“Be the woman who fixes another woman’s crown without telling the world it was crooked.”

Original Author Unknown

At the beginning of the month, we looked at the expectations we have of ourselves and of each other as women. There’s a critical role that any woman in a leadership capacity plays in this conversation.

In this regard, a leader isn’t limited to someone with a specific position or title that outrightly denotes leadership. It’s any woman with a level of power, authority and influence in our lives. This means our mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, female friends, etc all have a stake in the kind of women we are. Equally, so do we, in those whose lives we play similar roles.

Whether we like it or not, whether we sign up for it, or not, there will always be at least one woman whose view of womanhood is affected by our presence in their life. The younger they are, the more this holds true. Both young in chronological age and young in terms of spiritual maturity. We have to make conscious choices about who we are to them and how we are around them because that determines how positive or negative our influence is on them.   

As leaders, what expectation of womanhood have we created in the women around us through the way we handle them? The way we talk to them, the way we talk about them, the way we treat them, even our silence or inaction concerning them? 

What are our thoughts and feelings about the different women God has entrusted us to steward? Do we see them as God sees them? Because if we’re helping fashion them into women who are anything other than His ideal, then we have to consider we are the top of a ladder placed on the wrong building. 

Do we consider it an honour or a burden to lead women? Whatever title that leadership comes with.

These aren’t questions to quickly run through. They’re the kind you sit with for a while, every so often. 

Until we realize the power we carry as women through our presence in the lives of fellow women, we will find it downright impossible to fulfill our mandate to each other. Because we didn’t accidentally end up in each other’s lives. God has planted us next to one another with good reason. 

Who are the women God has placed around you?

Are you the woman God requires you to be to them and for them? 

May God help each of us find wholeness in our identity as women; for in our rest, we will help other women find their crowns and keep them on.