A Few Clicks

Sunday morning, my husband took all three boys to hockey and then they were going to our "hockey" church, a church close to the rink that has service times that work with spring hockey. All three boys were going even though only two were playing hockey because they really love that church. So I had the house to myself. I grabbed my laptop to look something up for my husband and as I clicked through websites and blogs, I found myself seeing a book on someone's reading list that caught my eye. I love how that happens. I was not looking for this book. I was simply clicking along and there it was. But as soon as I saw it I knew it was meant for me.

I clicked over the Amazon and downloaded the free sample chapter to my kindle app. I was laying in bed reading and tears came to my eyes. I wiped them away and fresh tears came. I had needed these words, these words of encouragement. These words of affirmation. These words were a salve to a broken place in my heart.

I have been wondering what I am meant to do with my life. I know I am supposed to be a mother to my boys. But is there more? I am slowly figuring out where God has gifted me and what He has put on my heart. I think there must be a reason that He made me someone who LOVES to read and study and then read and study some more. Someone who cannot be anything but authentic. Someone who is not afraid to speak in public. Most people fear that more than death I hear. Someone who is relationship driven, someone who wants to be engaged in real, deep, growing conversation. I am finally figuring out that God made me the way He wants me to be. And that He might just have a purpose for all of those things that make me a little unique.

But I have not been able to mesh what I think I am meant to do with where I am. I have run into some hidden barriers that I did not realize were holding me back. This book shed some light into the dark places I did not realize were discouraging me. I have been trying to figure out how to do what I love in the world I am in, in a world that puts limits on what I can do. Limits that are not based on who I am, what I know, or how God has gifted me but instead simply on my gender, on the fact that I am a woman.  And that really hurts. Deep inside me it hurts.

I know I am a woman. I have given birth so I truly know that God made men and women different. I have no aspirations of taking over the world. No desire to tell people what to do. I just want to be true to who God made me. I am not sure of who that is but I am beginning to understand that being a woman is only part of it. It may describe me but it does not define me. I am first and foremost a child of God. My gender does not limit what God will do in my life.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28

I still don't know what exactly I am going to be when I grow up. But I have some glimpses. And this book, the result of a few "random" clicks, encouraged me in a way I did not know I needed. A little affirmation, a little clarity of thought, a huge dose of "I am okay".