Ladders and Walls!

I spent the better part of three hours reconnecting with a friend yesterday and it opened my eyes to a ton of things I had either forgotten, or dismissed. One of which is how women need to remember how to be women.

It's really pretty funny, cuz I was a huge feminist growing up. Trying to prove all the time that I could do anything a guy could do! After I found out in climbing the ladder to success, my ladder was leaning up against the wrong wall, I fell rather fast to the ground and had to start rethinking my live and what I was really after. So many of us just stay on the ladder, even when we see that it's not working out the way we had dreamed. I'm thankful for my fall, now, not so much when it was happening.

I started to learn something about the way we women are made and don't think I've shared this before so here we go with a few things we know as women, but might have forgotten!

We were made as caregivers! It is something that comes as easy as breathing. Now, some of us are better at it than others and that's fine. We are social and want to connect everyone to everything and in the process we care about others. When I fell off my ladder and started getting real with myself and God, I found out I was pretty dang good at this caregiver stuff. I found this out very quickly after I started working at the soup kitchen. I got to looking and low and behold, 95% of my volunteers that came in and cooked and cared for the people, were women. The 5% that were men, were my board leaders, food pick up and maintenance.

Another case in point story. I was completely blown away one day when I had cleaned the parsonage, played in the yard, and had dinner ready for Preacher man when he got home. The look on his face when he walked through the house and smelled dinner, was worth an amount that I still can't put a price on! I had shown care for him by doing what was becoming my job. In all honestly, it has always been my job. I had balked against it for so many years, cuz I was a woman with more education than you could shake a stick at! Anyone could take care of a house, I wanted to climb that dang ladder that was leaning up against the wrong wall! 

This has been part of my wake up call from God. My job is to care for my husband, AKA Preacher man! Because I am saying ok to this God given design, He is blessing me with a ministry! I am freed up enough to be able to sit down with others and listen to where they are on their spiritual journey and walk beside them. Just in the past week, I have shared in tears of joy, calmness that has come straight from God, frustration that has been self made, and rekindled a relationship that I believe will turn into something so much bigger than either of us can get our heads around right now! All I really did was be available to listen, which is a God given gift (those of you who know me, have seem the change!). 

To think it all started when I fell off the ladder that was leaning up against the wrong wall and I allowed God to reshape me into the woman he had planned all along!