She begins by describing a scene we can all relate to. A neighbor stops by unexpectedly. All she can think of is the “Mount Rushed LaundryMore” , the unmade bed, her unkempt style of “rooster tailed ,comckamamie hair” and the “rumpled t-shirt” she’s wearing. a part of her life that is so not “Pintrest pretty” is being exposed and it’s quite embarrassing and humbling. Then it “hits her”
She writes:
I have no idea why all us neighbours and women down the street and across the table keep holding each other to a standard of perfection instead of letting us all be held by the arms of grace.
No idea why don’t we call a cease-fire to the constant women wars, stop the missile volley of judgement, subtle and not so subtle, that we hurl across the playgrounds and church foyers and back fences and front porches and screens at each other?
No idea why it’s taken me so long and why I keep forgetting:
Judging others is a blindfold that blinds us to our own grime and blinds us to the grace which others are as eligible and entitled to as we are.
If I have loved breathing in grace for me, how can I deny you the same oxygen?
Who of us isn’t a hypocrite in metamorphosis? Who of us is who he wants to be — yet?
Earth is our chrysalis. We all can get to fly away to glory, a loosening of slippery bindings. (It is in the space of aloneness that the caterpillar has space to grow wings. Never fear the aloneness — it’s a way you’re given a way to fly.) There are unlikely wings unfolding unseen everywhere.
We can’t notice in days what is happening in years — there can be this becoming someone different, someone remade.
We need Key Women in our lives who emancipate us from crushing expectations.
Key Women who unlock the courtrooms where we’re judged and assessed and weighed on these scales that feel like millstones around our necks, Key Women who believe that
we can change,
things can change,
kids can change,
minds can change,
the world can change.
There could be this rising of Key Women who are soul abolitionists, who end the enslavement of women to the self-appointed judges, Key Women who unlock and unleash women to transform into their own unique calling and giftedness.
Because — if you aren’t encouraging women to live out their particular calling, you may just be idolizing a particular idealized form of yourself.
There could be Key Women who turn to their sisters and unlock everything with their own anthem coming like a freedom song:
I won’t judge you for dishes in your sink and shoes over your floor and laundry on your couch.
I won’t judge you for choosing not to spend your one life weeding the garden or washing the windows or working on organizing the pantry.
I won’t judge you for
the size of your waist,
the flatness, bigness, cut or color of your hair,
the hipness or the matronliness of your clothes,
and I won’t judge whether you work at a stove,
a screen,
a store,
a steering wheel,
a sink
or a stage.
I won’t judge you for where you are on your road, won’t belittle your offering, your creativity, your battle, your work.
The key to the future of our communities, our culture, the church is whether there are Key People — people who will not imprison with labels and boxes but will unlock with key words, with key acts of freeing.
There could be Key Women who link arms with their sisters and say we will be the few Key Women:Key Women release you by not judging your mothering, your cooking, your cleaning, your clothing, your kids.
Key Women liberate you from cages and boxes and echo chambers in your head.
Key Women free you to be your best you, your unbound you, your beautiful you.
We are not here to be perfect. We are here to be real – to let Christ be real in us.
Like there’s this movement of women who have a key to open up our doors and come in —- and let us go free.
This is my desire. I want to have these kinds of relationships, to be known as the kind of woman described here, to be part of this movement. Perhaps moving to this new area and being in the kind of neighborhood that is a little out of my comfort zone is the beginning of something. Like I was put here to make waves.
