Fierce Woman of the Week: Gianna Jessen, Abortion survivor, speaks her life sermon in Australia

Women are a fierce breed and we are meant to use our stories to tell the truth and rise up on behalf of others. 


Check out Gianna's passionate courage in the face of weakness.  I love her quote:  Where were the feminists when my right as a woman to live was being taken away?


Don't miss this chance to stretch and enlarge your heart for the babies of the silent Holocaust.



Her identity in Christ is solid.  She's not afraid to be hated because she knows who and Whose she is.  She's a teacher for all of us.

He is Fierce for Our Freedom

An Eastern Starling flew down our chimney sometime in the night and started fluttering around our firebox, enclosed by the brick in the back and a glass front .  She kept fluttering around, getting herself stuck around bricks and trying to fly back up the black Alice in Wonderland hole where she came from.  I couldn't take it any longer.  I was having a birthday brunch for a friend in about an hour and I just couldn't imagine enjoying ourselves with a bird in captivity clanging around in the room adjacent.  Or at least, that's what I told myself.


I could tell that Andrew didn't care.  He was ok with the bird dying in the flue and then carrying his dead body out to the ravine to a "resting place" once he was at peace.  Andrew came from a hunting family and I've gotten very comfortable with that lifestyle.  I was quickly assimilated after seeing newly shot, skinned rabbits in the sink on my first morning sleeping over at my in-laws.  Even my children are fairly comfortable with the death of animals, watching what we call "circle of life" nature shows on the Discovery Channel.  Somehow, I could not bear the thought of this bird dying in my house, I dared to beg a very exhausted pastor husband who was Monday-morning-tired.


He came to my rescue.


Andrew got out his largest salmon/steelhead catching fishing net, opened the glass front and positioned the net over the front.  The bird walked in and then, unconvinced her freedom came in the form of black plastic netting, she promptly walked back into the firebox. 


Hmmmm. Time for a new plan of attack.


A few minutes later, the bird herself flew out from around the net and into the office/playroom, furiously beating her wings on the windows.  Over and over, Andrew kept flushing her out of corners where she would get herself stuck.  After that, she flew behind the huge computer cabinet and then into the corner behind the fish tank.  Stuck again.  I ran to get the broom and tried the help flush her out.  Again she kept flying from corner to corner.  We were adamant she had to go before the brunch...and then the kids would come home from preschool.  I wanted this bird to get out alive! 


The entire time, I'm getting seriously emotional...(and I am not even pregnant, a clear indication something else was going on here. )


I remember saving a songbird from the mouth of the neighbor's cat and making her comfortable in a shoebox until our friends' vetrinarian dad could come home from work and diagnose the problem.  More weapiness.  (I swear I'm not usually such a drama queen!)


The bird flew across the small room into a bookcase and got stuck there.  What now?  Do we reach in?  "I'll get some gloves for you," I said.  Plastic, too thin.  "My canvas ones are out in the garage," Andrew said.  I'm nearly crying by now.  OK. I got the gloves and brought them to him.  Protected, Andrew reached into the bookcase, brought out the starling and carefully carried him out the backdoor, saying to the bird as he released him, "Be free!"  I dissolved into weeping.


Oh.  That's what this was about.  A bird being freed is the theme of my sister's healing...and Freedom has been the theme of my Lent.  "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free." Galatians 5:1  It is an immediate sign that God has a word for me.  It's been happening constantly for six weeks. 

Then it hit me.  This is just a tiny picture of the kindness and fierceness that Christ has for our freedom.  He wants us to be healed of the gangrenous deadness in our spirits and be resurrected new creations.  He wants to fiercely show our other lovers (as the Old Testament prophet Hosea teaches) the door, kick them out for good, afraid to slink back into our lives when we're vulnerable.


My sister wrote about her healing in a memoir in which she talked about a word that I've always had trouble with: "wrath."  She wrote that she once gave God permission to send his wrath against everything that was standing in the way between herself and God.  Wow, now that's gutsy.  I looked inside myself, do I have that kind of guts?  Am I fierce like the Living God for my own freedom...or do I kinda wanna be free. 


If Andrew and I had kinda wanted the bird free, she would still have been fluttering around in windows that looked like the way out but were new dead ends, albeit pretty, sunshiny ones.  We had to be fiercely focused on the end goal.


I'm thankful our God is fierce for us, fierce for our freedom and for the women He made us to be.   I can't imagine not growing, not getting mature.  How depressing!  How depressing to still be dealing with the same STUFF thirty years from now.  I never want to leave my learning empty-handed.  God, thank You for loving me enough to be fierce for my freedom.  Help me to become fierce too.

Luminous ones, becoming more luminous all the time, what is it that our God wants to free you of?

Tuesday morning group

We miss you Stephanie!

Love Lavishly

Friends, I recently watched the beautiful transformation of the women on Enchanted April, a Merchant and Ivory film that I think is well worth your next Netflix pick.

In it Lottie moves from a woman who "meets out love in teaspoons" to a woman who has found abundance and can therefore love lavishly.

Yesterday with our Tuesday morning "Luminous Women" group in our little yellow cottage, we looked at the "Kitchen Service" chapter from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World and encountered the lavish loving of Jesus who washed his disciples feet.

Here's the opening verse of John 13:

"It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.

He was showing them, making them feel what lavish love looked like (creating a sense memory of His humble, abundant love) and there was certainly no "meeting it out in teaspoons."

The question is, can I (we) be so secure in the lavish love of God, spending enough time in His presence that it overflows into our home, our neighborhood and the surrounding world?

Shine bright, dear ones, but remember, your light will grow dim fast if it is only your own light.

luminous women--shining like stars

When my Tuesday morning group arrives at the front door of my little yellow cottage, (and I'm feeling particularly shiny that day) I often greet them with a "welcome, luminous women."

And they are.

We've been studying scripture and various Christian books for two years now and WOW what a joy! God is being reflected more and more.

Our blog name comes from Philippians 2:15, but here's the context, (a scripture I've been quoting to my children almost constantly lately...and to myself as well :) "Do everything without complaining or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like the stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life..." Shine like stars in the universe...as you hold out the word of life. Wow, I'd like to take a bath in that, it's so good.

So, my luminous women (Andrew is right now teaching me how this blog thingy sets up and is laughing at the words, "luminous women" --What do you think about “Glow in the Dark Chics” or “Radioactive Maidens,” Phosphorescent Females, he really could go on!) what does it mean to be shiny...to shine...today?

This song by Sara Groves and Matt Bronlewee sums up what I've been learning about worship and realigning myself with the God of the universe:

You Are the Sun

You are the sun
shining down on everyone
Light of the world
giving light to everything I see
Beauty so brilliant
I can hardly take it in
And everywhere You are
is warmth and light
And I am the moon
with no light of my own
Still you have made me to shine
And as I glow in this cold dark night
I know I cannot be a light
unless I turn my face to you

It's so good to remember, isn't it? Though we may be shiny, we are never the center of the universe and the light source doesn't even originate within us! As John Eldredge says in his powerful daily prayer in the back of most of his books, "He is the hero of the story...and the end of all things, including my life." So, I am starting this blog to encourage you, my friends, and anyone else out there who desires to let God make us light reflectors. Some days our blog will be just a quote from a book, other days a thought and some days just a picture of something I find particularly beautiful.

In particular, our dear friend Stephanie is moving this week...to ALASKA, of all beautiful and rugged and luminous places...Stephanie who God gave me in order to have the courage to leave the Episcopal church and create a safe (Anglican) haven for new believers to grow. So, this is my parting gift to you, my dear...for you to visit your friends on the Lake...and make your way up the path to the little yellow cottage anytime you so desire. Stephanie, You are a luminous woman! What a joy it has been to have you in our lives. Loved. Always.