me, a Jesus feminist {the becoming}

when my friend Sarah Bessey wrote a book, I clicked pre-order the minute the button turned green. after this was done, I sat on my couch and cried. the tears were desperately needed. there was freedom twenty years in the making behind that click.

the name of the book was Jesus Feminist.

it arrived on my doorstep on November 6th, this yellow book with the big black letters, the symbol for femininity right next to the symbol of my faith. I opened the book, and my eyes found the first line of the first chapter :: Jesus made a feminist out of me. and something inside me gasped like a man drawn out of the ocean.

it was an answer to everything that had been brewing inside me since the moment I realized that Jesus Christ didn't see me as less because I was a woman. 

when you grow up a woman in the conservative Church, it's hard to feel like you have big things inside. it's not always intentional, sometimes you don't even realize that it's happening. but it's easy to fall into the idea that since your body curves where a man's does not, that since your pronouns are she and her, you were birthed to be a stumbling block.

somehow it got put into our heads that feminism was the opposite of appropriate femininity. somehow the word became trampled and twisted underfoot until it stopped being recognizable as anything but ugly. 

but it's begun to occur to me that He spoke "woman" when everyone else was crying "girl," not as a word of derision or as a caustic word spit out in the direction of the "weaker sex," but as a badge of honour. He touched us when others shied away. His words of "follow Me" fell on female ears as well as male. there was no line in the sand with the Son of God.

{photo by me}

“we reject the lies of inequality, we affirm the Spirit, we forgive radically, we advocate for love and demonstrate it by folding laundry, and we live these Kingdom ways of shalom prophetically in the world.” 

Sarah Bessey :: Jesus Feminist

I find myself leaning against my husband more these days when we sit on the couch, tentatively asking if he approves of this new wild me, this new feminist wife, so different from the one who cried during her wedding vows, and yet, so completely the same. and he's supportive in every way he can be, even if sometimes it's just a hand on my arm or a kiss on the side of my head in the silence past midnight. 

and so here we are, standing on the other side of a book that changed the way I see the other Book that has been in my grasp since the days of pattered Bible covers and sword drills. I'm standing here on the beach while the Son of Man makes breakfast for all the ones who follow after Him, male and female alike. 

Sarah's book opened my eyes. but this Jesus Christ, this Prince of Peace and Word Made Flesh.

He's the one that made a Jesus Feminist out of me.