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I am a recovering perfectionist. I like rules, rituals, and traditions. I do well with clear expectations and strong boundaries. I like knowing what things are and what boxes they fit in. I expect strict and effective justice, as if that can be accomplished in our world.
I know, we have heard it a thousand times before: we are God’s beloved children. We have heard it so many times now that it can roll off us a little too quickly instead of resting on us; this fact that every unique gift we enjoy is because of the Fatherhood of God and our identity as his child, a daughter before him. But I have had to struggle and grapple to really believe that I am a beloved daughter, and so my faith in this truth today is one of my greatest gifts and joys.
I am at the cemetery with a birthday cake. I am three years old. The cake is white and the candles are red. My mom and I are blowing them out and singing happy birthday, hushed so we don’t disrupt a family nearby. We keep a small garden shovel and watering can in the trunk so we can always take care of the flowers. My mom is 30 years old. My dad will always be 27.
Like many girls, I assumed my mother's identity until I discovered my own. My mother was my first example of a strong, career-driven woman who did not put her husband or her children on the altar of sacrifice. Although I admire her personal achievements, it is my mother's thirst for God in the sacraments that was my childhood inspiration.
Too often women are reduced to their emotional life which – while beautiful –does not encompass all that we are.
God wanted to use me to do great things. My womanhood (or what I thought it meant then) for his glory.
I began to wonder if my girlhood vision of femininity was just the stuff of fiction, as fantastical as dragons and magic spells. I became aware of the myriad ways I did not fit the feminine ideal of the culture around me. I began to wonder: if womanhood is a narrow box, shaped only for the quiet, the docile, the delicate, is there room in womanhood for me?