I remember singing in the choir in the seventh grade with people I would describe as “my mom’s friends.” If there is a choir, mom is going to sing in it. These women had taught my pre-school Sunday school classes, been there when I was dedicated. I remember the patience these women had for me. The way they encouraged me, the way they quietly prayed for each other. I remember them laughing a lot, in a comfortable way. You could tell they had been singing together for a while. They were so patient with me. Even when I was 14 and had no idea how obnoxious I was.

I remember taking piano lessons. I probably would not have gotten to, but our piano teacher was a woman from our church, and just as we could no longer afford them she approached my mom at the Christmas Eve service and offered to give them to us for free. My oldest sister is now a music therapist and she, at least partially, has this woman to thank.

I remember being a little intimidated by her big house and her grand piano. Her huge TV in the basement that I sat in while I waited for my sister to finish her lesson. I remember the gummy bears behind the ice cream bar that I was allowed to help myself to. Very specifically I remember the time she knew that I did not ask for the sticker I wanted when I had done well on a song. I remember it had glitter on it. She told me that sometimes girls didn’t think that it was okay to ask for what they really wanted, but that it was important to speak up. It was good, to ask for what I wanted. She was the first person that saw that weakness in me, I don’t think I deserve what I really want. She was the first person to gently speak the truth to that weakness.

Later, when I got diagnosed with the middle-aged lady disease at 17, the same one she had, she encouraged me in ways that no one else could. She saw my soul again. I still have the cards she slipped me in church. She knew, she made me feel less alone.

I remember another woman who played the piano as I walked down the aisle. I remember singing in the choir she directed when I was 5 or so about how all God’s creatures have a place in the choir even if  “some just clap their hands and their paws and anything they got now.” I remember learning the songs she wrote for our moms on mother’s day. And I heard that when my mother approached her about payment for playing for my wedding she scoffed, “Kathleen, I know you aren’t talking about paying me. I thought we were friends!” Then, she arranged some extra flute pieces for my cousin Rachel between the rehearsal and the wedding, simply because she recognized serious talent when she saw it.

I was continually blessed during Christmas eve and Easter services by the same woman finding instrumentalists and arranging music. I loved the Sundays with the full orchestra. I remember a few choir directors and the time in between.  I don’t think this woman was ever paid for all she did. I think she just did it.

There are so many women, and men too, of a certain age and station that make up the strongest memories of my church experience growing up. The Sunday school teachers, the choir singers, the nut-sale organizers. The women who complimented my grown up hair cut and new contact lenses when I was still awkward. They made me feel beautiful. They were proud of who I was becoming. They told me how proud my parents were of me. I believed them. They spoke truth.

At 29 and 30 my husband and I are solidly in the older half of our church. College students and young marrieds, beautiful mid twenties women (seriously, Christian men, if you are not going to 1027 church, you are missing out!) that is our population. These are the people I worship with. I love them, and they are Jesus to me in so many ways. But I can’t help but miss the over 40 crowd. The way over 40 crowd.

I think they have truth that we could use. I want to know that there is nothing new under the sun, that the Christian life is hard sometimes, but at 60, 70, 85….it is worth it. I need the steadiness of people who have already quibbled over worship styles and done all the quirky Bible studies and abandoned the gimmicks but remained holding on to Jesus. I need the steady call of “this too shall pass” even as my youth (what little left I have) shouts obnoxiously that no one could possibly know, this time is different. I need their forgiveness for my youthful folly.

I think my kids need them too, these surrogate grandparents. They need to see that Jesus is the answer at every stage of life. They need to see that it is possible to fall more deeply in love with our savior every trip around the sun. They need to see someone who is excited to see them when mommy and daddy and all of their friends parents arrive to church exhausted by the effort it takes to get everyone there every week.

I think we need to learn how to serve them, us young whipper snappers need to step out of the rushing around of our little ones and budding careers and serve people who have come before us. We need to be reminded that we are not the first, and will not be the last, that there are a long line of saints (many still living) that have paved the way.

They think they are being sneaky. I let the kids start sitting where they want to when I finally cleaned out the extra desks and he chose since then to sit behind her.

It was the catalyst of homecoming that finally brought it all to the surface. He had to ask someone. He joked he was going to ask me. I told him he could bring me candy, and I would accept that, but I could not go to homecoming with a ninth grader. We laughed at how funny it would be if I did. I could pick him up in the minivan.

Shortly after he brought a dozen roses to school to “officially ask” (it is a thing here, I don’t get it either). I saw him before she did and he laughed as he held out the roses to me “Mrs. Norman, I, I have something to ask you!” I enjoy the occasional running gag with my kids.

Since that week, that asking, that dance, I have noticed he sprawls across the front of his desk in a way he never did before. His arms stretched as far as they can go, making an acute angle with the desk, his shoulders and back curved forward. Even his neck stretches toward her back.

Every time we turn the page he has to re-calibrate this desk stretch, and after every page turn he does. It is so he can touch her. He maintains this quasi-casual contortion so that he can touch her. Just on the arm or elbow. She crosses her hand across her stomach and their fingers intertwine.

It was not the strange posture of him that clued me in, but rather the soft smile on her face. Like she was keeping a pleasant secret. Like she knew something special. Like she was something special.

For now I let them think they are being sneaky, just the two of them holding hands, a world where only they know. And me, and now you too.

Dear Donald Miller,

You asked me, yesterday, whether I wanted to be treated like a man, or whether I wanted to be treated like an equal. You want to know, you say, because the conversation is confusing.

If this is the way you have chosen to frame the conversation man vs. equal, then the conversation is going to get confusing. Because that dichotomy is confused.

I don’t want to be treated “like a man.” I don’t want to be treated “like an equal.” I want to be treated like a person, like a life, like someone who has been beautifully and wonderfully made by a God who had me, gender and all, specifically in mind. I do want to be treated like I am special, just like everyone else. No more, or less because of my gender. If you want a specific list, I give you the fruit of the spirit, with gentleness, with patience, with kindness.

I think what you are speaking to is the attitude that I too have noticed in the evangelical women of a certain age. I have noticed it because I am of that certain age, and the attitude exists within myself. You have noticed the tendency of women in the church (not all certainly, but some of us) to say we want to be treated like equals, but we don’t demand it, don’t yet act with the presumption that we are in fact equals.

I need you to understand something about many of the women sitting in your pews. They were raised in the same youth group you were. Even churches that had women as elders, denominations that allow women to preach, were recommending books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye singing the praises of Wild at Heart. Books that may have spoken a lot of truth to a lot of people, and I don’t mean to discount that, but books that told me in no uncertain terms that I was not the star of this show. The best I could hope for was the trusty assistant.

Not only was I told that I could not hold the reigns, I was also told that any man who loved me wouldn’t hand them to me. A true man of God would do the hard work of steering himself, if he really loved me, he would want to do it for me. It was the boys job to discern, to direct, to hear from God. It was the girls job to wait, patiently and trust that God and the boy knew what they were doing. In good time all these things would reveal themselves and all the girl had to do was say yes, and be whisked away.

I was told that more than anything the men in my life, my brothers in Christ needed RESPECT, and me taking over (even when I knew exactly what I was doing, and they not so much) or talking up too much was disrespectful and harmful to the growth of these men. I wanted very much for these men to know God. Even though God made me to be a first responder, to be a yeller in the wilderness, I learned to sit on one hand while covering my mouth with the other so that I would not interrupt this process between God and man. I did respect my brothers, I wanted them to grow.

Do you see how we could grow up and hoped to be petted, told that we are special and pretty? Do you see how easy it is to accept the part of trusty assistant when you have been told that your husband, or boyfriend will love you like God loves the church and that needs to be enough for you. If it isn’t enough for you, then you are rejecting God’s best. Do you see how even when you grow up, call yourself a feminist, and have two daughters of your own and reject much of what was taught to you, you would still be in the habit of waiting to be asked?

I imagine that you do see the soul as genderless like you say, you have never been limited as to what you can do based on your gender. I know that you personally don’t espouse those beliefs, but I need you to recognize the privilege of that position. You’ve never had to consider your gender as it relates to your God. No one has ever insisted it changes the game.

It is hard work to unlearn those lies. Even still in a small group that has always welcomed me, I worry they are sick of hearing me pipe up, in my marriage I wait for him to come reconcile the fight because that is his job, don’t tell him what I need because that is between him and God. Even when I don’t believe the thought behind it, the behavior lingers.

We need your help, instead of making us choose between our old ways and new ways, we need you to gently push us to a relationship with God, with you, beyond the old boundaries. If you see us crying equality in a corner while we simultaneously wait for someone to invite us to the journey, remind us that God already has. When we think all we are good for is being petted, call us out on our selling out, and when we don’t open doors for you, remind us that you sometimes need a hand too. It isn’t fair for you to have life all in your hands. It gets heavy sometimes.

Your Sister in Christ,

Abby Norman

If I want to be found I must loose myself, If I want to live I must die. And I have been trying, at least I think I have. Lately all I have been feeling is lost, parts of myself dying.

All who are weary are promised rest, but the only way I have been able to find it is to disappoint someone else. Even rest is exhausting.

Lately it feels like my value and worth are all wrapped up. What I can do has become what I am good for. I am worthy when I meet needs. I am lost and dying all right, all poured out. Poured out for my kids at home and kids at school, for my church, for my friends. It doesn’t feel good, like an emptying of myself. It just feels empty and hollow. Lonely.

I didn’t cry at church this Sunday, probably for the first time in two months. Mostly because I didn’t go. I cried at home instead. After I got the kiddos dressed and Christian loaded them in the car, I was too tired to sleep for a full forty-five minutes, laying in bed, wondering why I bother.

Last night I spent every favor I had, and an hour I had hoped to be sleeping burning through all my social capital before landing on the two women I always land on when my kids need watched and I am at work. I have nothing to give them in return, only the words that I deeply mean, I am very very grateful that you love sacrificially.

It seems I have have gotten what I can do and who I am all tangled together again. If I can’t, if I don’t know, if I am unable….I feel unworthy. That grace I have been trying to live all year, I have still not figured out how to dump it lavishly onto myself.

I wonder how many times I will write this blog post, the one where I am learning to give myself grace, the one where I declare that I am enough, the one where I say I am learning to find my worth in simply being and not being something for someone else.

Let’s hope this time it sticks.

There won’t be any Reese Cups given from our house this year for Halloween. It is hands down our favorite candy, and the Peanut at two distinguishes between chok-at and all other kinds of candy. She knows the good stuff. (The Rooster isn’t picky, she just grunts and chants eat-eat-eat, then switches to a raucous YEAH with hands literally above her head any time you put food on her tray.) But this year we aren’t buying Reese cups or any other candy made by Hershey or Nestle for that matter.

It started with the discovery of the blog Rage Against the Minivan a few weeks back. She wrote about Fair Trade chocolate and the reality that most of the cocoa harvested is done so by kids, kids younger than my students. I shrugged my shoulders. Is what I do really going to make a difference? Everything is tainted nothing is fair. Besides, I had a birthday party coming up where all I was going to serve were s’mores. Everyone knows that s’mores are to be made with Hershey’s chocolate. Duh.

Then, I was reading that book I can’t shut up about A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and there in the middle of the justice chapter is Rachel Held Evans and her husband taste testing fair trade chocolate, because they also could no longer ignore the information they had about labor practices and chocolate.

Still I was stubborn. Fair trade isn’t guaranteed to do anything anyway, I reasoned. There are lots of problems with it. (I know, I have spent countless hours in the speech and debate world hearing all about it.) If I can’t be sure that I am doing better, then why should I even bother? Plus, I didn’t want to.

I just didn’t want to. It was inconvenient, this information came onto my radar right before my birthday, right before Halloween and it interrupted my habits. Isn’t it someone else’s turn? I asked God. Surely I have enough on my plate right now. I am entirely too busy to be worried about any of this business. It is all I can do lately to make sure everyone is wearing clothes and getting fed.

I am overwhelmed all the changes that I know I should make as a consumer. I have Food Inc. and Forks over Knives on the Netflix queue, and have for quite some time. I know if I watch them I would probably be forced to change my eating habits and what I am feeding my kids. So I haven’t watched them. I’ve read about the problem of cheap, disposable clothing, and if I had the time would love to spend hours on end in thrift stores and flea markets looking for the pieces I want. But it is all I can do to get my kids in and out of Target with all of my hair in tact. I have cut down on the sale t-shirt habit and ask myself, do I really need that, but I know that isn’t really the solution. We own cloth diapers that I used faithfully with the Peanut, but cannot seem to get into the swing of it with the Rooster. I don’t recycle everything I could. I don’t even know how to compost.

It all seems so overwhelming. I don’t want to seem hypocritical. If I say something about Reese Cups shouldn’t I then go to only organic, fair trade, etc. etc. etc.?

I don’t know what the answer to all of that is, and maybe throwing this out there on the internet is asking for all the criticism I am already heaping upon myself. But I do know that God, for whatever reason, has put this on my heart. We wrestled this one out, God and I,  and this is where I stand. We switched to Cadbury and Ghiradelli for the s’mores and will be giving out non-chocolate candy to the kids that come by. (As soon as we run out of the left over chocolate bars from the party. That is right. This year we are the full-size-candy-bar house.)

I am not sure why right now, this is the call on my heart. It feels as though this decision doesn’t matter….even as it feels like it does matter. Is this what obedience feels like? What being faithful is like? Is this what it is to put one foot in front of the other with a hope that He can work my tiny sacrifice into something greater?

I don’t know….I just know that this Halloween I have traded in my Reese Cups for Mike and Ikes and even as I am sure it couldn’t matter less. I have a strong sense that it does matter….if only to my God.

It is my birthday! One more year and I am old enough to get a tattoo! (I told myself a long time ago that if I still wanted one when I was thirty I could get one, because surely I would be an adult by then.) Needless to say I am looking forward to this next year. I think in my heart of hearts I have been thirty since I was about fourteen and am hoping for a stronger sense of peace as the two numbers become the same one.

I started celebrating last night by going to the Alanis Morissette concert. It was everything 15-year-old Abby hoped for. We are having a party later tonight where I am only serving s’mores. Because it is my birthday and I want to!

I was planning on buying A Year of Biblical Womanhood for myself for my Birthday, but I received an advanced copy (that I reviewed here). So, I am hosting my first ever give away! Leave a comment telling me how you found this little slice of the internet and I will pick a comment and send you a copy of the book. I will pick someone on Monday. (that’s my mom’s birthday! Happy Birthday Mom!)

If you don’t win it, you should buy it.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I have a sign in the front of my classroom that I wish I could hang at the top of my Facebook page. It says “Be Kind.” It says it and I mean it. You don’t get to say unkind things in my classroom, even if it is funny, even if it is true, even if that other kid deserved it. If it is not kind it has no place in my room, not when I am responsible for the environment that is set.
I wouldn’t characterize this political season with the words “kind and gentle.” I have smart and well-informed friends, which leads to a Facebook feed full of smart (alecky) posts on either side of the fence. I grew up in and still attend an evangelical church so I get the conservative side, and I had college friends mainly from the liberal speech circuit, so I get the liberal side too.

Here is the deal: I respect both sides of the fence. I know most people don’t come to the decisions on who to vote for lightly, so I don’t think it is okay to call people idiots for not agreeing with you. In fact, I think it is mean, and rude, and a little unwelcoming. And I REALLY don’t think it is okay to question someone’s faith-based on what party they affiliate with.

There are days that I wish I could send the Peanut to the houses of multiple friends where she could stomp her foot and crease her eyebrows in her too grown way and shout (in her seriously loud voice….I wonder where she got that from..ahem) Hey! HEY! WE NO TALK LIKE THAT! Because some of y’all need a good old-fashioned scolding. And I probably do too.

I was given a glimpse of my heart today when I hear that the Boston Globe and Donald Trump have something to release about Romney and Obama respectively and I got excited at the thought that maybe it was news of an affair for the candidate that I hope loses. How gross is that? I got excited at the prospect of a family being publicly humiliated, at the grief of a marriage being on display. These men are people with wives and kids and in Romney’s case grandkids that love him. These are fellow children of God and in both cases, men who profess to be my brothers in Christ. And whether or not I like them, or agree with them, or vote for the, I do need to be rooting for their marriages and families.

My heart needs changed. I repent of this attitude. I want to love these men and their families. I want to identify with just how hard it must be to be the wife of a man running for president. I want the fruit of the spirit to be evident even if I am talking about someone who I don’t agree with.

I am joining the “Praying Backwards” movement and I want you to join me. I am voting for Barack Obama. So, every day from now through November 6th I will be praying for Mitt Romney. I am not proud of the things I have thought about him. I affirm that he is a person that Jesus died for. I recognize that God loves him desperately. I want to love him too.

I want to pray for one person specifically by name that is voting for Mitt Romney. (Family doesn’t count because I pray for y’all anyway. But thanks for reading my blog!) I think that we as Jesus lovers, have done a lot of damage to the body of Christ in the spirit of democracy. I want to mean it the next time I sing “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

I believe deeply, that in the days to come the unity of the body of Christ will be a sign post to the world that our Savior is a radical being, that His love transcends politics, theological differences, even opinions on gender. (I am working on it, I promise.) I think praying for each other is the best way to knit this body together.

Would you join me? I know not everyone is willing to post to the entirety of the internet which way they will cast their ballots (but based on your Facebook feeds, a significant amount of you don’t mind), so would you leave a comment, email (accidentaldevotional at gmail dot com or Facebook me, hit me up on twitter (accidentaldevo) in a public or private message. We are going to run this like your third grade pen pal club. I will give you the name of someone who is voting for the opposite candidate and give them your name. Then, every day you will pray for them as well as the candidate they are voting for.

I will be praying through this, which I swiped off of Ragamuffin Soul

1. Pray that our leaders would grown in Faith. In their relationships with Jesus Christ.
2. Pray for their marriages.
3. Pray for their children.
4. Pray for those around them.
5. Pray for their emotional and physical health.

I am excited to see the Lord work in my own heart as I pray for someone elses. I hope you join me we’ve got some peace making to do.

In no way is it okay to stump for your candidate in the comments. I respect that you have the right to do that, but not here. Not under this post. If you have to, harass me personally on Facebook.

I can’t separate the theoretical from the practical. I have tried, but I can’t. It is what makes me, me I think, like my double jointed fingers or my dark brown eyes, the way I laugh too loud in mildly inappropriate situations. It is the reason I role those eyes when both Presidential candidates yell into the microphones and the moderator interrupts to say “I think we can agree, we all love teachers.” That statement alone makes me want to yell at the screen (an embarrassment  avoided only because the kids were already asleep).

I don’t believe the lip service because I don’t see any evidence of it. No Child Left Behind is a piece of bi-partisan legislation that went flying through both house and senate to land on the Presidents desk and signed with a flourish and a camera flash. Even in 2001 the teachers were crying that it was a bad idea. That we were already doing everything we could to not leave children behind. We are teachers, that is what we do. The teachers and the advocates for the teachers tried to make the politicians understand the impending implications of the cleverly titled bill, and no one wanted to listen.

Teachers who were calling that this would not in fact do what the politicians wanted it to do, they were decried as lazy and uncooperative. These teachers, the ones crying into the wilderness were shut down and labeled “the problem.” Even now, when everyone agrees the bill is a disaster, no one has taken any steps to repeal it. So pardon me if I find it hard to stomach when the only thing either side has to say about education is that they  love teachers. Class sizes are up (I once taught a full year with a class of 42 kids. We couldn’t even physically cram enough desks in the room.) and pay is down, (I am told if I love the kids enough, it shouldn’t matter.) but hey, at least everyone loves us!

I am having the same problem in my church. I am not expecting everyone to agree on all things where the Bible is concerned. I know that there will always be differences in interpretation. But I don’t know how to not be mad when someone says that they think Dude A is right and Dude A is saying that only homes where the man makes more money is biblical, that the dad as the primary care giver is an abomination.

You can “theoretically” and “well, in your case” me all day long. But if you believe that Dude A is always right and Dude A says that about the home, then you think my home isn’t being run within the context of God’s will. It is what you said. It is how the theory is applied, and I don’t know how to not be offended by that. I don’t know how to be gracious about it.

I am tired of people shrugging their shoulders and telling me “it is in the Bible so we have to believe it” when as Rachel Held Evans points out in the book I was given to review A Year of Biblical Womenhood,

“I’ve…never heard a sermon on 1 Timothy 2:8 in which Paul tells Timothy, “I want men everywhere to lift up their hands when they pray, lifting holy hands without anger or disputing” that all men everywhere must raise their hands whenever they pray. But I’ve heard more than I can count on 1 Timothy 2:11 just three verses later which says, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission” that have included universal dictums that all women everywhere should submit to male authority in the church.”

I don’t know what to do with the information, with the inconsistencies, especially when they are presented with a shrug of the shoulders and a “Whelp, the Bible says it. ” When the Bible also says that women should cover their heads while praying in 1st Corinthians 11 (⁵ But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. ⁶ For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.)

It is the same theory to practice problem. I am told the theory is that the Bible needs to be taken literally  and cultural context is simply an excuse to not do as the Bible says. But no one has ever asked me to cover my hear when I pray.  After all, the Bible says that too, or what about the part about men greeting each other with a holy kiss? That part isn’t meant literally either?

The theory breaks down when the practice begins. The laws don’t work the way we were hoping. We say we love teachers but we don’t pay them well. We apply all of the bible literally except when we don’t. I don’t know how to not see that, and right now I can’t figure out how to be gracious about it.

I am not exactly sure how I stumbled across Mercy Mondays, but I did and I am glad. Frankly, it is some of the best writing I have come up with in the past few months.

I read through some of my posts and some of the other posts that people have written about mercy (this guy is pretty wise), and I was reminded again that mercy matters. God’s mercy to me and my mercy to others. It makes a difference.

If you couldn’t tell from Sundays post I am perpetually burnt out. You know it is bad when your mom suggests going to see somebody and your response is that there isn’t room in the schedule. Then you start crying about it.

With everything I’ve got going on with me, I sometimes wonder if the small acts of mercy I am able to employ matter. Sometimes it feels as though I am attempting to empty an overflowing bathtub with a spoon.

What is the point? I ask myself. Why do I even bother? Reading through the posts for Mercy Mondays reminds me that mercy still matters. It matters because it is a response to the mercy the Lord had on us first. It matters because a small act of mercy from me has the power to be a monumental act of mercy to someone else. It matters because there are a whole body of believers, some have teaspoons, some have ladels, who are all trying to empty the same tub. On my own it is impossible, as a group it might even be kind of fun.

Mercy matters because God calls me to it. Mercy matters because practicing it brings my heart just that much closer to His. Mercy matters because little in the hands of God is much.

Linked with Mercy Mondays. Thank you Jenn! It has been fun.

About a week ago I got an advanced copy of Rachel Held Evans new book A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I read pretty quickly but my life is pretty chaotic. I don’t exactly have “leisure reading” time in my schedule. I am happy to say that I finished it in 4 days, and it was able to keep me up at least a chapter at a time. This may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but considering most books lose me within the first paragraph (I am just that tired) it is pretty impressive.

I am a frequent reader of her online writing and I was excited start when I finally figured out the PDF was already in my inbox. (Sometimes, when you spend all day with freshman they wear off….)  Because of my familiarity with Rachel’s online work, I was familiar with the controversy this book sparked before it was even finished. (Lifeway isn’t carrying it. There is a lot of speculation about this. Everyone from Slate to Huffington Post has written about that. Lifeway has released no statement about it.) I
was pleasantly surprised to see just how un-controversial this book truly
is.

Evan’s spends a year looking at the rules and guidelines various
groups have set down specifically for women based on their interpretations of
the Bible. Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Amish, Mennonite, Jewish, Quaker,
Catholic, even polygamist. All traditions show up and are heard in this book.
The thing that struck me about her handling of these traditions, was the
consistent respect Evan’s showed for the traditions she was looking into. There
was a dignity and respect granted to every tradition. She trusts her readers to
sort out the truth for themselves.

While some have said this author does not take the Bible seriously, I found the opposite to be true. It is with an earnest sense of respect and love that Rachel Held Evans searches for the truth of what God wants for the lives of women. Her explanation of the female characters in the Bible were clearly thoroughly researched and historically grounded. Those passages are some of the best in the book.

Rachel Held Evans and I do not completely agree about what the Bible does and does not say. We differ in some of our interpretations, but the beauty of this book is that there is room for that. There is room for disagreement, there is room to pray through to your own conclusions.

I was deeply challenged by the grace she was able to give others, even as they tell her she is not living biblically. It is something that I am working on and plan to address in a series of posts about specifically how this book challenged my own faith. Suffice to say that the grace chapter hit me hard in the best of ways.

This book did for me what so many books about being a christian woman have failed to do. It reminded me that I am not broken, that it was with purpose that God designed a loud mouth like me for this time and place. It managed to honor all women for all gifts, and all places in life.