Over the past month, I've been thinking about my space here, wondering if I was ever going to come back and write another word here. The last post I wrote fell on seemingly deaf ears. No one commented, no one shared. I was going to come back with an apology post.
The irony of that will hit you in a minute.
::
Women apologize a lot. For bumping into someone, for not seeing past the over-full endcap at the grocery store, for standing in the spot where someone might possibly want to stand in the next few minutes.
I'm sorry. Oops, sorry about that.
Whoops, sorry.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
I'm sorry.
The idea was posed to me today via a local radio host that perhaps women are incapable of a sincere apology. I have to admit, he might be close to right. Because when you repeat the same words, over and over again, simple letters for just standing there, just existing, just wearing this or saying that or exhaling in the wrong direction....do they lose their meaning?
It's that overuse that we've come to understand as prevalent in a country where the primary language is complicated in the small things but too simplified in the bigger things. Greek has three words for love. Sanskrit has ninety-six. English has one.
And then we come back to "I'm sorry" and the way that maybe it doesn't mean what it should. And it's not because we don't mean it when we say it, because we do. But it's repeated so often that it has lost meaning. It sounds funny to our ears.
Sorry.
It even looks funny when I type it now.
::
I'm in my third trimester of pregnancy with our second daughter. Our second girl. Our second future woman.
There is more to this discussion. There has to be, for my girls' sake. For my sister's sake. For my daughters' daughter's sake. For my own sake.
Because it was Jill who memorized the Signs. It was Lucy who saw Aslan on the cliff. It was Jael who hammered the tent peg through Sisera's temple. It was Mary who saw Him first.
And none of them were apologizing between roars.
