Eve’s Daughter

This is the second instalment of “Girly Stuff & Women’s Conferences“

As I have already mentioned, all of the speakers were good, but the one whose words embedded themselves deep in my heart was Georgie Baxter when she said, “Embrace your Femininity” at the start of her speaking time. I shuddered and felt like gagging! I have a problem with the word “femininity”. For me it conjures up a whole heap of images - pink girly stuff, lots of perfume, giggling and frills or those women who have just got it all together, their make up is perfect, their nail and hair is done, their clothes coordinate, they are calm, together, they’ve done their housework…- I know that this is not all there is to femininity and being a woman, but that’s what the word “femininity” conjures for me. So I hoped her words would impact me, would make a difference and thankfully she didn’t go all “traditional” about being a woman. She said a whole lot of other stuff too that was good too, although I don’t remember it, but I do remember what she said about “embrace you femininity”!

She read from the book of Genesis:

‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’ (Genesis 1:26-28 NASB) 

Now, I’ve always “struggled” a little with this; actually it’s never been much of a struggle, more like a vague uneasiness, a vague uncomfortable feeling about it, especially the bit, ‘God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him’;  I know that “man” means “human”, but, well, I guess in my heart, in my feelings, and in my mind, “man” means “male” and all the other stuff that goes with that, the extreme being “male chauvenist pig”! And there were quite a few of them around when I grew up.

I’ve always felt as though Eve was a last minute addition; sort of like God went, “Oh whoops, this man I created needs a companion, better do something about it!” Woman was created last, therefore woman is inferior to man; she is his helper, his companion, his servant, his slave. Like I said, I’ve got some issues! Unfortunately these issues are foundational. The truly scary bit is that now I know I have been building my life on the wrong foundations, on the half-truths and half-lies of the one who fears me and the difference I can make in God’s Kingdom.

Anyway, the notes I took read like this:

‘God called us and created us to be like Him. We are made in the image and likeness of God. God took something OUT of man and made a woman. Man no longer has what God took out of him, so don’t despise your womaness, your femininity, coz God took that OUT of man and put it INTO woman. What women have men don’t. What men have women don’t. And that’s okay, that is in fact, the way it is meant to be, the way God created it. Both men and women show God’s likeness, they just show different parts, complementary parts…’

This just blew me away, caught hold of me by the throat and did not let go! ‘Man no longer has what God took out of him, so don’t despise your womaness, your femininity, coz God took that OUT of man and put it INTO woman…Both men and women show God’s likeness, they just show different parts, complementary parts…’ so “embrace your femininity!” I was so glad after listening to Georgie, and excited, that I had already ordered ‘Captivating’ - I knew that I was on the right track.

Saturday night when the conference was all over and the kids were in bed, T and I talked about this stuff and he showed me the daily reading he had received from the ‘Ransomed Heart’ website a few days before. The following is taken from their newsletter - the bold is my emphasis. If you are not on their mailing list, then I strongly suggest that you put yourself on, these guys are so in tune with the heart of God!

‘It is a mystery almost too great to mention, but God is the expression of the very thing we seek in each other. For do we not bear God’s image? Are we not a living portrait of God? Indeed we are, and in a most surprising place—in our gender. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Follow me closely now. Gender—masculinity and femininity—is how we bear the image of God. “I thought that there was only one kind of soul,” said a shocked friend. “And God sort of poured those souls into male or female bodies.” Many people believe something like that. But it contradicts the Word of God. We bear his image as men and women, and God does not have a body. So it must be at the level of the soul—the eternal part of us—that we reflect God. The text is clear; it is as a man or as a woman that the image is bestowed.

God wanted to show the world something of his strength. Is he not a great warrior? Has he not performed the daring rescue of his beloved? And this is why he gave us the sculpture that is man. Men bear the image of God in their dangerous, yet inviting strength. Women, too, bear the image of God, but in a much different way. Is not God a being of great mystery and beauty? Is there not something tender and alluring about the essence of the Divine? And this is why he gave us the sculpture that is woman.’

(The Journey of Desire , 136)

I am still struggling to come to terms with this stuff! It’s so incredible, so amazing, so wonderful and so lifechanging! I am grateful Georgie Baxter who spoke on ‘embrace your femininity’ and to John and Stasi Eldredge for ‘Captivating’. They have opened my eyes, and the ‘truth is setting me free’. The foundation on which I based femininity and being a woman was a lie. There was truth in it and I had been taught it too, but it was not God’s truth. I am happy to say that this wrong foundation is crumbling, cracking wide open and falling apart. I am beginning to build on God’s foundation on what it means to be created a woman.

Georgie finished with ‘Until women take hold of their future it will never be fully realised. Embrace your calling – if you don’t fight for it, respond, rise up, embrace willingly then it won’t happen.’ I am called to be a woman of God. He made me and he made me a woman. So I will embrace my femininity (once I’ve figured out what that is) and I will embrace the fact that God made me a woman and not a man!

There’ll be more of this in a future post - perhaps it will be called “Eve”.

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