(A)Typical Woman Quotes

“The world is in need of us. It needs women who understand the privilege and glory of being a woman. It needs women who are at peace in the body God has given the, at peace with paradoxical strengths and weaknesses, who don't demean what they were created as or, by extension, the Creator. What a story God is telling!”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“What makes real men and women is the fact that God made us men and women, just as what makes us real Christians is that God made us Christians by making us alive in Christ. In both cases, we don’t earn it or achieve it or feel our way to it. Being a Christian and being a woman are both gracious, given, God-spoken, unchangeable realities”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“The biggest problem with women and submission is too much of it in the wrong places. We willingly submit to the world’s rules.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“We are Christian women, which means we are marked by our submission and our freedom, both in what we say yes to and what we refuse.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“Women, we harm ourselves when we use the Bible as a how-to book on being a woman only rather than look to it to see our God and Savior, who teaches us all things.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“How do we become mature in Christ? Maturity is a path through suffering with Christ. As much as we wish to spare ourselves and our loved ones pain, dear sisters, we dare not rob them of God’s blessing, that is, the realization that he is the true light “when all other lights go out.”34 God’s blessing is himself. Suffering is the terms of discovering our dependence and need and the abundance of Christ’s presence. Affliction is the way we learn that nothing can separate us from his love. In Christ, love is the theme, the heartbeat, the melody, and the storyline of suffering. Affliction makes this love song sing out all the louder as the noise and pain of the world try in vain to muffle it.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“Rather than believing that supper is a success because we avoided all the ingredients on “The Food That Must Not Be Eaten” list, we could view supper as glorifying to God because we served it in a manner worthy of the Lord, which is to say, with love.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“But perhaps the greatest gift God gives us when our circumstances won’t stop changing is that he reminds us that we are tucked away in the unchangeable Christ, who is the true constant, outlasting even change.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“If we’re Christian women, there are right and wrong answers to those questions. If we refuse to do what God has asked of us, we rob fellow Christian men and women of needed mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and daughters in the family of God.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“This is the beauty of the new commission—it doesn’t need fertile bodies to spread the good news. Shockingly, cracked and broken jars carry it better than shiny ones.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“Sometimes the glory God gets from our lack far exceeds what he gets from our fullness. Empty wombs and broken bodies point to greater realities—not despite the sorrow that comes with them, but with the sorrow as the pointer.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“Let’s not relegate womanhood to the edges of life and use the fact of our humanness to try to rise above it. Rather, let’s reclaim and enjoy what we are and all that flows from it in Christ: holiness, meekness, a backbone of steel, fearlessness, love, giving life, strength, weakness, obedience, and much more. All of this comes from what we are: Christian women.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ

“A glass chandelier is exquisite in its fragility. We could replace it with a wood frame, sturdy and functional, which would have a certain virtue to it, but it would lose all the things that make it what it is: the light that twinkles off the multi-faceted glass or even the refinement that underscores a necessary sort of civilization. It would be a mistake to deem a chandelier worthless because it’s fragile. That misses the point. Fragility isn’t a defect; it may, in fact, be the defining worth of a thing.”
― Abigail Dodds, (A)Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ