SheLoves Magazine

So, What Makes A Woman Strong?

“Is what we perceive to be a strong female really just what happens when a woman takes a difficult position, and then holds it? Or is there something more, deeper? “ 

By Kisa MacDonald | Twitter: @kisamac

7:05 a.m.  Facing myself behind floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and a ballet bar.

As I push my body into another thirty seconds of pain, my sleepy brain starts to wonder why I woke up so early for this.

To distract myself, I flip through my internal index of strong women. There is a long, long list of women in my life who are disciplined, faithful, and able to do great things.

I think about some of their lives over the past few days: at least two all-night hospital visits, countless family interventions, rethinking all her plans, moving into a new living space, trying to keep a job, wrestling for some sleep, finding good addiction counselors, balancing the bank account, battling cancer, taking that other anti-depressant, responding to special needs, adjusting to new pregnancies, writing that doctorate thesis, fundraising, and fighting over kids.

I could almost rip the bar off the wall–with all that collective strength. Instead, I gently put my chin up, press back my shoulders, and keep facing my own reflection. It is hard to look at my six-eh-um face, while trying to stay balanced.

So then the philosopher in me begins to ponder: Is feminine strength just an illusion? Is what we perceive to be a strong female really just what happens when a woman takes a difficult position, and then holds it?  Or is there something more, deeper? What does real, pure, genuine, supernatural strength look like? 

I reposition my feet. My mind keeps going: So, what does make a woman strong?

I begin to remember my own tough decisions and unpredictable circumstances. My muscles begin to shake. I point my toes.

I am not that strong, I think.

My body gives up. Being strong feels a lot harder than it looks.

I look around the room. All these other women look like they are more balanced, or at least more awake than me.

I remember my friend who is trying to leave an abusive relationship. She is struggling to regain her mental and emotional balance. Her days are hard.

I look around the room, again.

Sometimes, strength is hidden, elusive, buried deep.

Strength in Weakness

And then I remember something very true: my times of greatest strength have been found when I actually felt very weak.

What makes me strong, is my response to weakness – not just my own, but also those of others.

Those times of vulnerability, hopelessness, loss, pain or despair could be exactly the times when the strengths of who we really are come to light.

I realize I am standing in a room with an incredible group of committed women, who for whatever reason put themselves through the rigorous stretch and strain of this painful exercise.

I am reminded: Strength is gained among others.

Hanging a Painting

Five or six years ago, I had the enormous task of hanging a very large painting at the airport with Tracy Kobus, a talented artist from the Comox Valley. The canvas was massive, about twice the length and four times the width of my body. We struggled together, fumbling to get our feet and the canvas up the small ladder. Somehow, miraculously, we placed that giant piece high above our heads, angling it gently onto two very small hooks.

When we stepped back from the wall, the title stood out: If you don’t change, you won’t grow.

I remember that, and think. Growing in strength is like that. It takes commitment, challenge, creativity, and change.

I finish stretching on the floor. I had woken up just early enough to catch the dawn breaking out. And now, I need to begin climbing through a new day of obstacles.

We are all learning how to gain strength, in one way or another, through uncontrolled circumstances and endless things to get done.  For me, when I am honest and humble, able to be my real self, I know that no matter what I begin facing in my days, my strength comes from above and beyond just me.

I see the four ingredients of commitment, challenge, creativity and change emerging through the women who are standing along that early-morning studio with me. I see those same beautiful traits in the women who are reading these SheLoves posts.

So, my questions for you are:

1. Where does your strength come from?
2. When do you feel most strong?
3. Who gives you strength?
4. How is this strength given (e.g. words of love, time spent, kindness, etc.)?
5. What life changes or choices have you taken that have made you stronger?

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About Kisa:

Kisa completed her law degree earlier last year and is currently finishing her articling year at a non-profit that focuses on law reform, legal research and outreach. She grew up on Vancouver Island but has lived all over: North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. In this next season of life, she hopes to see creative community and access to justice established in Vancouver.

Photo credit: Pinterest via Amanda Yu

Unladylike: Author Interview with Pam Hogeweide

“I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.” –Lydia M. Child, a 19th century women’s rights activist and abolitionist, as quoted in “Unladylike,” by Pam Hogeweide.

By Idelette McVicker | Twitter: @idelette

“I feel a significant and strong connection to my virtual sisters,” wrote Jennifer Luitwieler in her recent post, Six Degrees of Sisterhood.

Can I hear an Amen?!

For me, Pam Hogeweide is one of those virtual sisters. I look forward to the day I may meet Pam in person (at The Justice Conference in Portland at the end of the month, no less!) We were first introduced via email by Kathy Escobar (another virtual sista), but I had been noticing Pam’s writing and tweets around the blogosphere for some time, even before our introduction. I knew she was writing this book, “Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church” and watched the development carefully.

Gender equality is a hot topic, causing much division, and yet, through my own awakening to injustice in its many forms over the last decade, I hoped and prayed this book would shine a bright light into the unnecessary silencing too many women still endure. Personally, I am thankful for my faith community where women’s voices are heard–it’s not even a question–and we can get on with the business of what God uniquely calls us to do on the earth. But I grew up in a silence and a stifling and I know what she’s writing about. Moreso, I hoped her book would bring more language, tools and clarity to the gender justice conversation.

I wasn’t disappointed. Even that first night I slid open my Kindle and began to read Pam’s words, I encountered a wave of freedom in my own heart.

She said:

“In writing this book, I’ve discovered that freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. Women must discover our personhood and our God-given voice and power for ourselves. A good Christian woman must be willing to be unladylike to defy the forces of inequality that have held her back.”

Pam reminded me that I have a responsibility to lean into freedom–not just for myself, but for my sisters. Injustice doesn’t just run away. We have to say, Enough! If I am tired of silencing, I have to take a stand. Plus: If we want to be part of empowering women everywhere, understanding our value–and our equality in the eyes of God–is essential. It’s from this place that we can go on and transform our world.

In “Unladylike,” Pam drew me in with her gracious spirit, comfortable writing style, yet well-researched strength.

Through the lines, I heard a whisper, Another way is possible for our women.

My own reading has been a powerful experience and I really wanted to share it with you, my friends, here on SheLoves. So, I emailed Pam and asked her several questions, hoping you would also catch a glimpse of her heart and her passion and be awakened on your journey. I certainly was.

Conversation with Pam Hogeweide:

Idelette: When did you know—decide, really—that you needed to write this book? What was your tipping point?

Pam: I’d been blogging about six years and began to really wonder if I ought to try writing a book. I looked at the backlog of hundreds of posts I’d written and realized that the topic of women was one of the most written about themes on my blog. It’s also been one of the most controversial. Whenever I have blogged about women in the church and leadership, equality, etc. … my comments spike and the discussion gets quite lively. Passions run high from all points of view, including mine. I realized that this was a subject deep in my bones, something I could write about with wholeheartedness. So when my friend Kathy Escobar urged me to talk with her publisher, I decided to pitch it to him. That’s how Unladylike was born.

Idelette: Why is this your story to tell and who did you write this book for?

Pam: When I first began to reflect on writing about women and the church, the first mental obstacle I had to cross was the fact that I am not a pastor nor an elder. I do not have that story of being banned from following my calling because of my gender. And that’s when it hit me: despite the absence of a leadership call in my life, I have been acutely affected by inequality in the church towards my gender. My womanhood and identity have been profoundly affected and shaped by the messaging of the church that women are to remain in subservient roles. That is my story, and I realized it is the story for many other women, too. Most of us are not called to be pastors or leaders, yet women of faith bump up against what I refer to in the book as “an inner stain glass ceiling,” the personal censorship we put on ourselves out of a sense of lacking power. That’s the story I wanted to tackle and these are the women I wanted to reach, women like me who are ordinary Jesus women scarred from inequality.

Idelette: What do you say to women who experience inequality or have been silenced in church?

Pam: This is a very important question and one that I wrestled with throughout the writing process. Am I going to tell women to leave their faith tribes? In one sense, yes, I do tell women to consider the option of leaving their community of faith if their personhood is being diminished. Otherwise, we are training the next generation of daughters how to remain disempowered in the body of Christ. Yet I am also aware that every woman has her unique story, her unique journey and circumstances. I encourage women to at least empower themselves with knowledge and determine what steps they can take to resist inequality in their lives. I am a strong advocate for resolution rather than acquiescence, which women are such experts at.

Idelette: Did anything surprise you during the process of writing Unladylike?

Pam: I was caught off guard by the awakening of forgotten memories of times I’d experienced the sting of inequality. I’d be writing when something would emerge from hiding. It forced me to pause and allow myself to remember, to relive the discomfort or shame that I’d long forgotten. Some of those memories ended up in the book.

Idelette: Do you have a favorite line or paragraph from the book?

Pam: I have a few favorite passages, but this one was such a delight when it appeared during a writing session. I had fun crafting it:

“I tried hard to follow Jesus with my pleading prayers for him to transform me into a better person, into a good Christian woman. I was chasing a myth and praying for heaven to help me catch her. But I never did. Instead, I caught myself. Being me is the best fitting role I could ever imagine. I am not a good Christian woman. I am a Christ following human being, a unique individual with customized features that are all my own. I have been made in the image of God, my singular life a sliver of the grandness of who God is and what God is like. My femaleness is a part of me, but it is not all of me. I do not have to conform to the image of a good Christian woman; I want to instead, conform to the image of Christ. Jesus was not a good Christian woman either.”  (page 160)

Idelette: What is one thing you’d like readers to remember from Unladylike?

Pam: That we each need to determine our own story and how to resist the polite oppression of women that still flourishes in our faith tribes.

* * *

I have been engaged in the conversation (ok, more of a listener and a learner) around gender justice for quite some time. I have attended two PASCH conferences with its firm roots in biblical equality. I listened to biblical scholar Catherine Kroeger herself explain “headship” and what it actually means. I read my friend Danielle Strickland’s “Liberating Truth: How Jesus Empowers Women.”

Now I would recommend Unladylike to anyone who has ever felt diminished, silenced or less-than inside of their faith tribe, because, for me, in reading it, I had my own personal encounter–a commissioning, if you will–that felt akin to that of Isaiah.

In the commentary on Isaiah 6:7, one writer says this:

” … whatever obstacle there existed to your communicating the message of God to this people, arising from your own consciousness of unworthiness, is taken away.”

In reading “Unladylike” Pam has helped remove some of the obstacles I have felt in my own unworthiness. In an email, I told her this: ”Thank you for making an active stand against the silence, friend, because your resistance has now become part of my freedom.”

I pray it become part of yours too.

You can watch the book trailer of “Unladylike” here:

_________________________________ 

Questions:

• Where do you find yourself in this conversation around gender equality?
• In your own faith tribe, do you feel silenced and held back or empowered and encouraged to be who God created you to be?

_______________________________

About Pam:

Pam Hogeweide is a blogger and writer in Portland, Oregon. She has been published many times in both print and digital publications, including Christianity Today and Geez.

Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church is her first book and is available in print and on Kindle at Amazon.

About Idelette:
I like soggy cereal and I would like to go to every spot on the map of the earth to meet our world’s women.

I dream of a world where no women or girls are for sale. I dream of a world where women and men are partners in doing the work that brings down a new Heaven on earth.

My word for the year is “Roar,” but I have learned it’s not about my voice rising as much as it is about our collective voices rising in unison to bring down walls of injustice.

I have three children and this place–right here, called shelovesmagazine.com–is my fourth baby. I am African, although my skin colour doesn’t tell you that story. I am also a little bit Chinese, because my heart lives there amongst the tall skyscrapers of Taipei and the mountains of Chiufen. Give me sweet chai and I think I’m in heaven. I live in Vancouver, Canada and I pledged my heart to Scott 11 years ago.

I believe in kindness and calling out the song in each other’s hearts. I also believe that Love covers–my gaps, my mistakes and the distances between us. I blog at idelette.com and tweet@idelette.

Photo credit: Katie Tegtmeyer

TGIF: A Pedicure, a Tragic Love Story and My Road to Recovery

On Cleopatra, Bon Iver and taking a fearless moral inventory.

by Tina Francis | Twitter: @teenbug
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It was Canadian Thanksgiving and I was getting a pedicure at the Korean nail salon ten minutes away from my house.

I love pedicures. Who doesn’t?

However, on the rare occasion that I get a pedicure, I ask myself, “Really, Tina? Is this kind of decadence necessary?” I feel an odd cocktail of guilt and pleasure. My overactive imagination conjures up an image of Queen Cleopatra perched on an opulent chaise longue, being fed seedless grapes and fanned with peacock feathers. Not to mention that there’s something oh-so vulnerable about handing someone your feet. (I would have been a hot mess if Jesus wanted to wash my feet! #worstdiscipleever)

In an attempt to ignore the guilt-induced contractions (incidentally, 30 seconds apart), I closed my eyes and leaned deep into the massage chair kneading into my sore lower back.

My brittle state of zen suddenly interrupted by the words:

“I don’t want to lose him. I love him.”

My eyes shot open. I sat up in my chair and tried to look discretely in the direction of the voice. Such a vulnerable confession, in such a public space.

The voice belonged to the nail technician across the room; let’s call her Nat. “Registration for my classes end soon,” Nat said looking up at her client, “If he wants me to move to Montreal, he has to give me an answer soon.”

“What did he say when you told him about your registration deadline?” the girl getting the pedicure inquired. Let’s call her Jen.

Nat: He hasn’t had a chance to reply to my emails yet. He is really busy at work. [Red flag #1]
Jen: Oh … kay …
Nat: It’s expensive for me to keep flying to Montreal.
Jen: Does he visit you?
Nat: He can’t leave work right now because he is trying to get a promotion. [Red flag #2]
Jen: Well, can you share the price of the air ticket?
Nat: He’d love to, but he is paying a big mortgage on his house. [Red flag #3]

This was a classic case of “He is just not that into you.” (<- Video) My stomach dropped.

Nat: I feel like I am losing him …
You never had him, I thought.

Nat: I just need to know if I should register for next semester’s classes.
Please register for the classes, I thought.

Nat: I don’t want to be pushy … but I really need an answer.
You have an answer, I thought.

My heart broke for Nat.

“If he loved you …” Jen paused, “he would give you a proper answer.”

BOOM!

Truth bomb.

Jen knew what was going on. I knew what was going on. The guy sitting in the Starbucks across the street knew what was going on. “He doesn’t love you!” we wanted to yell.

The sobering truth was obvious to everyone but Nat.
_______________________________________________

How many times have you looked at a friend and thought, “You have so much potential. I wish you would just open your eyes and stop making excuses.”

Crazy thought: What would happen if we took our own advice?

When I was in elementary school, my report card had a small section that graded things like punctuality, cleanliness and potential. Even if my report card was mostly peppered with A’s, I always got a B in Potential. “Room for improvement. Not operating at full potential.” My mom would always tap on the column and say, “Imagine if you really applied yourself, Tina?”

Nat was gambling her promising future for a boy who wouldn’t even respond to her emails.  I couldn’t help but wonder what her life would look like if she broke up with Montreal-guy, registered for her classes, kicked butt at school, worked her dream job and waited for real love.

Actually, what would my life look like:
If I cut my losses?
If I worked really hard?
If I stopped blaming my circumstances?
If I made (painfully hard) wise choices?

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
_______________________________________________

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Earlier this week I was listening to a podcast by Andy Stanley called “Recovery Road: Taking Inventory” where he talks about the twelve-step program developed by Alcoholics Anonymous. He highlights Step 4 of the program: “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory.”

He talks about how only the whole truth can bring full recovery. The partial truth only achieves partial recovery.

I thought long and hard about the words “fearless moral inventory”. This would mean exposing all my shortcomings openly before God so that I could get to the root of the problem. Heck, I can’t overcome something I can’t spell out.

Andy asks to complete the sentence:

“The real reason I _________ is because ________.”

Here is a brief snippet from my fearless moral inventory:

The real reason I overeat is because … I’m numbing my pain.
The real reason I tell self-deprecating jokes is because … I don’t love myself.
The real reason I spend hours on the internet is because … I’m running away.
The real reason I don’t give hundred percent at work is because …
I’m not doing what I love.

The answers are scary, but it is such a powerful exercise. Once I stop making excuses, I can start to make progress.

It dawned on me that I could take a “fearless moral inventory” because I am loved. Truly, madly, deeply loved. God loves me: emotional baggage, deep wounds, scars, flaws and all. I could stop kidding myself and just come clean. Stripping down the veneer of half-truths and looking at my ugly truth in the light of God’s unconditional love was liberating, healing and deeply transformative.

I can experience the full embrace of grace when I tell the full truth.

The unvarnished truth sets me free.

______________________________________________________

In honour of Nat’s tragic love story with “Montreal Guy,” here is Bon Iver’s rad (did I just say rad?) version of one of my all-time favourite songs, Bonnie Raitt’s classic “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Enjoy!

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Also, it’s not too late to buy SheLoves Christmas cards! All proceeds are sent to aid the famine relief in East Africa.

It all started when my friend Daniela (@DannySchwartz) was trying to get her son Owen to eat his dinner and the words, “There are starving children Africa” came tumbling out of her mouth. Her husband Ryan piped up, “Well, actually there is a famine.”

This SheLoves project was birthed out of the conviction of one mom sitting at a dinner table. One mom who wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the world to change. Or as she says, “We can’t do everything, but we can all do something.”

I love everything about this! Read, support, buy!

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So dear one… what ugly truth you are running away from today?

1. Recovery begins with a fearless look in the mirror. Why is it so difficult to be completely honest with ourselves?

2. What’s one area of your life that needs a “fearless moral inventory”?

3. Complete the sentence: “The real reason I _________ is because ________”

Love you more than Fig Goat Cheese Pie with Basil, (<- Recipe)

xoxo,
Teen

To read more TGIFs from Tina: Click here.

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My name is Tina. Loved ones call me: Teen.

Words are my chocolate. Music, my caramel. Photography, my bread. Girlfriends, my butter.

Confession: Some girls dream about Manolo Blahniks or their next Hermes bag. Not me. I dream of freshly baked bread, perfectly barbecued meat & steaming bowls of Pho. My dream lover *cue Mariah Carey song* is someone who would read out a menu to me in Barry White’s baritone voice.

I celebrate food, ask for help, interrupt conversations, laugh and cry hard, acknowledge the elephant in most rooms, fight for the underdog and believe in the power of storytelling.

My word for the year is “leap.” If something scares me, I do it.

I was born and raised in Dubai and currently live in the beautiful city of Vancouver, known for some of the best sushi in the world.

World AIDS Day: Change begins with my Whisper

On vanilla Rooibos tea, making a (digital) quilt and waving my arms wildly. 

By Idelette McVicker | Twitter: @idelette

_________________________________________________

It’s not enough for me to cry when I watch the trailer of the movie The Help. Just yesterday crocodile tears started rolling down my face again as I watched the trailer with the girls at LifeWomen. Kinda silly, I know, if you don’t know my story. But you see, the images of maids in uniforms remind me so vividly of the separate toilet in our home in Paarl, South Africa. I remember how my mom washed Flip, the gardener’s plate, spoon, fork and knife and carefully set it away under the sink for him to use again the next time he came around.

I have lived inside the pages of The Help; on a different continent, yes, and in a different time, but I know that story’s whites only pages.

Why do I keep going back to my “old story”?

Because my heart for justice was broken open in that place. I know what it’s like to be completely separated from a story happening right under my nose. I know how easy it is to live parallel to a great injustice and think I’m unaffected.

Now I know differently and this knowing colours my core.

So, there was a story to write today and I felt so tired and I’ve been silent for a while, but I knew I had to write this for this day.

World AIDS Day

That’s why I sat in my chair last night when my eyelids begged me to go to bed. I tried to freewrite my way to this story, but my pen felt like a rock in my hands and my head kept bobbing—so tired—wanting to nod off.

Finally, I made some vanilla rooibos tea and ate (another) Martha Stewart sugar cookie.

Truth is:
- It would have been easier to go to bed.

- It would have been way more comfortable to go to bed.

- It would have been fully justifiable to go to bed.

Problem was: I knew I would have to face my own heart all day today, knowing it’s December 1^st.

I also knew I would have to give account to my God for this day.

December 1st?

- Not because it’s the first day we will crack open the (fair trade—so excited!) Advent calendar.

- Not because it’s the day we might put up the tree.

- Not even because it’s one week before my eldest’s birthday, marking my own advent into motherhood.

No, it’s because on December 1^st, 1995—sixteen years ago—I parked my scooter and with notebook and helmet in hand, walked out onto the plaza at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial in Taipei, Taiwan. 

(Imagine this picture, only on gray day with drizzling rain and hundreds of quilts covering that cemented area.)

On that wintery day in Taiwan, I came face-to-face with the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It was a project originally created by The Names Foundation in 1987 and displayed in Washington, D.C. and finally made its way to Taiwan. This quilt—with each panel about the size of a regular bedspread—was laid out on the public plaza. It was like a whole block of my neighbourhood covered in fabric squares with stories, memories and photographs of loved ones lost to AIDS.

Soft music played over the loudspeakers and I remember walking from one panel to the next, reading message after message.

That year, December 1st became permanently marked on the calendar of my heart.

That dreary day, I read every panel.

I talked to people.

I cried quietly.

I took pictures.

From that day on, I knew AIDS was a place where I had to go stand, sometimes waving madly, so others would take notice; other times just weeping softly because this thing is so big.

In the years since:

- I interviewed Hansen Wu, an AIDS advocate in Taiwan who himself was HIV+ and had lost a loved one to AIDS. We sat in a small tea shop in Taipei and talked T-cells, dignity, human rights and faith.

- I became a fan of Stephen Lewis.

- Then I became an even bigger fan of Stephen Lewis’ Grandmothers Campaign–or GoGo Grannies where grandmothers in North America partner with grandmothers in Africa to give strength and support, so these African granny-heroes may care for the AIDS orphans.

- At last year’s Amahoro conference, I met the beautiful Musa Njoko, a woman who lives with HIV and was literally the first woman in South Africa who shared her story publically. Now she lives her (sometimes very difficult) life to sing and be a testimony to God’s goodness.

- Also in Kenya, I visited an HIV test center run by City Harvest Church and drank sweet tea with women like Becky and Ebby who volunteer their lives to test every person who walks through the door, so others in their community may be safe. This is their heart for God and in their community, where persons with HIV are often shunned, it speaks loudly.

My most honest statement today, however, would be that I haven’t held AIDS close this year. I have been distracted by the many other big things out there.

Then, yesterday, Annie Lennox emailed me.

Ok, she emailed every ONE.org subscriber with an invitation to participate in the (2015) Quilt project.

Quilt? 

Of course I clicked. I read the email, then clicked on the link. Click-click-drag-click and boom! I created a panel for this digital quilt. I just did something. Added my voice. Wrote a pledge. It took about five minutes.

As I read around the site, I realized something: the new AIDS math is astounding me. In a good way!

Current status: 1,000 babies are born with HIV every day.

Prediction: By 2015, that number can be nearly zero.

HOW? By giving 1.4 million pregnant mothers access to treatment that costs 40 cents a day.

The strategy is brilliant: ONE.org is honing in on stopping AIDS where it gets transmitted from mothers to babies. By 2015.

Somehow the numbers didn’t seem eyes-glazing-over overwhelmingly big. Suddenly this HUGE mountain seems kind of movable, with every one of us doing our something. (*Waving arms wildly here.*)

So, today I lift up my ONE voice to this mountain.

Honestly, 16 years ago I couldn’t have imagined reading the words “AIDS” and “end” in the same sentence in my lifetime. But this World AIDS Day, I pledge to stand in that exact possibility—that one day we could live in a world without AIDS.

Here’s what we can do today–simple things that eventually will tip the scale if we all do it:

• Read the facts.
• Make a quilt.
• Write a pledge.
• Buy something (RED).
• And please, let’s stand in this possibility of a world without AIDS today. That’s the place where I’m lifting my prayers up from today onwards.

The possibility still blows my mind a little … #faith #faith #faith

But, I am all for the beginning of the end of this one.

“It can be done.” –ONE.org

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My dear SheLoves sisters, friends and partners-in-change, I’d love to hear:

• When did you first come face-to-face with the story of AIDS?
• How will you honour this day today?
• If you make a pledge or create a quilt, please share it with me. I’d LOVE to see it.

_____________________________________________________

About Idelette:
I like soggy cereal and I would like to go to every spot on the map of the earth to meet our world’s women.

I dream of a world where no women or girls are for sale. I dream of a world where women and men are partners in doing the work that brings down a new Heaven on earth.

My word for the year is “Roar,” but I have learned it’s not about my voice rising as much as it is about our collective voices rising in unison to bring down walls of injustice.

I have three children and this place–right here, called shelovesmagazine.com–is my fourth baby. I am African, although my skin colour doesn’t tell you that story. I am also a little bit Chinese, because my heart lives there amongst the tall skyscrapers of Taipei and the mountains of Chiufen. Give me sweet chai and I think I’m in heaven. I live in Vancouver, Canada and I pledged my heart to Scott 11 years ago.

I believe in kindness and calling out the song in each other’s hearts. I also believe that Love covers–my gaps, my mistakes and the distances between us. I blog at idelette.com and tweet@idelette.

Putting the Fun in Mercy

By Musu Taylor-Lewis | Twitter: @mercycanada

Young women arrive at Mercy Ministries ready to do the hard work necessary to make changes in their lives. They come willing to spend about six months of their lives, so they can concentrate on healing.

The thing is, concentrating on healing takes a lot of energy.

It is emotionally draining to talk about your problems when you’ve spent years drinking (for example), trying not to think about them. It is mentally challenging to replace the negative voices in your head with the truth you’ve learned from scripture, and it may take physical strength to get up at 7am in the morning to prepare for the day or stop yourself from heading to the bathroom after a meal. Every once in a while, in order to keep concentrating so hard, we need respite  from the hard work of healing to restore some of that energy.

Two weeks ago, staff at Mercy Canada surprised the girls with a Mexican fiesta. Staff took over kitchen duties for an afternoon, prepared a Mexican-themed meal, decorated the dining room and had a piñata ready for some fun playtime after the meal.

The girls’ faces said it all. The joyful surprise and relief had one girl moved to tears.

Rest, recreation and free time are all part of the Mercy program, but I realized as I watched all of us relax and have fun, that respite came from the unexpected break in routine. Sleep is scheduled, so there’s enough energy to get the most out of the program. Free time at Mercy can be used to reflect and catch up on assignments. Even recreation is planned so it doesn’t interfere with the work that needs to be done. But the dictionary definition of “respite” is:

a temporary relief from something trying or difficult.

The brief interruption from the work of healing, in the fun of a Mexican fiesta, provided relief from the work of concentrating so hard, provided a moment of lightness for staff and an opportunity for  the girls to simply be  joyful and childlike without trying, or working at it.

It all reminded me of advice from Ecclesiastes 8:15

“So I recommend having fun, because there is nothing better for people in this world than to eat, drink, and enjoy life. That way they will experience some happiness along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun.”

God’s program of healing and wholeness is always perfectly balanced, and so in seasons of concentrated work He recommends spontaneous, healthy doses of fun!

About Musu:

My life is lived out of the calling “to advance Christ-centred work.” I am currently Director of Marketing and Development at Mercy Ministries, working to get the word out about the life-transforming work that takes place here. Prior to my work at Mercy, I directed a Crisis Pregnancy Centre, studied Christianity and Culture at Regent College and co-led women’s programs at my local church. I have four great children and am married to Steven, a gift to me from the Creator.

This is Rebecca.

Of Love, Marriage and Mercy.

By Musu Taylor-Lewis | Twitter: @mercycanada

Friends, who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved? -Solomon 8:5

WHO IS THIS?

This is Rebecca.

As a child: Sexually and physically abused, coerced into having an abortion, embraced promiscuity, heavy drinking and dropped out of school.

This is Rebecca.

As a teen: Brutally raped, she attempted suicide, placed a child for adoption, abused prescription drugs, resorted to self harm and turned her heart away from God.

This is Rebecca.

As a young woman: An unfaithful wife, pushed her husband away, couldn’t care for her children, developed an eating disorder and dismissed from work.

COMING UP FROM THE WILDERNESS.

This is the Rebecca who arrived at Mercy Ministries last September to seek healing. Angry, defiant, weak, defensive, numb and afraid to love.

Her husband Darryl had loved her through her rage, her inability to believe she could be loved, and her obsession with an eating disorder so severe that her heart was giving out.

Together and apart God arranged for their healing.

In the safe haven of Mercy, Rebecca revealed the sexual and physical abuse she had endured through her childhood for the first time, and found a place where she could let go of her shame and her guilt.

For Darryl, God provided a church community to surround him, love him and help him care for their young boys.

Together and apart they begin to a journey of faith and trust in the One who brings transformation.

Rebecca returned home from Mercy, with a new perspective, to a new community and a family united in gratitude to God.

This month, Rebecca and Darryl renewed their marriage vows in a simple ceremony, rich with meaning, and overflowing in love.

Together and apart they commit to live together in a marriage renewed by the love of The Father.

LEANING ON HER BELOVED

This is Rebecca today …

Bringing her abuser to justice, protecting others from abuse, encouraging others in pain, telling her story without shame.

This is Rebecca today …

Caring for her children, holding on to her healing, a part of community and worshipping her God again.

This is Rebecca today … 

Excited about life, grateful, healthy, hopeful and open to loving and receiving love

Friends, this is Rebecca coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved Darryl, together leaning on their beloved Christ.

You can see more photos of their Wedding Vow Renewal here. Thank you, Rachel Ray. 

About Musu:

My life is lived out of the calling “to advance Christ-centred work.” I am currently Director of Marketing and Development at Mercy Ministries, working to get the word out about the life-transforming work that takes place here. Prior to my work at Mercy, I directed a Crisis Pregnancy Centre, studied Christianity and Culture at Regent College and co-led women’s programs at my local church. I have four great children and am married to Steven, a gift to me from the Creator.

Image credit: Rebecca and Darryl, by Rachel Ray.

Getting Real with Trisha: On Sweden and Experiencing the Effects of the Nordic Model of Prostitution Law

Thoughts and observations from a society where women and girls are not for sale.

By Trisha Baptie | Twitter: @trisha_baptie
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“We had an art show/contest with 200 pieces of art. There was a equal amount of men and women represented and no one knew who had painted what. There were no names on the art and the top 50 pieces were to be picked and put on long-term display. We were surprised by the findings: of the fifty picked, forty were from men. Which suggested what many thought; men were in fact better at art. Or, did it mean something different? Did it mean that men had created the filter in which we judged what ‘good art’ was and that was in fact what needed to be changed.” –Mr. Claes Borgstrom, former Gender Equality Ombudsman, Sweden.

This is the story Claes Borgstrom started his portion of a presentation I was a part of last week in Stockholm. I was part of a two-day program put on by the Swedish Institute for international journalists that looked at the Swedish model of prostitution law and combating human trafficking.

It was a jam-packed two days that representatives from the National Police Board, Prostitution Unit (exiting services), Council of the Baltic Sea States, Former Gender Equality Minister and others presented to us. I recorded the whole two days and will be putting together audio clips together in the coming weeks. What spoke to me the most about society in Sweden, however, were the Swedes themselves.

The Impact of Gender Equality

I acknowledge that being in a major city like Stockholm, I did not see how smaller towns fared, and only being there for about a week I only scratched the surface on all the issues. That said, I was intentional about talking to a wide variety of residents about the laws and culture–like talking to some high school students about what they thought of their country’s laws. I must say what struck me about the young women was their confidence … the fact not one wore a stitch of make-up. In fact, I noticed that throughout my whole time there. I will right here interject some general statements about my observances on my time there, remembering I was in Government offices a good majority of the time, went grocery shopping, ate out, interacted on transit and such.

Women don’t wear make up. Not even kidding. What I noticed more was when women were in fact wearing it.

Heels, or rather the current trend of stilettos that have women from all walks of life and professions here in North America cramming our tender tootsies into them … women don’t wear them there. Again, I could count the number of women wearing stilettos. Once relegated to the uniform of prostituted women, sometimes it seems like all women are “required” to wear them now.

European women are known for their fashion sense. Swedish women are no different. What surprised me about their wonderful fashion sense was not what they wore, but how much material was involved with their clothing.

Was it because of the adverts they saw?

A friend noticed a gym advertisement portraying a woman in real gym clothing, lifting weights as one would in a work-out. Not one thing about that ad was hypersexualized. In fact, it seemed cars, food, liquor, gym memberships, cell phone providers, etc, often had women in their ads, but not any more than men. Still, it was not women’s sexuality that was selling the product. Rather the product seemed to sell itself, the models were just in the ad to hold it up or point it out. It was not the commodification of women’s bodies that sold the item.

I saw rows and rows of magazines and although they were complete gibberish to this non-Swedish speaker, the pictures spoke volumes. It was not rows of perfect bodies in too tight clothing that pushed the cleavage boundary. It was rows of women, some recognizably famous, other not so, but the common theme was their average and non-manicured beauty.

When talking to the high school students, they were baffled at the thought of their male counter parts watching porn, or treating them like some rap videos teach our boys to treat girls. Does flirting happen? Yup. Does teenage sex happen? Yup. What they did know though is that prostitution is self-harm. Not even kidding. That is what they themselves called it–and taught me. It’s self-harm. Prostitution is self-harm and men who buy women, well, shame on them.

Shame: Doing Wrong Against Society

That’s a word they use freely in Sweden about men who buy sex. Shame.

I bristled at that at first, but as they talked I realized the shame they mean is the shame that an act carries with it that is in fact a wrong done against all of society. It is a shame that says, “This is wrong. You know it’s wrong and you know why it’s wrong. (It’s against gender equality and is a form of power imbalance and thus a form of violence against women.) And why would you do this horrible thing to vulnerable people?”

It was the shame that changed behavior.

Which is exactly what the Swedish laws on prostitution aimed to do: change behaviors. Lawmakers set out to change the way men see women. Better yet, they changed the filter in which women are viewed.

Core of the Problem

I always thought feminism was about standing up to patriarchy, standing up to men’s entitlement. Legalizing or fully decriminalizing prostitution does not do either of those things. Adopting the Swedish model of law does. It’s the true feminist embodiment of gender equality and is the step Canada must take.

All the systemic reasons women get involved in prostitution are not in fact the core reason. The core–the heart of prostitution–is because of gender inequality. I have to wonder: What other forms of inequality can we end by starting with saying our women and girls are not for sale?

Check out these interesting articles on Swedish society, gender equality and the Nordic model of Prostitution Law:

In Sweden, Men Can Have It All, The New York Times

About Trisha
Trisha Baptie is Executive Director of Honour Consulting and founding member of EVE (formerly Exploited Voices now Educating). In 2008 she won BC’s Courage to Come Back Award for her bravery in transitioning to a healthier lifestyle, for giving the murdered women of Vancouver a voice through her trial coverage of Vancouver’s serial killer and for her ongoing activism. Follow Trisha’s tweets at @trisha_baptie or friend her on facebook. She recently founded EVE (formerly Exploited Voices Now Educating.)

MaryAnne Connor: The Woman Behind the NightShift Story

Thanks to a Vancouver snowstorm, this tenacious woman unlocked her doors and said yes to serving and loving Surrey’s homeless.

By Christi Walter

MaryAnne Connor, or “Mac” to pretty much everyone, is a blonde bombshell with a warm heart, a passion for people and a dogged sense of purpose for her life. She’s a former self-made business woman who gave it up all up to give homeless and struggling people in Whalley friendship and a solid meal every day. She’s never looked back.

It all started with one fated snowstorm. In January 2004, Mac was a Vancouver-based business-owner who came to Surrey once a week to attend church. At the time, she was volunteering at a Granville-based street ministry called Lifeline Outreach. “I was doing marketing (for them) because that was my gift, so I helped with fundraising initiatives, but I didn’t get my hands dirty,” she says. “To be honest with you, if I had to drive through this area, I’d make sure my doors were locked.”

Keys

But the news was reporting a terrible incoming snowstorm and, concerned about people on the streets, Mac asked the pastor of a Whalley-based church whether someone should keep the church open overnight as a shelter. “He proceeded to drop the keys into my hand and said he would agree to have the doors open, provided I was responsible.”

Mac felt more than a little overwhelmed. “I just thought it was a good idea–someone should do something–but not me,” she said. “So, all of a sudden I had his keys and I couldn’t say no. How could I?”

“I just started calling everyone I knew, ” she said, telling them: “I need blankets, I need food, I’m opening up the church tonight and I need help!” MaryAnne and a handful of others took the nightshift all week to keep people from sleeping in snow-drifts. She remembers: “About the second night the Lord really broke my heart, because I realized the people I was meeting, were people just like you and me.”

Caring for the One

A few of the other volunteers kicked a girl out for shooting heroin in the bathroom. Concerned the girl would freeze to death, Mac brought her back in and rubbed her hands and feet to warm them. The next day, that same girl gathered up cleaning supplies and cleaned the bathroom she had shot up in.

“She cleaned that place top to bottom and hung up a cheap little shower curtain,” Mac recalls. “Just girly’d it up.” The girl is in recovery today. “She’s like a daughter to me,” Mac adds.

Open Door

The following Monday, Mac was supposed to fly to Las Vegas and present at a business conference, but she found herself torn between her high-powered job and a deep calling she now felt to help her friends in Whalley. She says: “I felt God had kind of opened the door and said, ‘Now what do you think of this?”

Mac Connor chose to walk through that door, promptly cancelling her trip, quitting her job and founding Nightshift Ministries, named after her all-nighters with the homeless.

Nightshift now feeds 100 to 500 homeless and struggling people in downtown Whalley daily. Volunteers serve meals, hand out clothing and shoot the breeze with struggling community members, 365 days a year. Mac felt strongly led by God to keep the organization non-denominational, and, true to her vision, she now has teams from several different churches helping out on a weekly basis.

Dreams

But Nightshift wants to do more than simply meet basic needs and build relationships with hurting people. The organization currently offers referrals to rehab programs, and Mac plans to open a counselling centre and provide medical services. She also dreams of building supported-housing facilities to help re-integrate people into society. “People on the street right now, whether they’re just poor and have a roof over their head but don’t make enough money to exist or feed themselves, or whether they’re absolutely homeless, didn’t get there overnight,” she says.

In the beginning, not everyone in the community shared her passion for the down-and-out people of Surrey. Shop owners in the area have complained about the large numbers of homeless hurting their business. As a former business owner herself, Mac understands their concerns, but she believes: “We should be working together to do something.”

Two worlds

When Nightshift was just a small pack of volunteers serving food out of a church, Mac remembers seeing the Scotiabank tower across the street and a crack-shack close by. “I would stand there at night looking at the corporate world, and watching all these people going into the crack-shack,” she says. “I remember thinking ‘God, something needs to be done. Where is all the money, where are all the hands, where are the people who can fix this?’”

But change is happening. Mac says the business community has come alongside the organization in a powerful way. “They are now helping almost as much as the church community,” she says, “which is pretty amazing.”

I remember when I first heard Mac Connor speak at a local church service about investing her life in the kind of people who would make most of us uncomfortable … People like drug addicts and homeless men and women. I will never forget her words to describe her time spent with friends in Whalley. She said: “I’ve met Jesus there.”

To learn more about Nightshift Ministries and how you can help, go to www.nightshiftministries.org ( They also have a breathtaking blog!)

About Christi:
Christi has a Communications degree from Trinity Western University. She loves stories and feels privileged to have heard some truly incredible ones while interning at Childcare Canada. Christi hopes to figure out how she can best use her gifts to impact the world around her. Her greatest passions are writing and travel. She’s just come back from recent travels in Australia.

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Photo credits: Christi, by Cecilia Flaming

On a Pricey Pink Frappucino and Facing my Humanity

“He was asking for change. Quite literally for coins. But for some reason it felt like he was asking for proof of the change I felt had taken place in my heart. ”

By Shelagh Hardern

When I came back from Nicaragua this last time, I was a changed woman. I knew that. But the realization of it broadsided me within the first 16 hours of being back on Canadian soil.

Let me back up a little, and by a little, I mean two days. On my flight from Bluefields to Managua, the chargers for both my camera and my cell phone were stolen. I know this because the previous night, with only one available socket in my hotel room, I had chosen to charge the camera rather than my phone and so can safely assume I had to pack my cellular charger. (I’m usually meticulous about these things, so the notion that I would forget it, while still possible, is a more far-reaching one.) Besides, my suitcase was pulled aside to be searched by security. In Nicaragua, the owner of the suitcase needs to be there to witness it. Everything was there when I left. But that’s not the point.

Back in Canada

Having landed back in Canada with no real way to communicate, I did the logical thing. First thing in the morning, I hopped on a bus, went to the mall and bought a new charger. Then while I waited for my friend to come and meet me, I walked to the nearest Starbucks, bought myself a Vanilla Awake Tea Latte and settled into the corner by the outlet to charge my phone. I pulled out my journal and started the task of unpacking the events of the previous week. And then it hit me:

I was holding two days’ worth of Nicaraguan wages in my right hand.

Minimum wage there is 50c per day, which works out to two dollars and fifty cents and I just spent five bucks on a gourmet tea without thinking. As I sat there I promised myself it would be the last time.

Fast forward.

Four weeks later I’m downtown, indulging in some quality down time. My meeting had been canceled and I wasn’t set to meet up with my friends for a number of hours. It was just me. I had predetermined that this would be an appropriate occasion to treat myself to an “Ice Princess.” To clarify, an Ice Princess isn’t an actual drink. It’s a Starbucks creation that gets its name from the awesome bright pink colour and the fact that you become a princess the moment the order begins to flow out of your mouth:

Grande half raspberry, full white mocha, blended crème syrup frappuchino

And if that isn’t enough, the princess status is affirmed by the price tag of this decadent creation.

Ice Princess

As I stood on the corner across from the Starbucks, waiting for the light to change and eyeing the available seating on the patio, I heard a man’s voice. As I turned, I realized he was speaking to me:

“Do you have any change?”

He was asking for change. Quite literally for coins. But for some reason it felt like he was asking for proof of the change I felt had taken place in my heart. Not “Do you have any change?” But rather: “Have you changed?” A challenge to put my money where my mouth is and act out of compassion, to live out of my changed heart. As if on autopilot I heard myself politely telling the man I didn’t have any and then the light changed and I started across the road.

It was a bald-faced lie. I didn’t end up going into that particular Starbucks. I had become every bit the cold-hearted Ice Princess. Even I didn’t want to sit and have coffee with me in that moment.

There’s a little voice in me that says because I can’t give to every homeless man, woman and child I shouldn’t give to this one. There’s another voice that tells me it’s likely a scam; that this man isn’t hungry but rather is looking for money to buy drugs or alcohol. The voice of Truth tells me that if I have to justify my actions, then I know they were wrong.

I wish I could tell this story with a different ending. I wish I could tell you that if it happened again, things would be different.

About Shelagh:

I live my life at something close to ludicrous speed. I am currently serving as the Children’s Ministry Director for World Harvest Church, I work two jobs and have a renovation business with my good friend. I’m busy all the time, doing things I love, with people I love for the God I love. It is a full and abundant life that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Life, Interrupted

“What I experience as interruptions—outages of my expectations—my fellow Chennaites often take in stride.”

By Stacy Wiebe

People in my adoptive city of Chennai, India live with their windows open. Neighbor kids dart in and out of each other’s houses. On the roads, drivers tap-tap-tap their horns to let you know they’re behind you. In church services and at weddings, children run up and down the aisles (and no one’s too distracted).

Our doorbell rings 10 times more often than it did in the US: the water delivery guy, the ironing lady, the landlord escorting a barefoot electrician in to change our lightbulbs—all within half an hour.

The 10 million people of this city are largely unruffled by the constant hum of human activity.

I’ve got a lot to learn from them.

North Americans, quite often, are planners. We like to be proactive, set goals. And when our goals get blocked and our plans get changed, we are not happy. The infrastructure and choices that frame life in North America give us at least the illusion that we’re in control. Life and time and people are things that our books tell us must be managed.

Indians tend to be fantastic adapters and improvisers. They may set goals, but they accept obstacles as well, and are ready to make adjustments. Life and time and people are often simply enjoyed in present tense.

Adapting

In our city, the electricity goes out daily for 1-4 hour intervals. When it went off in the grocery store today, there were no gasps; the shoppers just carried on, squinting at the shelves in the dark.

What I experience as interruptions—outages of my expectations—my fellow Chennaites often take in stride.

The last three years in India have been forming me into a more whole person as I see both the values and the blindspots in myself through the eyes of another culture.

Dance

It’s a dance, balancing goal-orientation with people-orientation, responding gracefully to interruptions, especially when they come in human form. Jesus is the only one who’s gotten it exactly right. When the unsightly, the broken and the desperate clamored for His time and touch, He turned towards them and gave them His full attention. He was never in a hurry. He made plans, but changed them as easily. When He suggested the disciples go away with Him for some prayer and downtime, and a huge crowd ran ahead to meet them, His heart was moved to speak with them and give all 5,000 of them dinner. Only after that did He resume His pursuit of solitude.

Another time, Jesus was on His way to Jairus’ house to heal his sick daughter, and He stopped to bring inner healing to the woman who touched His robe. Meanwhile, Jairus’ daughter died. But the delay provided an opportunity to draw out Jairus’ faith and demonstrate His power in speaking her back to life.

So, with Jesus-as my teacher and India as my classroom, I’m learning. I can view people as goal-blockers or as people to love. I can choose to be present. To keep going in the dark. To spot opportunities in the detours. To allow delays to remind me that God’s in charge. To keep the windows of my soul open wide.

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Your thoughts?

• No matter what culture or continent we’re from, our personalities may tend towards task-orientation or people-orientation. How do you balance these in your life?
• What interruptions can you welcome in Jesus’ name?

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About Stacy:

Stacy Wiebe likes biriyani, books and things that grow. She’s lived in Chennai, India for the past three years, writing and speaking with WOW and other non-profits.

Image credit: Woman and baby on Ganges River, by Jordi Boixareu