Legacy

“If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”

-Matthew Arnold, Nineteenth-century British Poet and Philosopher

It is clear that there is a war on women taking place. When war is declared on a country or group of people, it is because they are, or at least perceived to be, a threat. Who are we a threat to... and why? 

The Eastern world is seeing the attack on women in a different way than we do in the West. It shows up in different ways depending on the region. China has the one child rule and is gradually coming to realize that they have aborted generations of wives and mothers. Where will the next few generations come from? We see gendercide taking place in India as well, young child brides in the Middle East, female mutilation in Africa and women being sold into sex slavery all over the world. 

The attacks we see on women in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world are bit different in nature, but no less heartbreaking. The number of young women with eating disorders and self condemnation that turns into behavior like self-cutting has skyrocketed in the last decade. The standard of unattainable physical beauty set before women has  led to confusion, hopelessness and a desperation to reach the standard, no matter the cost. The message that our worth as women is related to our sexual prowess continues to spread in Hollywood and through mass media through commercials, movies, TV Shows and music videos. No wonder women are confused...

When I lived in New York City I attended a multiple different secular conferences and charity events to raise support and awareness for the daunting challenges women are up against. It was powerful and encouraging to see men and women taking up different causes and sharing stories of educating women, with the hopes of creating lasting solutions. It’s hard to not feel hopeless facing the seeming odds in many of these struggles for Human Rights and freedom for women, without understanding who the enemy is and what his strategy is. The answers are spiritual in nature. The War on Women is all over the world and the goal is clearly to destroy us. Who is to blame? Who are we really fighting against? Hollywood? Marketing Executives? The Taliban? The Red Army? To understand this epic battle, lets go back to the very beginning of history. The very beginning.

The first couple pages of the Bible give us interesting background. God, the original creative designer and artist, spoke into being a magnificent world and put a ton of cool stuff in it. Trees, oceans, mountains, birds, sea creatures, suns, stars, galaxies and animals of every kind of variety. As awesome as animals are, they were not created in the image of God. In the creation account only Adam and Eve were created in his beautiful, intelligent and creative image. Genesis 1:26-27 The woman named Eve, which means “Life-giving” or “Mother of all who have life” is created as a solution to the first problem. The man is alone. He needed a partner. The crowning moment of all creation was the cameo of the woman. God decided to make this man and this women, together as a team, responsible for looking after all he had made and they began that journey in perfect and unbroken fellowship with God and nature in Paradise.   

Eve, is the only woman in all of history who never knew the meaning of misunderstanding, guilt, shame, envy, bitterness, estrangement, embarrassment and grief, until she listened to her enemy and began to doubt God. This led to the first sin of distrust and then disobedience. Spiritual death happened from the inside out as we read in Genesis 2:15-25,3. Ann Spangler describes it this way: “Suddenly, darkness rushed on Eden. It came, not from the outside but from the inside, filling their souls with shadows and cravings. Order gave way to disorder, harmony to discord, trust to fear.” There is so much more insight to this story regarding mankind, but I just want to focus on the woman right now.

Chaos and disorder always produces consequences. With Eve’s initiation and influence over Adam to join her, they together rebelled against God and disregarded God’s instruction to not eat the fruit of this one tree in Eden. Now....

Genesis 3:14-15

So the Lord God said to the serpent:

“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

The physical beauty meant to be endless begins to deteriorate. Spangler, in her book “Women of the Bible”, creates visual imagery and describes Eve during the birth of her third son, Seth (after her first son Cain, became a murderer and the younger son Abel, the victim): “Her skin, damaged by sun and age, now stretches like worn canvas across her limbs. Her hands are restless spiders, clawing the hard ground beneath her, grasping for something to ease her pain. She can feel the child inside, filling her, his body pressing for a  way of escape. The cries of mother and child meet with streams converging. Seth is born. With her child cradled against her breast, relief begins to spread across Eve’s face. As she rests, a smile forms, and then, finally, laughter rushes from her lips. Try as she might, she can’t stifle her joy. For she remembers...the promise God gave: sooner or later, despite many griefs, her seed would crush the serpent. The woman would win.”

There it is. This is the beginning of the story and the end of the story.... The solution is going to come through the woman. Her offspring would be the long awaited answer that would eventually bring the fatal blow to the serpent’s head. However, we find ourselves on earth now somewhere in the middle of this unfolding story.

In the dark days we exist in, we must reject doubt of God, but instead adopt trust like Job did in times of great sorrow and loss. 

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27)

Well, if I have an enemy that is terrified of myself and other women, then that must mean we have power we don’t yet recognize and a part to play in a bigger story. 

The Blue Dress

“From cover to cover [of the Bible], from beginning to end, the cry of God’s heart is, “Why won’t you choose me?” It is amazing to me how humble, how vulnerable God is on this point.” -John Eldredge

“We need not fear that in seeking God only we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many for the One.” -A.W. Tozer 

The dress arrived in a round package. It looked familiar, but I hadn’t seen it in over a year. There was something strangely comforting about the blue polyester material of this vintage dress with the feminine bow detail around the neckline...  As I held the dress I couldn’t ignore the memories from rushing back. It brought me back to that sunny, summer day in New York City... 

I was sitting in the middle of Central Park on a rock sobbing under my oversized sunglasses and sipping on some Au Bon Pain dark roast, when I got a call. “Trin, are you ok love? Come to New Jersey with me and my friend who’s in town. It’ll be good for you to get out.”

I wish I could say I woke up that morning, but that means you would’ve had to be asleep first. The night before ended with a phone call where my current relationship unexpectedly came to an end. I had done my best. I had prayed, I loved hard, I made sacrifices, I was available, I made excuses for his lack of effort, fought hard to make it work and affirm him as a man in every way I knew how. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough and was undeniably one-sided. The time of making excuses and living in denial were over. The reality hit me like a ton of bricks, but it was definitely over. 3 1/2 years of on again off again had ended. I cried most of the night and texted my roommate in the morning to tell her the news. She was out of town for work in Miami and texted our other girlfriends for reinforcements. 

I went with them even though I didn’t feel like it, knowing it was best. I’m so glad I did. We fought the traffic in Lincoln Tunnel, got lunch and ate it on the coast in Jersey and decided to hit up a Goodwill before heading back to the city. I don’t know who spotted it first, but we discovered the cutest blue dress on the sale rack for just a couple dollars! We both tried it on and loved it! The only problem was that it had a dark stain on the front. We decided that it was worth it to get it and see if we could get the stain out, so we did. My precious friend bought it and promised to pass it on to me if it worked out. She messaged me a couple weeks later she had gotten it cleaned and was loving it. 

Now over a year later, true to her word, I have it in my hands and it’s my turn to wear it, twirl around and enjoy the beauty of being a lady in a dress! To be loved deeply is to feel beautiful. It doesn’t matter what you look like, how much you weigh, where you live or how much money you have. When you are rejected and feel discarded and “stained” it’s painful and, unfortunately, no woman can rush the healing process. The dress reminded me of the journey and the healing I have experienced since that day. Even though I have a good man in my life now who loves me deeply, I am reminded of the hope that I have had along this journey of womanhood. The hope that came to me from the incomparable love of Jesus. It was the existence and purposes of this man Jesus that gave me hope for my future, no matter I would face in the days ahead. He fought for me, he suffered and sacrificed just to have a relationship with me. He did the same for you. You are not rejected or forgotten by God. No matter what has happened in your life. Immerse yourself in this truth today: "I'm chosen. I've been fought for. I'm passionately pursued, not for my body, but for my heart."

More than a year ago, that same dress lay discarded in a Goodwill in New Jersey and I lay discarded in my Upper West Side apartment. The beautiful truth that has been so liberating for me recently is that God longs for us to love him. Not only are we not rejected by him, but he searches for us and his eyes roam the earth for those of us that have our hearts set on him. He WANTS to show himself strong for us. He is so vulnerable and humble as he fights for us, waits for us and deeply desires to not only restore us, but to be quickly found by him when we search for him. He isn’t distant and uninvolved. He is a lover that waits to romance us. He will never force us to love him, but O, how deeply he waits and longs for us to choose him! The heart of a woman is for relationship and that does not make a woman weak, quite the opposite. It is the very heart of God and woman was created in his image, so it makes perfect sense that he placed that identity of relationship within us. 

"But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! ” . . . declares the LORD. (Isa. 49:14–15, 18)
(A promise of the Lord for the nation of Israel, spoke by the Prophet Isaiah and a beautiful principle that we can embrace as children adopted into the family of God.)

Eldredge, John; Eldredge, Stasi (2007-07-10). Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul (Kindle Locations 468-469). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.