A Different Kind of Woman

        Elizabeth Elliot said,“The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.” And so, I am a different kind of woman.  What kind of woman do you ask?  That is somewhat hard to explain. There are some things that I am sure of and others that I am still working out. But one thing has been my heart beat for as long as I can remember, pursuing truth.  

I want to know the whole, ugly, complex, disgusting truth about life, all of it.  Where did life come from, where has it been, and where is it going?  I want truth to speak for itself and I want to know it to its fullest extent.  Why is this so important to me?  Why should I care?  

17th Century Painting of the Queen of Sheba in church in Lalibela, Ethiopia

Truth is the source of freedom.  Every soul longs to be free.  When people embrace lies, they are bound to those lies.  But the real truth, even the hard truth, sets bound people free because they see with new eyes.  The blinders come off and they see the end of where their lies are taking them.  Lies, like all sin, can be pleasurable for a time, but in the end, they lead to death.  But truth brings life.  

Unfortunately, there are “authorities” who tell women like me that “we are not qualified to know the truth,” “that we have been indoctrinated with too much to truly ever know what truth is.”  It’s a really good thing that I don’t care what the “authorities” says about me.  I am not moved.  Truth is truth and cannot ever be anything else.  There is truth and there are lies or there is nothing.  

Reading Woman in Violet Dress by Henri Matisse

I know I have been wrong about many things in my life and I do not know everything there is to know.  I also know that spending a lifetime in pursuit of what is real and good and beautiful is worth it. I may get older and I may slow down;  I may come up against many unforeseen walls, but I do not intend to stop searching for truth.  I know there is treasure underneath all of the sudo truths that the world has piled up and I want to get at it.  

       I am an unsatisfied woman.  I know there must be more. I want to hold it in my hand, to not take petty answers and explanations as final.  I want to push closed doors open and search through long dusty shelves and say, “ah-ha!”  I want to know real, raw truth that exists to be known, truth that is alive and never grows old, making the old young again and the young wise beyond their years.

Psyche Entering the Garden by John William Waterhouse

I may not find all of what I am looking for before I fly to worlds unknown, but I want to blaze a trail that others can see.  I want someone to be there when I drop the trowel and lie down for the last time.  And I want them to pick up my dirty, chipped tools with a glimmer in their eye and begin to dig again, to search for what my heart longed for and then tell a lie-weary world the beautiful, unadulterated truth. 

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  - Philippians 4:8, NLT