A Woman in a Woman's World

Yesterday I had, well, let's call it an interesting experience. You know how you can be going through life, facing forward, living in the present, dealing, coping, stretching, learning. Doing the little advances that successful day-to-day life is all about. Then suddenly something comes along that has you stopping and looking back, looking far around you at places you once traveled through. Small thickets of confusion that are familiar in a distant way. That's what I did yesterday.

But it wasn't just in my memory. It was a concrete thing in front of me, invading my present. 

My parish is running a women's Bible study this fall. 

Now here's the funny thing. Maybe a year ago I visited a parish across the river for confession, and I saw that it was offering the same women's Bible study. I shared it on my Facebook page, being ever the promoter of things. I'm all for it, in theory, and I think I even momentarily looked into what it would take to offer it in my town. 

And I was asked to take a leadership role, similar to what I had done in our parish ChristLife, which satisfied my inclusion needs (aka ego. I was sought out. Thank you.). But ultimately I passed on it. Because to be honest, just the idea of being part of a women's Bible study sends me into the small thickets of confusion.

And I spent a chunk of yesterday spinning this around in my mind and checking out some interesting emotions that it conjured. 

It is intended not only as a Bible study but also as a community building thing. And this is where I needed to admit to myself what, for me, makes for community building. That would be work. That's why I liked the feeling of being offered the logistics and communication job. I even asked if I could do that part without actually going to the Bible study, but no, that wasn't the vision. That's ok. 

Shared work is probably my primary "love language" if you buy that expression. This is something I like about choirs and music; it requires that everyone work together. This is why I tend to take on huge tasks with a lot of excitement -- like the year our Bishop gifted our parish (and every parish) with hundreds of copies of one of Matthew Kelley's books, and my daughter and I gift wrapped every single one. I questioned the size of that undertaking, but my (then 8 or so year old) daughter proclaimed it "a labor of love," and so there was no turning back for me then. When parishes were reopened after our short COVID shutdown, I was asked to buy some rope from Lowes to make the required social distancing thingies look somewhat dignified. Oh no. My daughter and I braided ropes out of white tshirts and figured out a way to keep them firmly on the pews but also made them easily adjustable. That felt so good to be able to do that, whatever your thoughts on social distancing. 

Yeah, so what I don't find a helpful way to give myself is to sit in a group of women chatting about how Scripture impacts my day-to-day life, or study guide questions. Spiritual direction; yes. Theological discussion; yes. Lexical study, historical study; yes, yes. Pretty tablecloths, conversations where words fly fast and emotions fly faster, or women connect emotions to sensible things in attempts to "feel comfortable sharing..." I don't even know how to do that. And generally it makes me feel the opposite of community-built. I tend to sit there with my mouth shut, trying to track (or tuning out, depending on how my day has gone) and mostly feeling a thousand miles away. These days, my thoughts just dash to other things I could be doing. In the past, I sat there wondering why I did not know how to be a woman. Because I figured A Woman's World was what I was looking at.

Yes, yesterday I felt again that jab of feeling like an unwomanly woman. Like maybe I should try harder. Like maybe I was being weak or selfish or inadequate or unholy or rebellious or (insert more) for not wanting to participate. Like I really should. I thought of, and even played, that song by Wendy Talbot from the 80s "Woman of the Word" where she asked questions popular of the day about what women "should" do. It dawns on me now: we think the question "What is a woman?" is newly controversial. (Some) Christians have been making it difficult to answer that question, on a non-biological level, for decades.

In the midst of questioning myself yesterday, I found it extremely difficult to do the work that was actually in front of me. Suddenly I wasn't sure I could do anything.

If you diligently read this blog (😂) you'll realize I've been sinking deeply into the Seven Sorrows rosary in the last few months. After all these years as a Catholic, I am *just starting to sink deeper into understanding the Blessed Virgin Mary as woman par excellence. And as I've been meditating on her sorrows, I realize she has a lot of strength, born of emotional and spiritual pain. She probably did enjoy beautiful objects and she probably did chat with women friends. But there was only one Blessed Mother. In a common way, there is also only one of each of us. I have never been given to conformity, but I haven't always been at peace with being myself, either. It has struck me with terror; it has confused me. But humility says, I am who God made me, no more, no less. I will be me, because it is God's will for me.

This morning, as happens to me occasionally after a day on mental frappe setting, I woke with everything clear in my mind. Following the Lord is not a path full of should. Or as one priest once quipped, "Stop should-ing all over me." One must not should oneself, either. Jesus says, "Follow me and live." He commands, he invites, he speaks to us about reality, but he doesn't guilt us into things, so we need to refrain from responding to that kind of motivation. Ok, I need to stop it. Respecting freedom is super important, and it is grossly counter-productive to Christian life to not respect freedom.

I'm not guilty of being me; I'm responsible to be me, and to learn how to do it well. I need people in my life in order for me to be me well, but I also need space from people, and I can't expect that anyone is going to understand what I need unless I understand my own needs and make them known as necessary. I'm actually responsible to God to invest well the raw material of myself He's given me to work with, to try to gain a return. 

See -- it all boils down to shared work! 😉

*Everything in the spiritual life is always just beginning.