In Praise of Women

"Remember when we went to Chuck E. Cheese's, Mama? You smiled a lot that day," Clementine remarks.

I think: we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for Clementine's birthday, in February. Have I not smiled since February? And then I think: really, I can't believe I smiled enough, in February, that she remembers; I'd only stopped miscarrying a month earlier.

When I--an extreme extrovert--can't bear to be around others, when I don't want to talk to anyone on the phone, when I rage at people I can't avoid (i.e., my husband and children), I know I'm unwell. I consider all that's happened and will happen, soon, but--even when I peer deliberately through a veil of grace--I know: something's not adding up. I can't justify the misery I feel.

I'm tired of requesting prayer, of feeling needy. I'm tired of praying when I don't trust God like I did before the miscarriage. I'm tired of teaching Sunday school, and I'd feel like a fraud for doing it (seeing as how I seem to have misplaced every fruit of the Spirit), but I know we're going directly to Scripture, and I know I need it. I'm tired of feeling unable to write the book I've been called to write. I'm tired of blogging in (and through, and out of) anger. I'm tired of being tired.

But then, in one day, the walls come tumbling down. It's like Jericho, but the people marching around my heart are women. Not one of them suggests I might be crazy. Talk to your doctor, they say. We'll pray for you, they say, and two of them do: right then and there. We're here to help, they say: whatever you need. Can we watch the girls? Help you clean, help you organize? And one of them says, essentially: I am in the middle of this, and I don't have all the answers, but these particular things are helping me. And she passes me her sword and shield. She arms me.

They make me proud to be a woman: how--without judgment--they fight battles from ordinary places like living rooms and parking lots. I remember the power in service not because I've served, but because I've been served. And the only beauty of brokenness, I think, lies there: in realizing we can't do life alone and shouldn't try. We're each of us weak, but together we're strong. And God in us is strongest of all.

Charleigh and Me, Last Week. Photo by Rachel Huff.