Happy Easter... It is Time.
going to battle as feminine warriors...
I originally posted most of this back in October and as I pray and dream about what is next for Finding Havens, it resurfaced in memory as a post that I needed to revisit and expand upon. As we move through this Octave of Easter and into Eastertide, I am feeling very strongly about our call to live as beloved daughters, and the necessity of doing this together, as women in community who are cheering, praying, guiding and loving each other through this life. Much more to come on that. But first, we armor up.
We are in a WAR.
This is not a war that we chose, per se, although we are saddled with it by way of our first mother, Eve. This is a war that is up close and personal, intense, and unrelenting. It will rage in our hearts, lives and homes for the rest of our time here on Earth. It will touch our own souls and our closest cherished loved ones.
Are you feeling encouraged yet? No? That’s okay. Stick with me here.
The Battle Plan
This war is being waged on us precisely because of our marvelous, nurturing, receptive, generative, and utterly beautiful feminine genius. Think about what we have to give as women, my friends. Think about the awesomeness that is our capacity to act with empathy, compassion, and vulnerability. Think about the fact that we alone, as women, are gifted with the ability to conceive in our wombs, nurture and grow, and give birth to new human life.
I have personally been privileged to do this seven times, and I will be honest, I still haven’t wrapped my head and heart around it. It is nothing short of an absolute, stunning, miraculous gift.
And this is where we get back to the war. We have an enemy that hates this with a burning passion. And this enemy notices our femininity in all its miraculous genius and he just can’t stand it.
So what to do? He isn’t creative, or generative, or compassionate like us. He can’t do anything to stop God’s brilliant plan for our lives as women. So he does what he does best: Lies. Twists. Contorts. He convinces us that our openness to this one beautiful life we’ve been given is a liability instead of a gift. He whispers that being open is dangerous, and hard, and scary.
He turns our vulnerability into weakness.
And so when life punches us in the gut, we close up. We start to believe the lie that it is better to clench our fists and hunch over and harden up and be on the defensive. We believe the lie that this posture is safer. We are protected. Or perhaps more accurately, we can protect ourselves.
The Ultimate Liar & The Ultimate Victor
Quite frankly, this is where we as women get it all wrong. We buy into the narrative that we don’t need God, or a man, or a society, or a culture, or a community or anyone or anything to help us. No, we are independent and we can do it on our own.
Do you see what has happened here, my friend? How this narrative shifts the beautiful feminine genius that is ours to claim from a posture of surrendered openness to one of cold isolation? Have you perhaps experienced this voice in your head, a steady drumbeat bombarding you with the notion that you must self-protect at all costs?
The problem here is that we are not made for isolation, or self-protection, or siloed independence.
We are made in the image of God as His beloved daughters to know Him and love Him, and most importantly, to be loved by Him.
Please lean in here, my dear sisters in Christ. This is so important. You were made first and foremost to be loved by God. Not to be a machine, or a workhorse, or a doormat, or a self-martyring doer-of-all-things-all-the-time. You were created by a Father who delighted in you from before you were born. He held you in His mind and He brought you forth into being at this particular moment in history because He is completely and totally in love with you. YOU, singular. There is no other creature in all the world like you. This is by design, not accident.
And your Father wants to you delight in His love for you, to receive it with openness and grace and joy. He wants you to know Him so intimately that you when you feel those gut punches hitting hard in life, you have the courage to stay open. You have the courage to say,
Come, Holy Spirit. Jesus I trust in You. Lord, unclench my fists.
He is Our Haven
Can we imagine the graces that would flow from this simple prayer, prayed honestly and with intention each day? The real beauty is that it absolutely crushes the enemy’s plan to keep us closed up, defensive and hardened. Giving God our trust, in my opinion, is one of the bravest things we can do. But oh, what He can do with that trust when we do surrender it.
We experience the knowledge that the end game is heaven, not earth. The goal is a life lived full and free and boldly as His beloved daughter here, leaning into Him when the storms hit, so that He becomes a haven of safety, shelter, respite and calm during the inevitable chaos of life.
You see, the secret sauce lies in knowing that His protection of us is far and away superior to any fist clenching or hunching over we can do on our own. In fact, His protection of us is a foretaste of heaven. Surrendering our doubts, fears, worry, anxiety and control to God lets him deeper and deeper into our hearts, which were made for being loved by Him. Every time we draw near to Him in the Eucharist, or kneel before him in Adoration, or gaze upon His belovedness in prayer, we are being transformed.
Easter Joy & Armoring Up
We are coming out of the Lenten season, where we fasted, prayed and gave alms. Perhaps some of us did this beautifully, and our days looked like morning mass followed by working at the food pantry and we were super diligent about giving up that Starbucks or chocolate or social media, and Easter arrived in all its glory with out hearts rended and wrung out and all ready for the JOY.
Or, perhaps our Lent was a bit messier. Maybe we intended to do all of the above, except that we didn’t. We may have faced personal or family trials and stresses that had us leaning in even harder to scrolling or coffee drinking or whatever is was that made it feel better for a minute. And maybe our Lent was about surrendering all that we intended to do and accepting our little teeny-tiny smallness, which needed to be folded into His big, awesome, mega-enormous GREATNESS.
Whatever it was, my friend, we can learn from it, and lean into the lessons, and move forward with joy. Joy is not a feeling that needs to exist in a perfect bubble of all-is-right-with-the-world. And praise Jesus for that, because all is not right with the world, and it won’t be this side of heaven.
But — and this is a big but — we have Jesus. And with Him we can feel the joy of the resurrection in every blessing and trial. He is with us. He is risen. Let your heart be open to be loved by Him.
And you know what else we have?
Each other.
Friends, neighbors, sisters in Christ, fellow women at the well.. and we are all thirsting for the same thing. We want community that builds us up, lifts our hearts when they are heavy, and listens to and prays for us in every joy and sorrow. We have each other, yet many of us are still so lonely. We don’t connect with each other, eyeballs to eyeballs, heart to heart… and that is what is on my heart in this season. I am excited to share some ideas about how to find your tribe, lean in, armor up, and do battle — in community, with JOYful hearts, praising the Lord who loves us so.
I hope you’ll join me.
