The Feminine Soul

“Isn’t she beautiful, momma?”, I hear as I’m making my way through the clearance section at TJMaxx. A quarter century of motherhood has invited me to slow down and learn that seeing the world through the eyes of children is a gift that slips through your hands before you even know the treasure the way they see things offers. Shopping with my adult children I still hear, “Mom, look…” and I find myself wanting to show my close to 80yo mom what I find too. We’re all just trying to offer our hearts and what we find important to others – all of us just wanting to share where we’re at along life’s journey.

But that day I was wanting to find my own gifts with my own eyes as I had only been doing it for not even a decade. My feminine soul, not even out of the elementary years so to speak, is still enjoying the wonder of it all ~ the wonder of experiencing the world through the Feminine Image of God and at that moment my soul was excited to look at the tea towels marked half off.

I never want to forget what I used to believe, a dear friend text this week. If I forget what I used to believe I become arrogant and cavalier in the journey of my faith. But if you stop and think about it all of our faiths are evolving and changing because faith is a living breathing organism not held in boxes or contained in doctrine.

Shopping with small children is like watching one TV add after another while you’re trying to find something none of the adds are selling you. Whether It’s the odd star fruit at the local market that they tell me, “Daddy would buy if he was here.” or the painting of Mother Mary that my daughter was wanting to show me that day, children are always asking us to see what we’re not seeing. But to see what we’re not seeing means we’re going to miss out on familiar views that have brought us a form of comfort to that point.

Turning around to see the painting this small feminine soul wanted to show me, I knew that real Comfort is born in the faith of knowing that resurrection only comes after death and burial. I had been there to watch my own feminine soul walk out of the grave and I didn’t want to miss a bit of what my daughters soul wanted to show me, even if it was at a big box store. The cheap painting of Mary, Jesus’ mom, really was beautiful; but that’s not what my youngest daughter was showing me – not really. She was showing me one aspect of the Feminine Image of God – something her little heart could see in a tangible way. Standing there I remembered when I first voiced the awakening of my feminine soul.

Mercifully, it was a cooler evening on the porch of our historic home in the city my husband and I dreamt about raising a family before we were married, before we were old enough to even rent a car. The ungodly Texas heat was beginning to release its death grip on the never-ending summer. We were living the dream we had always wanted to live with people we had hoped to grow old with in the city we called home. One of our friends was turning 40 and we were enjoying their birthday at a table I had set up on our front porch that September. Their love for Southeast Asia was present in decorations on the table and meal we prepared. The evening breeze seemed to blow in and around us like a soft tropical embrace as laughter floated on the currents of friendship and shared memories. Conversation paused and started again like they do in easy relationships when someone asked about my husband and my recent counseling session.

Sitting with a group of friends who know everything about you is a comfort beyond comforts. Walls are down, hearts are open, and you say all the things until you can’t say all the things anymore. So that night when I said, “I’ve just given myself permission to stop making Chris happy…that’s pretty much it.” It was like time froze on their faces and something began to shift in the tectonic plates of friendship. I knew it was heretical when I said it – in fact it flew in the face of everything I had been raised at home and in the church to do and be as a Christian woman. If there’s one thing you know as a Christian female is that you were created second and for the purpose of helping a man, whatever that means. Period.

Looking back, my husband and I see now that our lives had just entered the multi super-cell storms of deconstruction, midlife crisis, differentiation and sending children off to college while potty training others. The tornado that came brought the death of a dream. The dream of the life we had always wanted. Bless all of our hearts sitting there that night, I think we all knew everything was changing and none of us could stop it. The devastation that comes after a multi super-cell storm in your life leaves you disoriented and unsure of any kind of future. All comfort is lost as you sit in the rubble.

She hardly ever asks for anything, this little woman we named Pearl of Joy. So when she asked for the painting of Mary I said, “Absolutely!” We are not Catholic, and icons of saints are not present in our home although we aren’t opposed to it. Like growing up in the South, you don’t think about keeping snowshoes or skis; but you’re not opposed to them. We had never been taught the beauty of the saints growing up in our protestant faith and we just didn’t see the need when we were all on mission anyways.

Reading the bible there are comparatively few stories of women shown outside of their supportive roles of men, not to mention seen as anything, but untrustworthy and dangerous. As Paul mentions in 1 Timothy 2 when he cautions that women were created second and were the first to sin – all of us with a uterus get the message loud and clear. I knew what I shared at the table of friends that night was taken as scandalous. Every woman at that table was living a sacrificial life to see her husband succeed and my words were seen as anti-biblical, anti-Christian and certainly selfish.

When we got back to the farm, she ran inside looking for a nail and a hammer. Every part of me wanted to choose where this image of Jesus’ mom was going to hang in our new home, but I restrained myself because I had learned that choosing where to hang the Feminine Image of God on a feminine journey is something one can only do on her own. Instead I began to put away the groceries and hang the tea towels I’d grabbed after taking a look at Mary at the store while I thought about my feminine journey. Used to I would have felt guilty about money spent on the beauty of a tea towel and given the money to the mission. A lot had changed.

Whether intentionally taught or intuited from her religion, women are taught to second guess themselves in relation to men. If your religious story begins with the imagery that your kind is deceitful and dangerous to men, you learn to be quiet and obey or risk unknowingly bringing even more devastation to those you love. If you don’t follow the rules of how this has always been done, you will be outside the blessing of God for sure and possibly your faith community. But I just couldn’t anymore. I was pregnant with the child asking for the painting of Mary when I just couldn’t anymore – couldn’t keep, “Dying to yourself to see the movement move forward.”

Places in time will later stand out to you when you look back at the awakening of the Feminine Image of God on your journey. I remember two conversations in a matter of weeks that I see now as Ebenezer stones of sorts on my journey. A dear friend asked me, “Do you have anything you look forward to during the week?” to which I answered, “Yes, when everyone leaves my house after small group is over.” I think we were both surprised – that was honestly it. I couldn’t think of one other thing I looked forward to. Today I could tell you that that was a clear sign, among other things, of burn out; but then it just seemed like a picture that had been stained by water and I was having a hard time making it out.

The next question came from my counselor. “What does marriage mean to you?” I answered that it meant repeatedly dying to yourself over and over again. Death. Again, we neither one knew what to say because when the only beauty you see in marriage involves eternal death with no hope of resurrection, you’re left speechless.

I hear the hammering and I’m honestly cringing. I can only imagine where’s she’s hanging Jesus’ mom. God save the queen. Letting a feminine soul wake up is if anything else, messy and handoffs. But I knew it meant something deep in this child who struggles with dyslexia and yet reads her story book bible every morning all on her own. Her heart is searching for the expressions of the Trinity and not just the masculine ones she’s finding in the multiple stories of men in her bible. She’s looking for the Christ in her that looks, well – feminine.

“I know it’s not ‘biblical’ and I don’t even know if it’s right, but I just know it’s my turn.” I breathed out over a swollen pregnant belly. He stood there looking at me bewildered. Bless him, I was bewildered too. What I was saying then is that I bore the Image of God every bit as much as he did, but I didn’t know that’s what I was saying. I just knew I could not emotionally or physically keep up with the religious pace we were running. What was sad and still makes me sad today is that he loved our life and God help us both, everything in the Bible supported me continuing to die so he could keep loving that life even if I hated it. I knew it was risking everything, but I also had a deep knowing that this man I fell in love with when he was fifteen was a good man who was a feminist, if mostly in ideology at the time, long before I was.

“I hung her!”, she yells running down the stairs. I smile to myself. It’s true – first you have to hang your feminine soul before you can embrace her. That night at the table on our porch with our precious friends was when I publicly hung myself. For all to see too. It had been 5 years since I dared to tell my husband that essentially parts of scripture weren’t working for me anymore and that it was my turn. I felt like the Early Church, who could no longer square implementing scripture like, “If your son is rebellious take him outside the city gates and stone him.” – something woke up in them when Jesus told the Prodigal Son story. Or when our present day churches tell women they are not allowed to be over men (either through practice or doctrine – the “telling” is done in many ways), but quietly edit Pauls’ words on women covering their heads or working in the marketplace – scripture is living and breathing and what worked two thousand years ago for slave owners is actually a shameful practice for every Christian today. Christians historically find themselves saying, “There’s a New Way.”  

“Will you come see her?” Yes, of course I will come see Mary. Walking into the deep peach colored room my daughters have decorated I see her – she’s crooked and hanging on the wall over this little Pearl of Joy’s bed. Tears sting my eyes and I say, “Oh, my goodness baby girl – that’s just perfect. Isn’t she beautiful?” She doesn’t say anything, she just stands there smiling while I think about Mary and what she said yes to in raising the Christ child. What she said yes to was a whole lot of suffering. And she herself told God what to do when the wine ran out at a wedding. The whole story of the push back from the Prince of Peace as he called her “Woman…” and tells her he would not make more wine makes me smile. If you keep reading the next thing you see is that he’s well, making more wine.  Recognizing and honoring the Feminine Image of God straight up. :)

It’s been a looooong trail, this journey to find my feminine soul. Ten years, actually. Lots of discovery and lots of hard. But no more eternal death in marriage and no more thinking I’m second to my husband and the Image he bears. I told my family this week that in this evolving faith of mine, I’m still willing to be wrong about Jesus because He has and continues to change my life. Not to mention he made a place at the table for women. Even though translators would later change female apostles names to a men’s’ names so as not to upset the patriarchal wagon and Paul’s admonition to keep women at home, I’ll go down with the ship pointing to the Trinity just like Jesus did. Always Jesus.

We were tucking the kids in and I wondered if he had noticed her hanging on the wall. I stood there as he bent to kiss our little Pearl goodnight. Standing up his eyes stop on the mother of Jesus. “Oh, wow…she’s so beautiful, where did ya’ll find her?” Right? Where do we find the Image of God in Feminine form? Mostly inside your soul, but sometimes if you’re lucky you’ll find her at TJMaxx. :)

I want my children to see the Feminine Image of God like Sarah Bessey said, in the way that he told an angry Elijah to eat a snack and take a nap. To see the Feminine Image of God in the way the women waited at the tomb of Christ, because thousands of years of oppression can be a gift that gives you courage to wait and see and then run to tell the men in hiding that the tomb is empty and the whole thing is legit!  I want them to see the Feminine Image of God in the way their auntie leads a non-profit hell bent on seeing people set free from emotional bondage, the way their grandmother is making a life after the death of her love of 60 plus years, in the way their brothers continue to offer equality to their wives and to their sisters by being willing to follow their ideas too and in the way their dad and I no longer worry about who’s leading, but rather honoring Christ in each other.

Every morning they wake my youngest daughters see her smiling down at them, this Feminine Image of God – Jesus’ momma. Little Pearl sighs at breakfast, “I think she was really brave, momma and I don’t know if I could have said yes. I think a lot of girls said no before Mary said yes. Right mom? Because the angel was asking her to say yes to a really hard life watching her son be perfect…also, I think I wouldn’t have liked being his sister because who wants a PERFECT brother…but she knew he was God and that we would hate him and she had to watch him die, mom.” I’m shaking my head knowing she’s right and I’m shaking my head knowing Mary also saw the empty tomb. Which is the whole point of the whole thing. Death. Burial. Resurrection. Watching this little Pearl embrace who she is in Christ, watching her feminine soul wake up ~ well, it’s like finding the tomb empty and wanting to run and tell everyone else. Thank you for saying yes, Mary. You are honored among all of us.