As my hands clutched the wheel of my grandma-style Camry, I found myself whispering a prayer. I caught myself a bit off guard, because with the deconstruction of faith came an absentee prayer life. I simply couldn’t trust that the way I had been taught to pray was helpful for anyone, so I nervously and rebelliously checked out for awhile. Yet, here I was, in my car barrelling down the highway toward the third-largest city in my state whispering one request, “Please help me be a woman of valor…”
At that very moment, grief-stricken people were filing into pews and hovering around screens while they painfully awaited saying last goodbyes to our beloved Rachel Held Evans. I can’t speak for others, but Rachel walked with me through a time of darkness when a lot of others couldn’t, simply because they didn’t know the path. In the aftermath of three years spent trying to engage my prior church about my experience, I came to grips with the fact that I endured spiritual abuse, which spiraled quickly into PTSD. I was angry at God and those who represented him, and I felt like I had been groomed by Him. Did He create me so I could worship Him, in spite of my circumstance? Was I seriously called to praise Him in all things? If so, He felt very selfish and prideful, and I didn’t want anything to do with Him.
Oh, but I loved Him… and the thought of leaving Him entirely shattered my heart. So I sat in doubt and frustration, and the tension nearly killed me. But then, with her sweet southern accent, in walked Rachel.
Rachel Held Evans taught me that I was not alone. She taught me that you can engage very hard and horrific topics with grace and understanding. She taught me that people are bewilderingly beautiful, and that many of us are reeling in pain. She taught me that there is power in those stories, and that they are all knit together in a bigger story that is still unfolding before our very eyes. She taught me that the Christianity I experienced wasn’t representative of the God I loved, and I could trust Him. She taught me that there were safe places to ask a lot of hard questions, and that it’s no less safe if there are no answers. She taught me what it means to be a woman of valor. Each time I consumed her written and spoken words, she whispered, “Carry on, Warrior.”
So at one o’clock in the afternoon on June 1, 2019, while Audrey Assad sang “Wounded Healer” to a crowd of broken hearts, I sat in a chair at the front of a public library conference room ready to share my story publicly for the first time. #MeToo Springfield sponsored a training workshop for local church leaders and asked if I would read my personal experience and allow area pastors to ask questions. Though the idea terrified me, I know there is power in a story, and I wanted to be faithful to share mine in a way that is used for good. They contacted over 100 churches in the city by sending letters, personally inviting their leadership teams to attend the training. “We could have two or two hundred,” the president of the organization said with an unknowing shrug as I inquired about the size of the class.
But they had zero.
When I looked out among the crowd, I saw supportive faces. But I saw no pastors. Instead, I saw one church with two female representatives (the Connections Coordinator and a member of the Board of Directors). I saw a Christian woman who earnestly wanted to learn more. I saw a female representative of a local domestic violence shelter. I saw the husband of the event’s coordinator. I saw a man in a polo… who I thought was a pastor, but later in the event, he announced to the room that he had simply forgotten his bag earlier in the day and came back to retrieve it.
There are so many things wrong with this picture, but I’m not ready to unpack them all. Instead, I want to paint a broader picture of what was happening in the world that day.
The day before, The Houston Chronicle released another part of their Abuse of Faith series that exposed major scandals with covering up abuse on the Baptist mission field. Albert Mohler offered public statements about this critical moment for the Southern Baptist Convention. Sadly, it was not in relation to major abuse cover-ups, but in response to women preaching. He “never thought [he] would see this day.” Twitter exploded because Beth Moore said sexism existed, and victims of assault were crying out for their own justice, though no one in power seemed to care. And in the mix of this tumultuous dialogue at a national level, I stood in front of a room to speak about these issues, in a city with churches on every corner, and I looked out at six people–the only people in a city of 167,000 residents who wanted to attend. Four of them were women. One was with his wife. One forgot his bag.
When I found out that the #MeToo workshop and Rachel’s funeral were going to happen a the same time, I decided I would speak boldly in Rachel’s honor–embodying all she taught me. I won’t lie, as I looked out on a room so bare, the thought crossed my mind, “I’m missing my mentor’s funeral… for this?” But then I realized there was no better way to truly embody eschet chayil. To be a woman of valor is to do even the mundane or easily overlooked with purpose and strength. To be a Proverbs 31 woman is not to be a domestic saint, but to march forward in every day with a heroic battle cry. “Friends, cheer one another on with the blessing,” Rachel urges us, “celebrating everything from promotions, to pregnancies, to acts of mercy and justice, and honoring everything from battles with cancer, to brave acts of vulnerability, to difficult choices, with a hearty ‘eshet chayil!’–woman of valor.”
Though yesterday may have looked like a failure. Though it stirred in me even deeper concerns about the state of our churches. Though the brave, quiet voices seem drowned out by the louder, arrogant ones, I can almost hear Rachel looking upon our unattended event saying, “You go, girls!” And that gives me the courage to press on.
this wordy world 