God-Made Woman

The entrance and unfolding of Your words give light; their unfolding gives understanding (discernment and comprehension) to the simple.

Psalm 119:130 AMPC

It feels like everywhere I look women are being championed to greatness.

Sure there’s all the usual anti-women junk but the pro-women stuff seems to be getting louder and louder with each passing day.

We’re in the era of self-made women.

And in the vast and treacherous sea of all the ways the world has found to make women less than ______, being a self-made woman sounds like a gloriously freeing reality. One that any woman would be insane not to aspire to.

Indeed, it would be the perfect ideal…if self made woman. But self didn’t make woman. Self doesn’t make woman.

God did. God still does.

God made woman.

God made women.

With all this self-made women rhetoric, I find myself constantly asking – what does it mean to be a God-made woman?

What does it mean for me as a woman…as a Christian woman…in this progressive age to find my identity in eternity-old divinity?

It only takes one degree of error on a compass to land you thousands of miles from where you were supposed to be.

It only takes one degree of error in the midst of ninety-nine degrees of truth to create a version of you that is nothing like who you’re supposed to be.

I have no qualms admitting that Christianity hasn’t always been the best home for women to find their place in life. Particularly when the version of Christianity in question is one that defines God, woman and their relationship through the warped lens of self.

I also have no qualms admitting that Christians – both men and women – have used the word of God against women – when it should have been used for God’s purpose for women.

Yes, there has been much wrong.

So. Much. Wrong.

Actually, the older I get, the more I accept just how little I truly know and understand about God, life and humanity. All the more, I never want to be so wise in my own sight that there is no room for the understanding that the Spirit of God brings.

So this is what I do know.

God loves me.

God loves women.

God wants His absolute best for each of us as women.

Just because the world…and the Church…and the Christians…haven’t always done such a great job taking care of us doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to do a perfect one in their place.

Best case scenario is that we get a reality that’s better.

Yet, having a good life and having a God life are nowhere near the same.

God’s best isn’t something that we can put in a set of templates that we find fitting based on our dreams and preferences. It’s infinitely far more precious than our ability as women to imagine and establish it.

I can’t settle for a self-created version of a good life knowing I can never outdo God’s love for me.

But I sure can embrace His love each day as His goodness and His mercy chase me down.  

I can put my hand in His and let Him lead the way to a life that is beyond my wildest dreams.

As I count all the ways I am blessed to be woman, and cherished as His.