This may become an ongoing series of posts as I experience the season of Lent as someone from mostly a Christian tradition that does not interact with the Church calendar. I pray that sharing my experience will encourage others to expand their own Christian practices in whichever direction has been neglected or left unexplored.

Early on, I learned to make myself small.

I learned it through layers and repetition, slowly, in a million little ways.

I order my meal with the word "just" in front of it: "I'll just have the grilled chicken."

I apologize too quickly and for things that need no apology. "I'm sorry, could you pass the salt and pepper?" When I bump into someone in the hallway at work, it's always, "I'm sorry," and never "Excuse me."

I eat the leftovers. I play the board games with the pawn nobody wants. I go last and acquiesce to what the other person wants to do, where they want to go, what they want to talk about.

This is not a complaint, because if it were anything other than this way of compliance and chameleon camouflage, I'd be terribly uncomfortable.

I make just a quick announcement at church, sorry to take up precious time in the service as if I'm the hidden stepchild instead of the pastor's wife and the women's ministry leader.

So as not to bring attention to myself, I opt to go along with the prevailing opinion rather than to have a mind of my own. I am thankful for whatever is offered me, not wanting to be a burden. I am praised for being demur, peaceable, and quietly submissive.

Being introverted and shying away from controversy and conflict play right into this small way of life I have made.

I make myself as invisible as possible, discounting and dismissing myself time and time again. "Oh, no problem. Maybe next time."

***

Roxane Gay's book Bad Feminist was on the Campus Bestseller display table for months when I managed a university bookstore. The title intrigued me.

I picked up somewhere along the way a vague notion that feminism was bad, although I can't tell you why. I never talked about feminism or knew anyone who claimed to be a feminist. Maybe it was the rebellious nature intrinsic in feminism that cast it in a bad light for me, and I dutifully kept my distance.

What can I say? I grew up in the South under the tutelage of classy, polite, graceful, and poised female family members as role models. These are the women I love.

There wasn't a single Steel Magnolia in my life until the movie when I was new bride of 20. To date at that point in my life, those six fictitious characters were the only examples I had of unruly, unapologetic, subtly rebellious women who didn't have it all together but would die (or kill) trying to figure life out. There was nothing "just" about any of them. They were large and weighty and loveable.

But I went right back to my life and cultural norm of quiet, small, invisible.

Until Gay's book title intrigued me. Did it support feminism or not? Is a bad feminist good? What, exactly, is a bad feminist?

I never read the book -- again, too complicit to venture outside my lane.

But I did read Gay's next book, Hunger: A Memoir of My Body. Gay is a very different person than me with very different values, beliefs, and life experiences. But the writing was good, and I stayed with it. I am learning there is value in reading things I don't always agree with and hearing out an alternate point of view.

The book is Gay's statement on her relationship with her obesity. One of her coping mechanisms involved overeating purposefully, in order to become large, after she was gang raped as a girl. "I needed to take up space," she says.

After I read those words and the many ways -- both healthy and not -- Gay lived in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted, her notion of not wanting to be small still resonates in me.

The concept has taken its time to do its work, my paradigm still shifting, but I'm ready to be large, or at least the right size. Not in stature like Gay, but in value. I'm ready to value myself as equal to the value I afford others.

I'm ready to breathe the air and require resources. I'm ready for my words to have weight, my voice to be heard, my thoughts, desires, and needs to be valid. I'm ready to take up due space and time and consideration. All without apology or just as a qualifier.

I've diminished myself out of expectation, real or perceived, and it's wrong. I am finished being stingy toward myself, while generous towards others, which I have mistakenly done out of a desire to be feminine and humble. It is neither.

I am a full human being. I may have a lot of unlearning to do, but when God made humanity, he stepped back and evaluated his day's work and said it was very good. He gave his crowning creation a greater glory, which is to say he gave them weight. I'm ready to do the same.

I read so many wonderful essays this week on the internet. Wise, somber, deep, challenging words that are beautiful and speak hope and life and truth. 

Addie Zierman has  "been trying, lately, to figure out what it means to be hopeful in this wintering world.What does hope look like in a landscape that keeps erupting into wildfires and tsunamis, landslides and earthquakes? ... the whole world seems to be buried deep underneath the weight of winter itself."

Addie's The Grouundwater of the Soul


Nadine Schroeder wrote a stunning piece called 12 Minute Walks for Off the Page, where she explores all the things there are to forgive, and all the ways we need each other, and how it all adds up to love and many 12 minute walks. And it really did make one cohesive amazing piece of writing.

12 Minute Walks 


Kaitlin Wernet's piece for Fathom Magazine about being the 20-something sister of a brother whose life was snuffed out too soon hit so close to home for me, but is also so achingly beautiful -- for everyone. "I’m no longer satisfied with putting off thoughts about heaven until I get there, not when living a life where the youngest die first and the oldest grieve most."

Only the Good 

Housewife Theologian Amiee Byrd wrote a thought-provoking piece on sibling relationships between males and females in the early church and the timeless body of Christ. "For both the sake of appearances and the threat of lust and sexual impropriety, Christians are often counseled not to text, email, share a lunch, ride in a car, or even share an elevator unchaperoned with the opposite sex. Is this the way we should be seen treating brothers and sisters in the Lord? Is this how we show the love of Christ to the watching world?"

You Promiscuously Call One Another Brothers and Sisters!

I started reading the bible through, but slowly and thoughtfully with the smart and talented Rebecca K. Reynolds. This piece ties together thematically four chapters and as many mini-stories from Genesis. It is lovely and relevant and you begin to see how the one story of all of scripture is a mirror to your soul.

Rain on a Barren Land

And, finally, some spot-on analysis of The Greatest Showman. by Jenna Badeker for The Rabbit Room.
"I can enjoy the story of characters who quickly regain their footing and crow about their life “from now on.” But I truly identify with and love the stories of characters who have done their time in the trenches, who live in the tension longer than they want to before the payoff comes. This is what feels authentic. The groaning of creation. The people in the desert. The silence of God for hundreds of years. The barrenness for almost a century. A hope deferred."
She isn't hating on this movie-musical. Promise. And if it brings you down instead of ringing true, then listen to the soundtrack and you'll be instantly inspired and flying high again, because it is the feel good movie of the year.

The Greatest Showman (or at least the Fairly Decent Showman)