Post--But she had wings

Journal entry a few years ago….

I was in my kitchen today rinsing black-eyed peas. Getting them ready for a long soak, before I slowly cooked them in bacon fat. Yes, I was rinsing my beans - thinking about how many women did and felt as I felt at that moment. Washing beans, and preparing the meals for her family. Women carry baskets full of grain on their heads and buckets of water across their shoulders. Women carrying the bags in from Walmart. Women carrying truth, knowledge, and wisdom. Women carrying out the tasks of the home - providing, and nurturing. Women carrying the wonder, the uncertainty, the anxiety, the fear, the joy, the pleasure and beauty, the horror and doubt, and all the hope that life brings.

Here I imagined centuries, millennia even of women. Women rinsing and soaking their beans, preparing the pot, sustaining the home. Eve herself I dare say, rinsed beans through tears of loss and grief and regret as well as joy, laughter, peace, and contentment. Women forced into rinsing beans because it was their only sphere. Women grateful to be rinsing beans because their babies would have full bellies. Women rinsing their beans early, before they leave to teach classes, sell real estate, write laws, wait tables, see patients, or administrate someone else’s life - all to keep beans on the table. Women rinsing their beans early before the kids wake up, before carpool, before the lunches are made, before giving every part of their being to the training and nurturing of their family. I thought about how strong we are. I thought about how undervalued we are. I thought about how tired we are. And I thought about how incomprehensibly crucial we are. At this moment rinsing my black-eyed peas, I felt connected to the Sacred Feminine and to womanhood past present, and future, to motherhood to sisterhood…and to Creator, to Elohim, to El Shaddai.

Fast forward and today I’m thinking…

Genesis 1:27 (NRSV) So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God he created them.; male and female he created them.

I love this scripture. It reminds me that I am an image bearer —- tselem Elohim, Imago Dei —- The image of God. And God my Mother is on my mind today.

Now don’t pick up your stones yet. I simply mean that I am so grateful for and fully embrace the characteristics of God that are maternal, that are Feminine. In Deuteronomy 32:8 God gives birth — He is the Rock that bore you….the God who gave birth. In Hosea 11:3-4 we see God in the role of a mother cuddling, teaching, and nourishing her child. In Isaiah 49:15 God compares himself to a nursing mother. This is literally the picture of El Shaddai the all-sufficient one. In Psalm 131:2 We see God described as a mother giving comfort and provision. In Isaiah 66:13 God promises comfort is like a mother’s comfort. And in Matthew 23:37 and Luke 15:8-10 Jesus says, “…I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…” I love this imagery. I get it. I understand it. I live it. This imagery…all of these…make me feel understood. I am made woman, in the image of God.

Someone has said that the kitchen is the heart of the home. I have found the most tender and profound moments happen here. Here where we orchestrate, sweat, laugh, cry, and create out of our love for our families and our intuitive heart to nurture. Recently, just like the moment rinsing my black-eyed peas, I had another reflective moment in my kitchen. This time it was baking a pound cake. My first from-scratch pound cake. That is actually sad since I’m 52. So you should understand the remarkable things that happen in my kitchen are completely relational and rarely have to do with good cooking!

Anyway, there I was making this pound cake, uncertain but armed with two secret weapons - my grandmother’s pound cake pan - easily 70 years of cakes in that pan; and my sister in law’s sour cream pound cake recipe that has wowed our family for decades. In those moments, measuring and mixing, listening to the sounds of my own daughter’s laugh, listening to my mom as she reminisced about her mother’s cake pan, I felt profoundly connected to so many amazing women. I felt connected to the God that had directed their lives. I could see my grandma baking cakes in that very pan, interceding in the Spirit as she measured each ingredient, laughing with the joy of the Lord, her face kissed with flour. I could see my mom, so beautiful and reveling in the excitement and contentment of knowing that we would all be around her table soon - loving each other so well. I was flooded in fact with memories of the remarkable women of influence in my life. Wave after beautiful wave a remembrance would wash over me and I was grateful to my core.

Just like that day in rinsing my black eyed peas and just like the day baking my first pound cake, I reflect today on Womanhood, Motherhood, Sisterhood and the God in whose image we are made. The character of God, the love of God, the mystery of God, the closeness of God, the authority and sovereignty of God have all been beautifully revealed and exemplified to me through my mother, grandmother, and my sister… through my sisters-in-law, my mother in law, through my friends - my tribe, and so delightfully through my daughters. I am profoundly grateful for Holy Spirit who teaches me through strong and sensitive women. Their lives preach. Their lives teach. God has rescued me through their Wisdom. God has embraced me through their empathy. God has given me rest in their faith and prayer and warfare. I am certain of God’s love and mercy because of them. I am certain of my own strength and potential because I am made Imago Dei.