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There is no “one size fits all” pattern for God’s women.
People today are desperate for meaning. They long to know that it is possible to live a life that matters.
They said I would laugh about it later. (I haven’t.)
To be told when you are young and searching that “you can be anything” is not helpful. It’s too vast. It gives no direction. To be told when you are older that “you can do anything a man can do” isn’t helpful either. I didn’t want to be a man. What does it mean to be a woman?
An underlying, gut feeling of failing at who she is. I am not enough, and I am too much at the same time.
The result is shame, the universal companion of women. It haunts us, nipping at our heels, feeding on our deepest fear that we will end up abandoned and alone.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Prov. 4:23). Above all else. Why? Because God knows that our heart is core to who we are.
The desires that God has placed into our hearts are clues as to who we really are and the role that we are meant to play.
We think you’ll find that every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That’s what makes a woman come alive.
A woman is a warrior too. But she is meant to be a warrior in a uniquely feminine way. Sometime before the sorrows of life did their best to kill it in us, most young women wanted to be a part of something grand, something important. Before doubt and accusation take hold, most little girls sense that they have a vital role to play; they want to believe there is something in them that is needed and needed desperately.
She was no longer eighty—she was ageless.
God has set eternity in our hearts. The longing to be beautiful is set there as well.
And here is the important part: it’s not just the desire for an outward beauty, but more—a desire to be captivating in the depths of who you are. An external beauty without a depth of character is not true beauty at all.
We desire to possess a beauty that is worth pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be seen; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil.
that is a metaphor of this deeper longing, to fight for the Beauty. This is not to say that a woman is a “helpless creature” who can’t live her life without a man. I’m saying that men long to offer their strength on behalf of a woman.
“The whole, vast world was incomplete without me. Creation reached its finishing touch in me.”
While little boys are killing one another in mock battles on the playground, little girls are negotiating relationships.
Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships and the quality they deem those relationships to have. “I am a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Or I am alone.
This whole world was made for romance—the rivers and the glens, the meadows and beaches. Flowers, music, a kiss. But we have a way of forgetting all that, losing ourselves in work and worry.
“You cannot simply have me. You must seek me, pursue me. I won’t let you in unless I know you love me.”
Convinced that in order to have the best possible life, she must take matters into her own hands.
We have never considered that by living a controlling and domineering life, we are really refusing to trust our God.
Every day is too often for a mother to call her adult son who has left home.
but the reason there are so many struggling women is because there were so many wounded girls.
