I was told that being a woman meant that I was supposed to know my place and allow a man to protect me. I was to go second, a step behind him, into the adventure God was calling him to. My role was to submit, to support, and to follow. That didn’t work out so well.
my counselor casually mentioned how my family had been scapegoated in the missions community. After she said that I spent several weeks reading about scapegoating and trying to decide if she was right. I think she was,
I feel betrayed by his silence and apathy, or at least by what looks like silence and apathy to me. As my son said, “How am I supposed to trust anyone when they tell me they care about me after this?” How do I trust God’s love for me when it feels like God is less concerned with justice, truth, and kindness than I am?
None of us can be safe for everything. We have to choose what we will be safe for and what we will be unsafe for.
If God’s desire is that men lead unilaterally over women, yet over and over in Scripture there are situations in which women are in authority over men, God is incompetent… or else this is how God wants it to be.
… what would have happened to the Jewish victim after he recovered and returned home. Was he ever able to go to the temple again? Did he panic every time he saw a Levite? Was he bitter and angry with all priests because of the one Priest who had left him for dead?
While I sobbed my way through the process of unraveling, I can’t say that I ever ran from it or numbed the call to pay attention to it. I just knew that this was the only path that was worth taking.
(This is taken from a newsletter sent out a couple of years ago. Having had a number of conversations about my observations on spiritual warfare in Bali, I thought it would be helpful to make it public.) Recently a friend of ours, Adam, came to visit us. One day we arranged for a Hindu friend (Mr. T) who is a driver to take him around a particular area, and that evening ended up at Mr.T’s house enjoying traditional Balinese hospitality. At…
In a linear perspective, one “winter” is okay, but another is a crisis. But this isn’t the reality of nature or faith. We are seasonal beings, and every season contains both hope and hints of the coming change.
Sometimes people ask what it is like spending time in brothels with trafficking victims when I am powerless to do anything about it. This is it. It feels like a choice to love and a choice to give whatever I do have, even if it is only an offer to walk through the valley of the shadows alongside. I do it because the women and girls that I encounter are worthy of being loved. They are worth crying for when things do not turn out like I wanted.