Captivating

So here comes the part in my journey where I lay down my identity as the angry feminist that you know not to mess with and pick up my cross.

I have been avoiding reading this book because I don't want to be "generalized" as a woman. Having two people think they know what it takes to be a woman and what drives women sounds a little foolish to me and I avoided it to avoid getting frustrated and angry. Well, God is good. After some times weeding through some pain and disappointment and God calling me out I have decided to let go of anger. It doesn't belong in my life. I need to begin to look at men and women through the eyes of love, through the eyes that God intended.

Well as I open this book it begins. Oddly enough the book started with talking about all different types of women. Working women, motherly women, sporty women, that non of us are the same. So that was kinda a petting session to my feminist mind. But then it lead into how the Christian society has raised a group of women filled with guilt of who they are not. The pressures of needing to be more "Nancy Nazarene"and do what pleases your husband. I find this to be partly true, I feel some men want women to walk around and kiss their feet for the rib that they have given to them instead of walking around chin-up chest-out with their own set of ribs.

I do believe that those pressures are out there but that does not give excuse to those who have allowed those pressures to define them. Do we give excuses to those who give into our secular society? No. So why should these excuses be accepted within a "Christian" society. Now this is being written from a girl who has been raised with a very strong mother figure. She fought for me and my sister with every fiber of her "mama bear" being. That made "strong" women very appealing for me. I wanted people to fear me such as they feared the wrath of my mother. In all honesty, I have no idea how she did it. She could be a roaring lion to anyone who tried to change her children but then as tender as a kitten when it came to comforting her children from the wounds the world gave us. What a woman. Now, also having watched the church reject parts of my mother for how outspoken she is/was surely affirmed that I never wanted to be what the church "wanted" me to look or be like. Let me give this disclaimer though, we were attending a church that had only men in leadership and was very "traditional" or whatever the hell that means. shit.

Anyways, watching someone as strong as my mom and that didn't fit any of the molds that people set out for women just taught me that all the molds were wrong. I could not trust them because my super hero mom defied them all, and I was being raised to not be just anyone, I was being raised to be a super hero. You have no idea how many times my mom told me "I didn't raise you to be like anyone else, I raised you to be the one in a million girl" so I almost in a way accepted the rejection. At times it brought me comfort when someone treated me like there was something wrong with me. I remember getting in an argument with a man from the church about how I didn't care if my husband brought home the money, I wanted to be able to support the one I love as long as he was passionate about what he did. He said that was defying the way God created for men and women to be, that men were to bring home the bacon and women to were to stay home with the children. Now, my understanding is that God loves me, a lot. So if He loves me and He is going to send me someone that loves me a whole lot, then what more is that convo than the pressures to become what is expected.

Here is the thing, I have gotten hit from every angle about the way I have defined myself as a "woman'. Even so much as been taken out of the category of "woman" and put in the category of "Feminist" which is a "wannabe man", right? But whose fault is it that I allowed the pressures of that make me angry. I allowed the pressures of someone else define who I was and how I was supposed to treat and feel about men and women. I let that define my views on women. So here I am doing the exact thing that I was trying to run from.

Right now, I am ridding myself from any label. I am Anna, I am free to be any type of woman I choose. Strong and sensitive. Driven and comfortable. Smart and silly. All the while, I am a woman. A woman of God. I prayed before I opened into the chapters of this new book. That he would unlock the chains that I have allowed everyone to place over my heart. That I could read these pages through the eyes of my ultimate Lover. That I could soak in the goodness of what someone has observed and filter through the things God does not want me to take to heart. I will enjoy this book. I will embrace being a woman. A one in a million woman.

Dear future husband,

Oh what you have in store for yourself. I pray that I get to spend my life with you unaware of any "expectations" this world may have for us. I am working on losing all expectations of what you should be like. I hope you haven't actually met yet and you ran the other way because I roared at you with my "womanist views". I pray that I gently approach your heart and sweep you away with me and God. I don't know what the women before me have done to you but I pray that what gets you through and keeps you going are these letters that God places in your dreams. That somehow you can feel you are being prayed for. That you are being fought for, it may not seem like it, but I am fighting for you through how I am treating myself. Sometimes I don't feel like treating or respecting myself so much, but I think of you. I usually gets me through, usually. Sorry for the slip ups. haha. I hope God is twirling you onto the dance floor where you will join me in this dance of life. I don't know you yet, I don't think I do, but I know that I love you already. God told me I did.

Sweet dreams my prince.