YES. THAT IS FUNNY. YOU AND I THINK THE SAME THINGS ARE FUNNY, LADY. I try not to be petty, but I asked God to punish her for the timing of that comment, and I’d like to believe He did. (Anne Lamott says that “you know you’ve made God in your image when He hates all the same people you do.”1) Church can be so weird for women. A woman with a PhD can operate on a person’s brain stem but remain shut out of leading a church group because of her lady parts.
The thing is, we all want to belong, we all crave sanctuary, we are all invited guests. Women, I commission us to fix this. Rather than waiting for the church to get secure with everyone (Jesus’s Church: Uncomfortable and Socially Awkward Since AD 33), we can set a bigger table for our sisters. We can pull up chairs, set out more plates, open extra wine. It is sacred work to open our eyes wide and look around: Who is unseen? Who is left out? Who is marginalized? Whose voice is silenced? Whose story is outside the lines? Who would feel isolated by the primary language here?
For those of us in the dominant narrative, it means not defaulting to our own demographic. Just like a white person is so embedded in majority culture, he or she has to deliberately seek racism to see it, the Marrieds with Children must choose to pay attention to folks outside the mainlined category. It is natural to filter language, community, needs, and perspectives through our own grid, but a simple mental channel change would expose how many of our church structures are isolating and narrow.
When I’m sitting by my gay friends in church, I hear everything through their ears. When I’m with my recently divorced friend, I hear it through hers. This is good practice. It helps uncenter us (which is, you know, the whole counsel of the New Testament) and sharpens our eye for our sisters and brothers. It trains us to think critically about community, language, felt needs, and inclusion, shaking off autopilot and setting a wider table. We must examine who is invited, who is asked to teach, who is asked to contribute, who is called into leadership. It is one thing to “feel nice feelings” toward the minority voice; it is something else entirely to challenge existing power structures to include the whole variety of God’s people.
This is not hard or fancy work. It looks like diversifying small groups and leadership, not defaulting to homogeny as the standard operating procedure. Closer in, it looks like coffee dates, dinner invites, the warm hand of friendship extended to women or families outside your demographic. It means considering the stories around the table before launching into an assumed shared narrative. It includes the old biblical wisdom on being slow to speak and quick to listen, because as much as we love to talk, share, and talk-share some more, there is a special holiness reserved for the practice of listening and deferring.
My sister has been married to the guy of our dreams, Zac, for ten years. This is the man who named his slightly trashy backyard “Zacapulco” (complete with signage) and inspired our entire family to dub our patios with this inventive brand of tropical irony, resulting in “Hat-O-Vallarta,” “Kingcun,” and “Cabo san Drewcus” (our friends Andy and Anna Melvin loved our game and named their outdoor porch “Cozumelvin”). Anyhow, like millions of couples, Cortney and Zac have struggled to conceive, and I am regularly shocked at how many invade this tender space with gross insensitivity: When are y’all finally going to have a baby? I guess you just don’t want any kids to mess up your fun life, huh? Chop chop, you guys! Time to get going on those babies! The whole notion of heartache, loss, or even basic privacy doesn’t even register to people who assume others fit their template, and if they don’t yet, they just need some prodding.
When our spiritual spaces are homogenous, it silences the hundreds of alternative stories that experience vibrancy or suffering outside the “norm.” (As a full-time career gal, I sometimes feel the tremors of disapproval, because I’ve defected from the party line.) My dream is for a safe church, a wide table, no secondary kid tables. If Jesus made the sanctuary free and available for all, we should too. If the Savior of the World decided that demarcations and hierarchies and power players were no longer necessary to the health of his church, then who are we to reinstate a ranking system after Jesus rendered it obsolete?
Girls, if you reside outside the approved label of Docile Wife-Mom, first of all, I’ve never mastered “docile” a day in my life so, you know, solidarity. But I want you to hear me say that you are welcome here: in my space, in God’s beautiful church, in this family of brothers and sisters. Your voice matters, your presence is imperative, and your story makes broad the body of Christ, which only strengthens the tribe, never weakens. (And Docile Wife-Moms? You are fully welcome too! We all count. Everyone counts. Everyone is in.)
Also, if your husband or family or kid or marriage or history or best friend or parent or personality or passion or orientation or career places you “outside the camp,” I want to whisper something awesome to you: there is no camp. There is only Jesus and His band of scalawags and ragamuffins. Find your people. They exist. Raise your voice, tell your story, take your place. So many sojourners with your story or temperament need you to stand tall and strong; you represent many others, trust me. It only seems like everyone is all the same. But peek over your fence, look out into the big, beautiful world, and you will find it is wide and diverse and fascinating, and every sort of person thrives in God’s kingdom.
Sure, maybe the Bob Hatmakers of the world cause some pearl clutching under the steeples, what with the I-talian girls and squirrel hunting and rough edges and proclivity to fish on Sunday mornings instead of don a tie, but I can assure you the church would have been better for his presence, his inclusion, because he is a good man and a loyal husband and father and a faithful neighbor and he had lovely gifts to offer had he been welcomed instead of banned all those years ago. It was our loss.
Let’s set that wrong right by welcoming in the whole array of God’s beloved.
What a beauty that church will be.
I don’t exercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.1
— JOAN RIVERS
CHAPTER 13
ON EXERCISE
My very first job as a high school junior in 1991 was at a small, women’s gym in Wichita called Fitness for Her. I only remember two things really, the first being my boss, Venus, who wore spandex bike shorts under a thong leotard every single day as her work uniform, which was understandably stressful for me to navigate on the regular. I wanted to not see her spandex cheeks sandwiching the thong, but how could one not? I’ll answer that: one sees.