Writing It Out

This is why I write. This is it exactly. Last night, I felt hurt and wounded by what I read on that blog - on a blog of someone I don't even know- and so I sat down to write it out of me. And in the writing I was able to find a small point of clarity about why I feel the way I do. I recognize that much of my need to feminize images of God is based on old childhood wounds that I will always struggle with. I realize that these wounds will sometimes make me irrational and unfair and selfish and grasping when it comes to this issue. But, I also recognize the validity of my feelings and needs, despite the fact that they may stem from my woundedness, and as I wrote last night, "I need to know she values the female in herself, or else how can I?" I saw that there was a huge truth in that idea that I had not been able to articulate before. I still feel ashamed of being a woman. I still worry that God is ashamed of her femaleness. I struggle with feeling as valuable to God as a man.

How awful. How embarrassing. Intellectually, I understand these fears to be unfounded, but my heart, oh my poor heart, is still a little girl who has been told repeatedly that boys are better and smarter and more valuable. My heart has difficulty seeing a God who is proud of the female qualities she has given to me from herself and it is all compounded by a church that often encourages these beliefs by belittling the place and value of feminine imagery and language and contributions to that faith.

I know. I know. We are all struggling. It is so difficult to find the pure truth beyond our histories and culture and gender. It is difficult to allow other people to struggle with these issues when they free themselves and bind me in their answers. The more I write, the more I read, the more I learn, the more I am finding that I can sympathize with the fears that we all seem to have that start our hearts pounding and lead us away from thoughtful, compassionate responses. I understand that many people, and not only men, feel as if I am taking something sacred away from them when I call God a woman. I understand that they believe I am subverting the truth, that I have sacrificed God's character for my own comfort. It hurts. I disagree. I would like them to hear me, but I know that I also need to hear them. I need to offer them grace as much as I need it from them. And I do need it from them, and that is so hard to admit, and I didn't know that until I sat down to write it out.