feel less than if we are not married, we feel less than if we are married without children, and if we are married with children, we are exhausted. Moms feel guilty for working and they feel guilty for staying home. It is ridiculous.

If women get married, most don't get married until they are at least in their 20's, and if they have children- often the children are gone by the time they are middle aged. So does this mean women have no value and nothing to contribute for the 40-50 something years of their lives they aren't bearing and raising children? Because, sometimes it feels like that. 

I was single into my early 30's and I can't tell you how many times well-meaning folks at church would say to me:

"You are so awesome, we need to find you a good man."
Or, if I happened to be holding a baby, "That baby sure looks good on you. We need to get you married so you can get started."
FOR REAL.
ARG.
Can I get a witness?  This kind of crap really messed with my head. 
For the love, people, DO NOT SAY THOSE THINGS TO A WOMAN.
EVER.
Thank you.

It has taken many years of prayer and seeking God for the lies about my worth to be broken about this. I am just now realizing that my God-given identity isn't dependent on anyone but God. Yes, I am married. However, the good ship "Progeny" sailed a couple of years ago. This in no way affects my calling by God to minister to Him, those close to me and the world around me.

This is not in any way, shape or form a slight to married women with children. Or non-married women with children.  ANYONE with children. Raising children is a noble and high calling. For women AND men. And it's HARD. With the rise of technology, it's even harder because, Lord knows, according to all the voices screaming at you, you are probably not raising your free-range, organic, perfectly-behaved, straight-A children correctly. Shame on you.
Sweet fancy bananas. Mamas and Daddies of all kinds, you are heroes. Yes and amen.

ANYHOO..
I have a burning desire to know what God says about it all. If I had time and money- I would go to seminary, suck it up and learn ancient Hebrew and Greek and go for it. This does not seem to be my path, so I will just read like crazy and ask God to help. 

I started with wanting to know- who has God created women to be? Not what the church says, what does God say?

Genesis 1: 27-28

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God’s image is expressed as both male and female, image-bearers in community- with Him, with each other. He commissioned them both to be fruitful, multiply and rule. For those familiar with the story- throughout creation, God called everything good, until He didn't. There was one thing that was not good.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper (or help-meet, help-mate depending on the translation) suitable for him.”

The word help there is the Hebrew: EZER . It means-to rescue, to save, to be strong. Often used in a military context, we see it used 21 times in the Old Testament- used 2 times for Eve, 3 times for nations coming to help Israel in a military capacity, the other 16 times in reference to God Himself. God had Adam name the animals, GOD named the woman Ezer Kenegdo Himself. He named His daughter after HIMSELF. Talk about image-bearing!
Helper here is not the “make me dinner and bring me my slippers” kind of help- this is the “I will die without you” kind of help. Certainly not less than or inferior in any way, just sayin'.

KENEGDO means facing, opposite to him, corresponding to him, equal. It's the KJV “mate” or “meet” word, ESV translated “fit for him”, NASB suitable to- Help-Ezer Mate-Kenegdo.  
Somehow- in our English language- the translation and how it is interpreted doesn’t reveal the full force of the intention of God's intended Holy Alliance between men and women, each doing their equal part to rule and subdue creation. God created a true partnership. This wasn't Adam as the thinker and protector and Eve as the caregiver, helpless princess. Adam needed HELP in the garden, not more work. God created Eve to be his comrade in arms. That was the intent, true partnership. Then the Fall caused this alliance to collapse and male and female have been jockeying for power ever since. Instead of a Holy alliance- everyone is grasping for the upper-hand or just trying to get a place at the table-which is not God’s design for any of us, women or men.

Ezer Kenegdo is who women are created to be as image bearers. It manifests differently in each of us, it may also manifest differently in certain seasons of our lives, but the call stays the same.This is true for each and every woman, regardless of where we are in our earthly story.

To really be living in the truth of God, and who he made us to be, we cannot leave any woman out based on her status.  All of us are crucial, in all of the seasons of our lives- no matter what that looks like for each of us. What if marriage and/or children are not a part of God’s plan for us? What if things don’t go like we expect? What if divorce or infertility become a part of our stories? Do we cease to exist in God’s eyes? Have we no purpose in His plan and story? What does Ezer look like then? These are the questions we need to ask ourselves so that we can break free from the lies that keep us from being who we are called to be.

Jesus recognized his ezers. We see it all throughout the New Testament. He treats every woman that He comes across with love and respect- the stories bear witness: his interactions with His mother, the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the woman with the issue of blood, the woman caught in adultery, Marty and Martha- his friends. He honored all women he encountered.  He loved them, defended them, talked and joked with them. He let them support him and minister to Him.

It was a woman who first understood the truth of the gospel. While Jesus' friends surrounded him shortly before the crucifixion, sitting around eating and talking, denying what Jesus was saying to them about his death and resurrection, still thinking in terms of ambition and politics, suddenly a woman comes in to minister comfort to Jesus in his loneliness and sorrow. She anoints him for his death, affirming that she is listening, she understands what he is saying. She believes him. She loves him. She stands with him as an ezer while he prepares himself for what was to come. I love this. A woman extravagantly comforts Jesus in his time of need. I confess to being a little jealous of the privilege. What an extraordinary example of what ezer looks like.
 

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.”  Dorothy Sayers