As promised, I am posting what I wrote for my student's scrapbook. This started out as a letter, but as I was writing, it turned into a prayer, so I went back and changed the whole piece to a prayer for my student's future. For this posting, I removed my student's name from the prayer (as indicated by the ---), but otherwise, for better or worse, here are the words that my student will carry with her as part of her scrapbook:
Father God, I lift up --- as she steps into another chapter of her life and her walk with you. I pray that you would give her the courage to passionately pursue the dreams that you have planted in her heart and that she would never find satisfaction in anything less than your best for her. I pray that you would give her the strength to stand firm in the face of the enemy’s challenges, using the shield of faith to protect her from his arrows and the sword of the spirit to hold him at bay. Father, I pray that you would deepen her trust in you, and that she would never waiver in her belief that you know what you’re doing even if she doesn’t see your entire plan.
Lord God, I pray for --- to follow the example of Jesus by loving big and loving much. I do not ask you to protect her from pain and heartbreak, but instead I pray that when she feels let down by the world that you would walk with her through her tears, purifying and restoring her heart so that she would grow from her pain and not be broken by it. In the same vein, Lord, I pray that you would teach --- to forgive truly and completely as you forgive us. Teach her to walk in your grace, free from all anger, bitterness, and pride that the enemy would use to hinder her heart in reflecting your love to the world. Lord Jesus, I pray that --- would always surround herself with people who love you and who will redirect her gaze upward when her eyes shift to the circumstances around her. I pray these Christian friends would never tire of reminding her to focus on you as the rock in this life of constant change. Father, I pray that --- would never forget who she is and who you have called her to be.
Finally, Lord, I pray that --- would wake up each morning with joy and excitement at what you have in store for her. Life is many things, but most of all it is an adventure. I pray that --- would face all of the adventures that you have planned for her with generous hands, an open heart, and wide eyes that are fixed on you, eagerly waiting to see what you will do next. Lord Jesus, I pray that --- would make you the song of her heart. I pray, that you would remove all fear from her and that she would give the gift of herself to the world without reservation, knowing that what we see as failure, you see as opportunity. Father, I entrust --- to your care as she blossoms into the woman you have created her to be. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to know her, however briefly, and to witness a small part of her journey. I also thank you for all of the lives that I know --- will touch in the years to come. I pray all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.
I am a sensitive person, and this makes it difficult for me not to take certian criticisms very personally. This character flaw of mine presents a big challenge in my chosen career since the nature of public education exposes me to regular attacks, something I never anticipated when I first chose this path because I didn't have parents who would attack educators as freely as a lot of other parents do. Now that graduation is over, my goal for the remaining days at my current school has simply been to transition out of here as smoothly as possible. But any hope of leaving here without incident was shattered this morning when I came in to an angry email from a parent threatening to go to the school board over an incident that her child had with a teacher. As the counselor, I thought that I had handled the situation professionally, but the parent felt that I could have done more and this is what she is angry about. Her email bashed the teacher, an assistant principal, and myself over the handling of the incident. Of the three parties, I was actually the most innocent and the least criticized, but because of my personality, I took the email the hardest.
Speaking from much experience, if we don't consciously put on our spiritual armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) every morning, it's easy to feel beaten down by the attacks we face. It's also easy to forget that our enemy is not the hurt, frustrated, fallen person who is executing the attack. Daily putting on our armor reminds us that our enemy is not our neighbor, our enemy is Satan who treads all over the world wreaking havoc on tender hearts and sensitive spirits, leaving many of us hardened out of a feeling of self-preservation necessity. Yet all we really need for self-preservation is to daily ready ourselves for the battle. The enemy would have us believe that there is no battle beacuse if we aren't alert and ready to fight, then we aren't really a threat to him at all. Don't fall into his trap. Even though we can't see everything that is happening in the spiritual realm, we are living in war torn world and we have the carnage all around us to prove it. We are spiritually hurting people who are hurting others out of our own hurt. We are also people who serve a God who sees the battle from a different vantage point and has empowered us to victory through His son.
In Isaiah 54:17, we are promised, "'No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their vindication is from Me,' declares the LORD." We have to stand firm in our armor, but God has already won the battle. Through Christ, we have the power to walk through every attack waged against us in the war for our souls and come out unscathed. In fact, in Luke 10:19, Jesus says to His disciples, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you." Satan knows of our power and the more aware we are of our power, the larger our threat to Satan and therefore the harsher his attacks will be against us. Instead of being beaten into a position of self-pity by Satan's attacks, we need to quickly and confidently face our attacker with the power and authority of Christ's name. No enemy can harm us when we take Christ into the battle with us.
I know that feminism and Christianity make for uncomfortable bedfellows in most circles. Feminism brings with it the idea of girl power and this frightens the church who often seems to confuse submissiveness with worthlessness. In His ministry, Jesus made it very clear that women have value to God outside of the kitchen, but in some ways I think that the church has a difficult time reconciling the full value of women with the traditional idea of a woman's role. So instead of attempting such a reconciliation, some Christians gasp at the mention of the word feminism and focus only on a woman's role as mother and wife. As a Christian, I don't think that feminism has to be a dirty word to the church because I don't see feminism as being about this frightful female domination movement so much as I see it being about women claiming their full worth and walking in that worth. Without delving any further into feminism and the church today (that will take another post), I do need to say that as a woman I am appalled by some of the events that I have heard about and recent headlines that I have seen in the so-called news. In fact, I am so appalled by what these events and headlines say about our society that I just can't keep quiet about it.
Earlier this week I ran into a female acquaintance who told me about a sexual harrassment case that she recently filed at work. I had heard about this case from one of the males who works in her department whom I talk to on a regular basis. From his perspective, the woman is too sensitive and can't take a joke. When I heard her story and learned what these "jokes" were and how since filing the case she has been ostracized by both the men and the women in her department, I was outraged. The things that were said to her offended me when she was retelling them, and I would have probably reacted the same as she did if these comments were made to my face. I would think that most women would, but apparently her female colleagues were unaffected and unable to see how it involves them. By allowing sexual harrassment to continue around us and by dismissing it as boys being boys (which is what my acquaintance's female supervisor did), women are condoning our own objectification when we should be raging against it.
I know that American Idol is last week's news, but I have been infuriated that more of the headlines that I have seen since Jordin Sparks won the title have been about her weight rather than her vocal talent. All of this apparently started when one woman, MeMe Roth of the National Action Against Obesity, declard Jordin obese on a national news show. In the aftermath of Roth's comments, one website geared towards contemporary women created a poll to rate whether or not other women also find Jordin to be obese. (Of course, this is the same website where women can vote on all kinds of superficial aspects of famous females such as hairstyle and fashion sense which only adds to my point). To me it is completely ridiculous that we women find the need to perpetuate the myth that we have nothing more to offer the world that a nice figure and a pretty face. We should be building each other up instead of tearing each other down. In Jordin's case, we should be celebrating her talent and her inner light that shines so brightly on her face rather than rating her weight.
Just this afternoon, I saw a video clip online of has-been celebrity Danny Bonaduce calling women "bitches" and giving one a disgusting lap dance and then lifting her over his head, basically proving that she's nothing more than dead weight to him. Not suprisingly, Adam Corolla of the exceptionally degrading Man Show was cheering him on from the background. Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel (the co-host of the former Man Show) have offended me so much that I shudder even to hear their names because their treatment of women is the stuff of the dark ages. But what offends me even more is the women who willingly and actively participate in their own degredation at the hands of these men. In the video I saw with Bonaduce, for instance, the women were laughing and smiling as if they truly did measure all of their self-worth on the fact that these chauvanists find their scantily clad bodies enticing, just like the "juggies" on the Man Show who willingly bounced around on a trampoline and accepted such a degrading job title.
If we want the world to take us seriously and honor us for our substance, then we need to start taking ourselves seriously and honoring each other for substantial reasons rather than superficial ones. We complain about the glass ceiling and other double standards, but even if we blame the men for putting these double standards in place, women are the ones keeping them active every time we turn around and cattily bad mouth one of our sisters. We want men to respect our worth, but first we must respect our own worth. We cannot and will not be anything more than objects to some people until we as a unified whole demand to be more. Yes, I can certainly acknowledge that women have come a long way over the past several decades in the US, but with everything I have seen and heard this past week alone, I will not sit back and deny that we still have a long way to go.