Today we have a guest post from a good friend of mine, as I have been busy entertaining friends and family over the last few days. I will post some photos of my adventures soon! I hope you enjoy Michelle's thoughts on living an authentic life as a Christian woman....
Living & Loving Outside of the Box... of Crayons
"It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1When a friend asked me to write about women's roles and discovering the shape of our heart, for women of faith who love Jesus, I thought about a box of crayons.
The story involves a flash bulb memory of an incident years ago in my early 20's when a young man I was dating asked me if I'd teach Sunday School with him. I was thrilled! One of my gifts is creative communication, which I hadn't identified specifically as such at the time, and I was planning to use elaborate illustrations and hands-on practical examples of God's word for a 4th grade Sunday School class. Imagine my surprise when on the day of the teaching, I was handed a basket and instructed that my role was to pass out crayons!
That particular church had some strict guidelines on what women could and could not do in the church and in addition to not teaching male children, counseling was discouraged as an unsuitable role for a woman as well. These experiences certainly didn't represent my own experience or upbringing of Christianity so I did not stay for very much longer in the church or in the relationship. However, this experience birthed a passion in my heart to not only live my life passionately outside the crayon box but to encourage other women (and men!) to do likewise. Not necessarily to raise a battle cry to oppose misogyny with a chip on my shoulder, which was certainly tempting at the time, but to follow Christ's heart for women, for all of us, in fact to discover our hearts and love fully. Christ's love always leads to freedom. "Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty (2 Cor 3: 17)."
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