I love my mum, I adore her so very much. I love the way we laugh and how she makes me laugh and all the joy she brings to my life- this post is for my radiant mum, who I have inherited my cheeky mouth from.
I come empty handed, baring nothing but Your truth and time and time again, it ignites a storm so much greater then I could have ever gathered...
Legs crossed, elbows to knees, I peer over to the young men eagerly discussing their hopes in a trip to Las Vegas. Full of excitement they exclaim about the girls, you know, the ones who are naked and come in catalogues that you can purchase for an hour or two. Prostitutes.
My palms begin to sweat. My stomach lurches to protect those women, all women.
"Don't you have a girlfriend?" I ask, knowing that this guy has been going steady with his girl for at least 3 years.
"Uh, yeah but.."
"But what? Do you have a girlfriend or not?" My heart begins to tangle around my most recent conversations with the women in my life. How I desperately try and refute the lies that they so readily believe and how I get it, I get it, I get it, I get why we as women live in so much self condemnation and agony. Partly because we are surrounded by men who are so lost and so broken and don't know the first thing about respect, and the other is we don't know how to accept true, pure and selfless love.
He barely notices my point, my meager attempt to defend the woman he so carelessly calls lover-
"Yeah but Vanessa's cool, you know..." Laughing off the awkwardness with his buddy, I sit wide eyed, I can't stop looking at them. I want to scream.
And as I think about the evening I still want to scream and it makes no sense in my mind to continue writing out the awful conversation or the disrespectful and misogynistic things that were spoken that evening. But it was horrific and disgusting and every single man that sat in that basement fell so short of honor, integrity, respect and courage that if they ever so thought to consider themselves 'real men' I would have gladly taken on the duty of informing them otherwise. Because a real man delights in respecting women and those around him. A real man honors and builds up others, he does not tear them down. A real man has enough courage to stand up and defend, to love sacrificially and admit when he has been wrong.
To my mother and my grandmothers and my aunts and the sisters in my life, my dear girl friends and young girls who are rising up to be women, YOU are worth so much more then the single-mindedness that an offensively large percentage of men hold- YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL in everything that you are. You deserve to be pursued, sought after and won over. You, a beautiful daughter of God deserve a man who is willing and ready to lay down is own life for you. You deserve better, you deserve more, you deserve wholeness and to be lifted up. You deserve laughter and tender care, moments filled with such pure love it makes your soul ache with happiness.
Dear friends, do not go another day believing the broken theology of man- do not compare yourselves to the women who are sculpted from plastic. But instead ache for them and note that anyone who hates themselves so much they must become but a shadow of the masterpiece they once were, is hungry for the same thing you are. LOVE. Unconditional, radical, life altering LOVE. We all want to be accepted, to be told we are special and that we are loved by someone, anyone- so let us start now. Lets stop talking poorly about each others appearances, always comparing but instead realize that we are the movement of change. We apart of the movement that will heal a generation.
One of my favorite stories from the bible is when a woman caught sleeping with a man that wasn't her husband is dragged from the place she was and thrown at the foot of Jesus. The whole town watching, chanting for her demise- she lay there naked, ashamed, broken, embarrassed and abused. Desperately wanting to be loved and accepted, to find worth and wholeness in a culture that labeled her as an object of conquest. But instead of throwing religious law at her, stoning her to death or reprimanding her, Jesus looked to her and found in her a beauty that took his breath away, a radiance that was unmistakable and a perfection that only God could create- he saw the cry of her heart.
I wonder what our world would look like if we stopped to listen to the cry of the hearts around us. I myself am nothing like Christ, nowhere as forgiving, loving or wonderful, but lately I have tried to stop and listen to the cry of my sisters' hearts. What I feared I would hear and what resounds among all, are deep seeded lies, lies rooted in self worth, image, belonging, and love. How desperate my soul is for truth, revival and change. How desperate we all are for someone to hear us and assure us of our worth and purpose.
In these trying times of brokenness, I am ever grateful to know so unwaveringly the love my God has for me and EVERY SINGLE person on this planet, even the guys I began my post off with.
to be continued..
to be continued..
