and all god's people say. . .

Brothers and sisters,
we are all made in the image of god
and all god's people say
amen
the Husband is the head of His house
and all god's people say
amen
wives (separate but equal) unto the Husband
and all god's people say
amen
woman (unspoken, broken) silenced in the church
and all god's people say
amen

Brothers and Brothers
we are all made in the image of god
and all god's people say
amen
give unto the poor (except for the dirty drunks with drugs)
and all god's people say
amen
all lives matter (except for the thugs)
and all god's people say
amen
jesus loves you (as long as you are us)
and all god's people say
amen

we are all made in the image of Man
and all god's people say
amen

you say

you say get over it

I hear your pain makes me uncomfortable

you say don’t gossip

I hear your experiences are not important

you say we need to keep the peace

I hear our reputation is more important than the truth

you say you are being rude

I hear i don’t care that you are crying out

you say i don’t want to take sides

I hear i believe his manipulation

you say he had a bad day

I hear you threatened his position of power

you say he is a man of god

I hear you are wicked for questioning him
you say i'm saying this out of love

I hear my love is conditional

Do You Think I'm a Misogynist?

You asked me this question, repeatedly. My hands were shaking. I had never seen you so angry. In fact, before that Wednesday night, I didn't know you could get angry. I was caught off-guard. I was coming to you as a member of your church, a member who felt marginalized, a member who was worried about her church. I kept saying, "No, of course not," but you kept asking. Again. And again. My response has since changed. I know you will never read this, but while the rest of the church keeps your pedestal waxed and shined, despite the fact that you abandoned your flock, I need to release the answer that has been burning within me for two months. 

A year ago, I called out a Facebook post you published which implied that the only reason there was a scandal with the Duggars was because "the liberal media" was out to get Christians. I vehemently opposed the idea that the predator who preyed on the innocent was a victim of media distortion. I was called names, and my Christianity was questioned because I dared to disagree with the pastor. You brushed aside the abuse of children. You allowed other professing Christians on your Facebook to denigrate me because I would not allow the innocent to be used as props. 

Before that time, I recently found out, my mother, the foremost Biblical scholar in your congregation, sought you out after church to ask you a question about the message. She was analyzing potential symbolism of Jacob's wives. Not only did you not answer her question, you dismissed her as an annoyance, saying she was, "always asking questions." Now, I have some questions for you: Are you intimidated by my mother? By the sweet woman who is always in the nursery, changing diapers, singing songs, and loving the most vulnerable? What if my father had come to you with questions about your sermon? Would you have reacted the same way? I think we know the answer to that.

That summer, those who attended family camp came back full of fire. My Facebook was overrun with posts from young women declaring that the highest calling of a woman was to be a stay-at-home mom. I saw more pictures of that stupid umbrella hierarchy than I ever wish to see. This was the summer I became filled with a righteous anger about how other Christians were excusing and dismissing the abuse done by Josh Duggar. I even wrote a blog post entitled "The Danger of Defending the Duggars." I began doing some internet research, finding article after article about churches covering up abuse. I found examples of this in my own life, regarding people I care about. I posted these as a wake-up call for all Christians! We are to protect the weak! People come before buildings and organizations. A church member texted my husband about how he needs to reign in his wife, that I was attacking the church. No! I wanted to cleanse the church. You took on the mantle of peacemaker, and I fell for it. While you urgently assured me that the method of message was wrong, I didn't notice until a year later that you stood by his message.

Flash-forward about a year later. Our relationship was strained. You kept referring to me as "The Feminist," and you included feminism as an evil (which I have yet to find that verse in the Bible) in several sermons. I felt like I had been systematically ostracized from the church. I offered to help, and you and others pushed my offer aside. It happened again and again and again. At first I thought it was just you and the control-your-woman man (plus his wife) who had an issue with me (though neither of you ever said anything directly to me), but then I noticed that others in the church began keeping me at a distance. Those I had considered friends left me in the cold. I even felt it from my family members in the church. You participated in shunning me. Since you were the demigod of the church, the others followed you, blinded by loyalty.

I had (have) issues with how women were treated in the church. Females: kitchen or childcare. Males: preaching, music leading, prayer leading, offering collecting, handout passing, etc. Men are visible. Women are invisible. What bothered me the most was how women could not lead prayer. No women prayed aloud in front of adult men, yet male children were often asked to lead prayer in church. Our voices were silenced. We were not considered holy enough to lift our voices in prayer to the Savior who died for men and women. I studied this issue. I compiled Bible verses, looked up words in the original Greek, and came to you. I was so nervous. I told you that I thought the church was following tradition rather than scripture. I provided proof for my belief that women should pray aloud. You stopped me before my shaky voice could finish reading off the outline I had written. You then asked, again and again, "Do you think I'm a misogynist?" Your voice raised; your eyes flashed indignation. I stutter a reply, but you cut me off before I could say more. You growled that my feminism is clouding my Christianity (once again, using feminism as the "f-word"). You calmed down enough to tell me a story with a moral of: You shouldn't demand privilege. For a woman to lead prayer is a privilege in your eyes. A privilege denied by her gender and only her gender. You used your position of privilege as a man and as a pastor with unchecked power to dismiss, discredit, and dishearten a member of your flock.

My husband and I decided to quietly leave the church. I told you that I wouldn't gossip and cause drama, and I kept that promise. From what I gathered, you did not hold yourself to the same standards I did. A few weeks after we had been gone, you left Sunday School to seek out my mother in the nursery. My mother had been dealing with family emergencies all month and was physically and emotionally drained, and you thought she had snubbed you by not saying, "hi," that morning. You confronted her in a position of vulnerability: the nursery. You angrily proclaimed that you had standards and would not conform. She had no idea what you were talking about. You used your position of power in an attempt to intimidate and humiliate her. Would you have said this if her husband, the Sunday School teacher, was with her? No. You made sure of that. There were two also in the nursery who stood by silently. These women continue to proclaim that you are a "man of God." Your sin of spiritual abuse darkens their hands as well. 

Let's review: you dismissed abuse against females and instead implied that the abuser is a victim. You demeaned women for asking questions in a way you would never with a man. You allowed and implicitly encouraged the shunning of a church member who spoke out against injustice. You engaged in the spiritual abuse of a female church member because she was "[demanding]" the "privilege" of praying aloud in church. You hunted down a woman in your church in order to publicly shame her for no reason beyond her relation to me and because she didn't wave to you.

The definition of misogyny is: "dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women." The evidence is in. You are a misogynist.

The Colors of Grief

The first color of grief is gray, that feeling of neither sadness nor joy. It's like all color has been sucked out of your life. You walk on a plain of apathy. You know you are missing something from your life, but for the moment, you refuse to think about it. You are nothing surrounded by nothing. Years later, I still find myself, at times, stranded in a gray valley. It's difficult to leave. It's safe. It's familiar. This is a protective color.

Next is blue, an overwhelming, suffocating blue. It fills your lungs and stings your eyes. It's a tsunami of pain that washes over you and violently tosses you to and fro. You search for any life rafts in the form of friends and family. I was never given a life raft; I had to learn to dive into the crests and keep my head about water. No one heard my cries for help, so I stopped crying. Even now, if I saw a bobbing yellow speck on the horizon, I would swim the other way. 

Gold is the gilded mask you wear, beautiful and perfect. "How well-adjusted she is!" "You are so strong!" No one sees the face under the facade of strength, of flippancy, of humility. Your vulnerability is protected. You keep everyone at a distance, for their protection and yours. I grow weary of the decorated deception, but it has grafted to my face. To remove it would tear my flesh and leave me exposed.

Green creeps through, wrapping serpentine arms around you, pulling you in deeper and deeper. Jealousy bitterly entangles your thoughts, twisting them into a dense unrecognizable jungle. Why was she allowed to die, but I have to live? Why can others express their grief, but I have to conceal mine? Green is insidious. It slowly grows, taking root in your soul. You cannot weed out green without killing part of yourself. 

Red is a two-edged sword. It is love that cuts deeper than indifference, sorrow, self-protection, jealously, and bitterness. It leaves you bleeding. It is rage that cauterizes yet never heals. Red burns through you in equal parts passion and anger. Both feed and fight each other. Because I love, I have rage. Because I rage, my love is abused, left bruised and broken, hidden away. 

Rigid Gender Roles Hurt Men

Even if I feel strongly about an issue, I try to read and understand other perspectives. I think it is important to be able to see an issue from multiple sides because it helps me to empathize with those who think differently than I do. 

I am an unapologetic feminist. My extremity varies as I am constantly challenging my beliefs on how feminism fits in with Christianity, with logic, and with my world view. As I have studied the Bible, the more I am convinced that Jesus is a feminist and Paul was a leader in early Christian feminism. 

In studying the other side, the one that throws around terms like "Biblical gender roles," "complementarianism," and the like, I find that their views on gender roles do not just harm women; they also harm men. 

For example, my husband is a tremendously loving and involved father to our son. I am so blessed that my son has a great role model in his father. There are times when it is incredibly inconvenient that many men's restrooms do not have changing tables. Sometimes, he is with the kid at a restaurant without me; sometimes, it's just his turn to change diapers. When that happens, he has to go out to the car, or give me the kid to change because, of course, the women's restroom will have a changing table. 

While we are a happily married couple who can work through issues like lack of changing tables, what about single-fathers? Do they not count as parents?

Recently, our kid had to be picked up from daycare because he was running a fever. It's much more convenient for my husband to get our son because he works 5 minutes from the daycare while I work in another town. Also, I'm a teacher, so leaving work means making emergency sub plans and hoping the students do something productive. My husband told his bosses that the kid is sick, and if I couldn't get a sub, he would need to pick him up. His bosses made insinuations that caring for a sick kid was the wife's job. I couldn't make it in time to get the kid and make it to the doctor (it was a really high fever), so he picked the kid up. He got hell at work for leaving a few hours early. A female at the business stated she did not have any issues leaving work for sick kids. Why is it different for a male? Why is caring and comforting a sick child a woman's job?

By enforcing, consciously or subconsciously, strict gender roles, families are left struggling to fit an impossible mold. Men are pressured to be sole breadwinners in an economy which demands dual-incomes. Fathers are pressured to be fathers at an arms length because "women's work". Instead of focusing on people's strengths and following common sense, females and males are restricted into someone else's (unbiblical) ideas of what females and males should be.

Keeping Abreast of the Situation

Lately, my Facebook page has been flooded with opinions on public breastfeeding with people (usually those who haven't or won't breastfeed) weighing in on every side of the issue. My son is two years old, and I pretty much breastfed him anywhere/everywhere: stores, parks, movie theaters, etc. I rarely used a cover because 1) he was, and still is, the squirmiest wiggle worm; 2) a blanket over your shoulder draws more attention; 3) I didn't like trying to balance a blanket or making sure I always had one with me. I also rarely excused myself from situations to feed him elsewhere because 1) I refuse to nurse in a bathroom stall; 2) Texas summers are unbearable and I don't want to run the A/C while being banished to a car; 3) I don't want to miss out on anything.

Despite being confident about my choices regarding how/when I fed my kid, the comments and implications from the other side do hurt.

When I was fourteen, my breasts were severely burned with battery acid. The scars and trauma from the accident caused extreme anxiety attacks. Sometimes just leaving the house was (and sometimes still is) a struggle. I felt (feel) like my body betrayed (betrays) me because of the scar tissue and the motor skill problems from a TBI. When other people, usually generally good people, talk about public breastfeeding in a manner meant to shame women for their breasts, those old feelings of crippling anxiety arise.

For me, just being physically able to breastfeed is a miracle. The skin grafts, amazingly, do not cover any milk ducts. This vessel of mine which had been shattered and super-glued back together provided nourishment for my child. I genuinely feel sorry for people who would rather be rude to me or compare me to a slut or call me an exhibitionist for not shamefully hiding myself than to celebrate with me this miracle.

It was only a few years ago that I embraced this imperfect body. When I fed my son in public, it wasn't about you. It was about my son. It was about me accepting my body and claiming my victory over anxiety. I refuse to return to the years where I hid in fear and shame. I refuse to be revictimized by you.

Interpreting Modesty Culture as a Burn Survivor

Interpreting Modesty Culture as a Burn Survivor

I grew up in a very conservative environment: independent, fundamental Baptist churches (and don’t you forget it!), Christian schools, church camps, and mission trips. As a young female desperately trying to be a good Christian girl, I could spout modesty rules and truths that had been ingrained from attending summer camps in sweltering Louisiana where culottes were the fashion, from mission trips where denim skirts were next to godliness, and from watching modelesque girls in cardigans being lifted up as paradigms of morality. I knew that girls (we were never called women, always girls or young ladies) had to cover the three Bs (boobs, bellies, and butts) because men (always men, never boys) could not help themselves. They would lust, and it would be our faults. I did not want to be a licked cupcake or a chewed piece of gum, so I strove to cover, cover, cover because I did not want to cheat my future husband by having another lust after me. After all, if a male found me attractive, it was that same as if I had slept with him. These were the lessons I was taught from childhood before I could understand what lust and sex were.

The summer before high school on my way to attend a Christian camp, I was in a tragic accident. Four innocent teens died, and I was left severely injured. Battery acid burns covered my left hand, chest, and stomach. Fast forward a few months, I’m mostly healed (physically, at least), but my breasts are badly scarred. If I wear a shirt which fits the definition of modesty: no cleavage, my scars may still be visible. People will stare because that is what people do: they stare at deformities. It didn’t help that I’ve had C-cups since middle school. I was taught that it was sinful for me to have people, especially those with a penis, stare at my breasts. Now, I cannot escape it.

I felt ugly because of my scars. I mastered layering clothes in order to hide my scars. I would cover my left hand in a jacket or hiding it behind my back. In the middle of high school, I had an epiphany. If I was so ugly and scarred, I did not have to worry about being modest. Since modesty is based on a how a man finds a girl attractive (note the use of “man” and “girl”), I was in the clear because no man would find me attractive.

This went beyond just my scars. In American culture, breasts are highly sexualized. For many people, breasts serve only to titillate men. (As someone who breastfeed a child, breasts are not purely sexual. There is not nothing sexy about engorgement and sore, bleeding nipples.) As a female, I was supposed to find my sexiness in my curves (then, hide the sexiness because, you know, men can’t help themselves). With my scarred breasts, I just knew that no man would ever find me attractive. I didn’t have to worry about being lusted after (because lust and finding someone attractive are the same thing, right, conservative Christians?) I was shamed for having breasts and shamed again for having scarred breasts. This led to a rebellion of wearing cleavage-happy shirts. I just swung from an extreme of being objectified and forced to cover to objectifying myself and being uncovered. Neither extreme was healthy.

Modesty culture was incredibly harmful to me as a burn survivor. It taught me that I was worthless and ugly because it based my attractiveness on men’s perspective. Because my breasts were considered sexual “stumbling blocks” (I hate that term), once they were scarred, I had no sexuality, no attractiveness, no prettiness. I was floundering in a conundrum: I shouldn’t invite men to stare at my breasts because I would be sinning; however, no man would want me because my breasts were ugly.

Two ideas freed me from insecurity-driven anxiety (which came from fearing men would lust after my breasts and from fearing people staring at my scars). 1) My scars symbolize strength. I am a badass. I am tough. My scars tell a story. Go ahead, ask me about them. They will tell you I survived, through the grace of God, extreme suffering and difficult trials. 2) I am not responsible for other people’s morality. A man lusting after me, especially when I was underage, is not my problem. He is responsible for his thoughts and his actions. (Obviously, I try to dress appropriate for the occasion. I don’t wear bikinis to church.) I can’t live my life in constant fear that I am a “stumbling block” (a term I believe has been misinterpreted, but that’s another post for another time). It was a painful journey to get to where I am now, confident and at peace.