“She’s never worked a day in her life.”
“At least I don’t just drop my kids off at daycare.”
“She’s one of those annoying Attachment Parenting moms.”
“She’s one of those annoying Babywise moms.”
“No kids? And that’s on purpose?”
“I’ll be praying that God brings a man into your life soon.”
Let’s face it. We’ve all been on the giving and receiving end of jabs like these. Most of us just don’t have tens of thousands of twitter followers and a national TV audience to catch us in the act.
Though Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen has twice apologized to Ann Romney for saying that the stay-at-home mother of five boys had “never worked a day in her life,” her remarks have triggered yet another round of women-at-war stories as reporters, pundits, and bloggers continue to tout the importance of women voters in the 2012 election.
while strategists from the Left have been using the “war on women” narrative surrounding the birth control debate to rally women to their cause, strategists from the Right are hoping this latest spar in the so-called “mommy wars” will draw sympathetic moms to the Romney family and the Republican party.
Frankly, I’m tired of both sides using violent imagery to describe the difficult decisions that I, and my sisters, make every day, and I’m tired of seeing those decisions reduced to bumper sticker ideologies that can be exploited for political gain.
Being a woman is much more complicated than that. The decisions we make—for ourselves, for our families, for our churches, for society—rarely fall into neat and tidy liberal or conservative categories. The boxes we check in the voting booth reflect only a small part of who we are, and like a lot of things, they usually represent something of a compromise.
But the war imagery seems to work, and I suspect it’s because it appeals to the same insecurities and impulses that get us gossiping about one another after PTA meetings and lead us to say things as cruel as Hilary Rosen’s remarks under our breath or among friends more often than we care to admit. (Unkindness goes both ways. The Catholic League has been criticized for tweeting that “Lesbian Dem Hilary Rosen tells Ann Romney she ever worked a day in her life. Unlike Rosen, who had to adopt kids, Ann raised 5 of her own.”)
When I search my own heart, I confess I get a fleeting sense of reassurance when I dismiss another woman’s decisions simply because they do not look like my own. Insecurities I have about my decision to delay parenting, for example, are momentarily assuaged when look down my nose at the frazzled young mother of four, struggling to get her toddler to stop crying in the cereal aisle at Wal Mart. “At least I’ve made better decisions than that,” I think.
But as a follower of Jesus, this attitude is unacceptable.
As followers of Jesus, we are committed to peace—both in our actions and with our words.
As followers of Jesus, we believe that God’s presence is not limited to a single sphere but fills every place—from kitchens to classrooms to boardrooms to nurseries to assembly lines to the cereal aisle at Wal Mart—and that a woman committed to loving God and her neighbors can bring glory to the Father no matter her circumstances.
And as followers of Jesus, we are people of grace—grace for ourselves, grace for one another, grace even for our enemies.
So my challenge for Christian women is this: If there must be a war, let’s refuse to provide the ammunition. Let’s stick to our convictions, yes, but let’s not allow our differences to divide us or be exploited as mere spoils in a political war.
When a pundit takes to Twitter to belittle Ann Romney, let’s un-follow.
When Rush Limbaugh gets on the radio and calls Michelle Obama “fat” or Sandra Fluke a “slut,” let’s change the station.
When we find ourselves in disagreement about whether the government should require insurance companies to cover contraception, let’s drop the militaristic language of a “war against women” or a “war against religion” and speak instead with civility and peace.
And when we’re tempted to roll our eyes and make an unkind remark about another mom, another coworker, another classmate, or another leader, let’s hold back, for if the real battle is indeed a spiritual one, it can be won or lost in whispers.
Rachel Held Evans is a popular blogger and the author of Evolving in Monkey Town (Zondervan 2010) and the forthcoming A Year of Biblical Womanhood (Thomas Nelson, 2012). She always has a lively conversation going on at rachelheldevans.com.
Eduardo Verastegui, the Hispanic actor who turned his life around and starred in the 2007 gem Bella, now has another starring role – albeit in a short film that will likely never make its way into theaters.
Verastegui plays a ringmaster in The Butterfly Circus, one of ten finalists in The Doorpost Film Project, an annual competition of short films whose purpose is “to encourage truth-seeking visionaries by honoring their creativity as filmmakers, serving them in the context of building community and sharing their discoveries with the world so that others may have hope.”
Also starring in the film are Doug Jones, who has played fantastical characters in Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and will also be playing a yet unannounced role in the upcoming Hobbit movies. And making his film debut is Nick Vujicic, a real-life evangelist who has no arms or legs.
Kay Warren has struggled with low-level depression most of her life. The co-founder of Saddleback Church, Warren assumed that joyful living was meant for other people—people like her husband, Rick, who she says has a naturally buoyant, "joyful, Tigger-like" personality. As a self-described Eeyore, Warren didn't think being joyful was part of her personality.
"I used to think life came in waves," Warren told me in a recent phone conversation. "Hard times, and then good times; back and forth." But she's realized the highs and lows run through our lives life on more-or-less parallel tracks. "In every moment of our lives, there is beauty, truth, honor, love. And at the same moment, there is an ache in our hearts for something else. People are dying. Relationships are ending." On the day of President Obama's inauguration, Warren was present as Rick gave the invocation: a real "high" for the Warrens. "But at the same time," Warren says, "a loved one was struggling with a mental illness. On the same day!"
Warren's new book, Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn't Enough (Revell), which was released earlier this month, grew out of a personal revival in recent years as she discovered what it meant to live with joy—which she says is built more upon a settled assurance about who God is and a conscious choice to praise God in every circumstance than upon whether circumstances in life are going smoothly.
"Happiness is built on happenings," Warren told me. "Joy, on the other hand, is about connecting the eternal to the internal so that we can interpret our externals in ways that allow us to say, 'everything around me may not be all right—but I'm all right.'"
This is a striking claim coming from a woman who has encountered tremendous suffering in the past years. Warren has had two different forms of cancer, a daughter-in-law with a serious brain tumor, a premature grandchild, and loved ones suffering from mental illness. "Suffering does give one an appreciation for joy … those who have suffered have been given the opportunity to recognize the limitations of ourselves and to know God in our darkest days." Likewise, Warren's work in the developing world—especially as an advocate for orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS—has shaped her perspective:
"These people are my most powerful joy-mentors. I have been humbled to my core at the depth of passionate worship I have seen in places where the worshipers are hungry, in tattered clothes, taking in AIDS orphans. This is not to glorify poverty—we must work to alleviate it. But these people, who have experienced tremendous suffering—like Paul, like Jesus—know what it's like to walk through this life with its losses, imperfections, struggles and still live a vibrant passionate life of confident faith that overcomes the anxiety, depression, and worry."
When speaking to groups, Warren often asks her audience to raise their hands if they know two people who truly live out James 1:2, "counting it joy" when they face trials. Most people raise their hands. Then she asks how many know 5, or 10, or 25 such people. Pretty soon, no hands are left in the air. But Warren is convinced that joy in suffering to be the biblical expectation for Christian life—that joy is the Christian's "norm." That's why she's hoping that the book's message will take a hold for other women who, like her, once felt that "joy was for other people." She hopes they will come to experience joy: "the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things," as their "birthright through the Holy Spirit."
In the book, Warren talks about "joy conservation." Joy can seep away through a million little cracks every day, she says. Joy conservation aims to plug those cracks—maybe by avoiding habits that you know to drain your joy, maybe by determining not to be bothered by little things, like someone taking your parking space. "You can't change other people, but you can change you," Warren says. Living in the moment, practicing gratitude, and determining to praise God whether in the midst of pain or pleasure—these are some of Warren's tried-and-true methods to finding true joy. Warren is hopeful that this book will also spark a conversation about mental illness in the church.
"Those who find life unbearable need the comfort and the arms of the church—they need our assurance and confidence in God to bear them up. Until we were touched by mental illness, I didn't realize how pervasive it is."
As for Warren herself, she says rediscovering the biblical concept of joy has changed her.
"I'm closer than I was before," she says. "I'm not there—but I'm getting closer to James 1:2."
It’s a pretty cool thing, this Doorpost deal. I served as a judge for the final films a couple years ago, and was very impressed with what I saw. I have only seen a couple of this year’s finalists so far, and haven’t yet been wowed, but hope to be as I watch more in the coming days.
I’m not serving as an official judge this time around, but I am “judging” the films as a viewer – and so can you. All you have to do is log in to the site, watch all 10 films, and you too can play a role in deciding which film will win the $100,000 grand prize. But hurry – online viewing and voting ends on Sept. 16, and the awards banquet will be held Sept. 19 in Nashville.
