seen

Seen.

I can’t seem to get away from that word lately.

One of our speakers at MOPS talked about healthy relationships as places we can feel “seen, soothed, and safe.” On a podcast I just listened to, the guest said something like, “The one thing people are more attached to than their deeply-held beliefs is their need to be seen.” And the underlying theme of a book I read recently—On Purpose by Julie Zine Coleman—seems to center around the devastating lack of seen-ness that women in the modern American church experience, due to the questionable ways we have traditionally interpreted the Bible’s controversial passages about women.

As this word has pestered me until I can no longer ignore it, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with two facts:

1. I need to be (and feel) seen—just like every human being who has ever lived. As much as I’d like to think myself superior, or immune, to this innate human need, I am not.

2. I cannot let the need to be and feel seen hold power over me.

If you were raised in evangelical Christianity, as I was—and especially if you are female—you probably know why the need to feel seen makes me feel so uncomfortable: it’s the exact opposite of how I learned to exist in the world. I always thought that the best and most Christian thing I could be was invisible.

After all, what were the “good” women in church always doing? The invisible tasks, like staffing the nursery, teaching children’s church, counting the offering behind a closed office door, or washing dishes in the kitchen while everyone else socialized over the potluck. And which girls were subject to adult disapproval, subtle or otherwise? The ones they thought to be dressing or behaving “for attention.”

But the quest to become invisible in order to feel like a good person is, I think, actually a backward quest to feel seen. That innate need to be known, understood, and cared for can’t be ignored into nonexistence. The longer we ignore it, the more insatiable it becomes, and the more power it gains over us.

For example: If the people that matter to me are only comfortable when I’m small, quiet, and doing the work of a martyr in the background, I’ll do my best to stay that way—because I need to feel seen and accepted by them. Stepping out of that role might catch their attention in the short term, but it could also alienate them in the long term, which would be an earthquake to my sense of self. So in service of being seen, I remain invisible.

But what happens when, in service of remaining invisible, I refuse to become who God has called me to be?

I’m going to make a statement that would lose some Christian authors, speakers, and influencers a lot of money and attention if it were accepted by the church: I don’t think a sinful desire for attention and power is a major stumbling block for Christian women. I think it’s the opposite—the need to be accepted by the group, the need to not be treated like a pariah for having a voice, is what stands in the way of many women walking in obedience to the Lord. At least, it’s what often stands in my way.

The need to be seen for who we are is real and legitimate, and with it comes the terrible vulnerability of being found lacking. I would rather spend my life protected from criticism by an invisibility cloak woven with nursery shifts and dirty dishes than stand up and speak out on behalf of the Good News of the Kingdom (especially when that good news is often unpopular even within the church’s walls). But have I been called to these acts of quiet, invisible service by God, or by my frail flesh?

For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity…

2 Timothy 1:7-9 (emphasis added)

What might it look like for me to stop living in a spirit of timidity? How could power, love, and discipline change the way I follow the holy calling of God?

As far as specifics go, I don’t know yet. But I know what other seemingly-powerless and invisible women knew long before me: We serve a God who sees, and His is the only judgment that ultimately matters.

So Sarai treated [Hagar] harshly, and she fled from her presence. Now the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” Then the angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” Moreover, the angel of the LORD said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” … Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You area God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi [the well of the living one who sees me]; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

Genesis 16:6b-10, 13-14

life and rebellion: a tale of two mothers

I’ve been studying the early chapters of Genesis rather extensively as part of my BibleProject class over the last couple of months. It may seem like an odd place to find foreshadowings of the Christmas story, but not if you’re a Bible nerd. After all, everything begins at the beginning.

This verse, in particular, has been making me think:

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with [the help of] the Lord.”
- Genesis 4:1

One reason I’ve been dwelling on this verse so much is just the obvious translational liberties that have been taken with it—well-intended, but still risky. The bracketed words, “the help of,” do not exist in the Hebrew; they’re added by the translators in an effort to make the sentence make more sense to us. And the word “manchild” is actually just the ordinary Hebrew word for “man.” No reference to a child.

So let’s read it without those alterations:

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a man with the Lord.”

The verb phrase have gotten is related to the same word used of God to denote His status as the source, Creator, and possessor of all things. And the word with, while it could mean with the Lord’s help as the translators have suggested, can also just mean in proximity to the Lord—or similar to what the Lord has done.

So there’s at least one alternative way of understanding Eve’s words: “I have made a man, just like God.” She whose name means “life” may have read a bit too much of her own press and believed that she really could create life, just like Yahweh.

Whether Eve saw Cain as a gift she acquired with the Lord’s help or as a boastworthy achievement that fulfilled her deep-seated longing to be “like God” (Genesis 3:5), we can make one educated guess: She was hopeful that this man would fulfill the words of the serpent’s curse and deliver the death-blow to the sin and deception she had welcomed into Paradise.

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life; and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
- Genesis 3:14-15

Could Cain be that victorious seed? Could Eve’s ill-advised grasp for power and wisdom on her own terms be reversed, and righteousness restored to God’s image-bearers?

No.

Instead, the man Eve created—the son of her fallen flesh—became the father of hatred, jealousy, and murder on the earth. Although his parents were the ones who fell, Cain himself is the first human to draw his first breath in a fallen state. When he raises his hand to kill his brother Abel, he kills all the remaining goodness in his life as well—his identity, his work, his relationships within his family—and is separated forever from the face of the Lord.

Eve goes on to bear more children and receive them with greater humility (Genesis 4:25), but the serpent lives on—and with him, thousands of years of brutality and bloodshed, jealousy and murder, hatred and division.

Until another young woman, whose name paradoxically derives from the word for “rebellion,” meets a being from the spiritual realm.

And the angel [Gabriel] said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God.” … And Mary said, “Behold, the Lord’s bond-servant; may it be done to me according to your word.”
- Luke 1:30-35, 38a

Eve “created” a man through the flesh. Mary submitted herself as a vessel for the Son of Man through divine conception.

Eve thought her son would make her like God. Mary’s Son would be God Incarnate.

Eve hoped her son would rescue her from the consequences of her sin. Mary’s Son would wipe out the sins of all humanity.

Eve’s son became the father of murder and the instrument of the first human death. Mary’s Son became the Resurrection and the Life.

Eve’s son was the first in a long, long line of disappointments who never overcame the wiles of the serpent—but Mary’s Son was the One who, though wounded in the battle, finally crushed him.

And Mary said:

“My soul exalts the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has had regard for the humble state of His bond-servant;
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.
For the Mighty One has done great things for me;
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is to generation after generation
Toward those who fear Him.
He has done mighty deeds with His arm;
He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones,
And has exalted those who were humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty-handed.
He has given help to His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
Just as He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his descendants forever.”

- Luke 1:46-55

The woman named Life became the mother of death. The woman named Rebellion became the mother of salvation.

Where history would look back on Eve as one accursed, Mary knew from before Jesus was even born that she would be remembered as blessed among women, for she was considered worthy to bear and raise her own Savior—and not through any doing of her own, only surrender to the work of the Lord.

life lately

Mulling over the fact that it’s mid-November, and there are only six weeks left of another year—why does time seem to make less and less sense the more it goes by? I perpetually feel like my body is dragging my brain a month or two behind it, so lost in thought that it doesn’t comprehend the act of turning the calendar even though it’s my own hand doing it. Wasn’t it just September?

Anyway, I’ll spare you all my endless ability to marvel at the passage of time. I wanted to write something light today—something like a snapshot of my current life, what I’m doing and learning and thinking about.

Doing

• Primarily, spending a lot of time with Clara. She is two years old now and the sweetest and silliest person I know. She is speaking in full sentences, but there are still times when I’m the only one who understands them, and I’m going to be sad when that’s not the case anymore. She is inseparable from Alfie, Pooh, Percy, and Bunny-Llama (her four favorite stuffed animals) and one of our favorite things to do together is sit in the rocking chair singing hymns before bed. “Mo see sah?”

• Working out with Sydney Cummings and my sisters-in-law, via YouTube and group text. We commiserate on our pain as well as celebrate our progress. I’ve always loved working out, but I’m especially loving Sydney’s challenges and seeing myself get stronger and stronger. Clara looks forward to it every day, too!

• Going through the prerequisites to become a “member” at my church. Between you and me, I find the entire concept of church membership rather strange and possibly superfluous, but I suppose it’s the best system we have at the moment and so I’m trying to get over myself so that I can become more involved in and accountable to my church body.

Learning

• You all already know I’m taking Intro to the Hebrew Bible from BibleProject, if you’ve read my recent posts. I’m about 60% of the way through and totally enthralled. If you have even the tiniest interest in the subject, you should try this class. (They also have shorter ones on different topics!)

• I’m also learning everything there is to know about baby and toddler sleep, because why not? I had no idea how my perception of sleep would change when Clara was born—at first, it was the biggest stressor of them all, but now it’s one of my greatest fascinations. Did you know there is an enormous amount of science around how we sleep, even as babies? That there is actually a TON you can do to improve sleep quality—your own as well as your kids’? It’s so cool. I’m currently getting certified as a pediatric sleep specialist because that’s how interested I am in the topic. Yes, my enneagram 5 is showing.

• And one of my weekly(ish) highlights is learning dressage at my horseback riding lessons, which I’ve now been taking for a full year. Even though the progress seems slow at times, I can look back at where I was a year ago and see how much stronger my legs and core are, and how much better my seat has gotten. Many thanks to Pilot, Whiskey, K-Bar, and Halo for their patience with me. ;)

Thinking

• Is the risk of stifling God’s work in the world worth taking Paul’s admonitions about women in the church as changeless commandments for all times and all places? I’ve been reading a lot about what the New Testament teaches about the sexes (and how it aligns with the greater story of the Bible) and I’m starting to worry that we have, as it were, strained out a gnat only to swallow a camel. After all, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)—until you are a woman who wants to teach the Bible, and then the most important (and disqualifying) factor about you is that you are female? I do understand the idea of “equal in value, separate in role,” but even so, we have enough history with “separate but equal” in this country to acknowledge that the philosophy does not actually lead to equality in a practical sense. Even if Paul was referring to all women for all time and in all places (debatable), does God care more that men should never hear the Word of God taught by a woman, or that women should be treated as equal image-bearers and Kingdom ambassadors by men? Are we capturing the spirit of the rule or only following its letter? Are we being Christlike or Pharisee-like?

• It’s a little unnerving, but also encouraging, to consider how I’ve grown as a believer over the past 10 years since I was first in Bible school. Unnerving, because so many of the black-and-white beliefs I held then have shifted or been shaded in with detail; this can make me feel like a heretic at times, until I remember that it’s not heresy to allow the Word of God to correct and reprove the errors in my thinking, even when those errors were taught from a pulpit. But it’s encouraging, too, because even when I’m afraid of being rejected by those who don’t agree with me, I have seen that God is still faithfully walking with me, sharpening me, and molding me into something a little bit more representative of His image. It’s He, not any particular denomination or theological camp, that I am required to follow.