To all my women friends... Men can read too.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and where I'm going... I'm 25 years old now, recently graduated with my Masters degree... And life is nothing like I thought it would be when I first started out on my journey into adulthood. Granted, many of the things that happened to me have been glorious acts of God's love toward me. Like Nick, for example. I never thought I'd get married before I was 28 or maybe 30! And then God steps in and changes my direction with a fabulous sense of irony, because Nick and I were friends for two years before we even began to date (he was the last person I thought I'd end up with). Needless to say, marriage has been the greatest thing to happen to me next to salvation. No person has tested me and taught me more than Nick. No one has loved me more, and that is the picture of Christ and His church. It's beautiful.

However, disappointment has met my path on all too many occasions. I have found myself to be very incapable and very unlovable in every human perspective. I am also not very passionate about what I say is important to me. I love God. He has shown me His truth, His love, and His mercy time and again. I say that He is my rock and the source of my life. Jesus is my savior... I say these things and I believe that there is only salvation through Jesus alone.... and then I don't act on what I know; what I say I believe. Oh, sure, I'm a good person, right? I don't live a life that goes totally against His law. I am involved in a church, I tithe faithfully, I "do the right things." I think... So why, for the past two years or so, do I always feel like something's missing. I can't explain this big void I've felt. It's so empty and expansive. Sometimes it feels better than other times, but it's always there. I've been hurt a lot in my life, just like you who are reading this. And those wounds never go away. They're always there, and at times something happens that opens those wounds again and causes me to relive all the pain I've felt from the past. My personal struggle is that I've always felt as though I am not good enough... Or maybe it is that I am too much. There are insecurities that bring me to a place of fear and doubt. Fear that I will never be truly loved, and fear that I need to hide part of me from the world so that I don't become unlovable. And doubt that I can ever really be wanted, or worse yet, needed. Could anyone ever need me? Impossible.

*Alright, enough vulnerability*

What God is revealing to me, slowly, but surely, is that I am needed. We are all needed. Despite what the world has done to me, how worthless it has made me feel, I was created for a purpose. It sounds nice to admit that, but what does that really mean? I am a woman; I am Eve. I am the counterpart to Adam. I am compassion and nurture. I am the crowning glory of God's creation; the finale. Woman, who has been beaten down, oppressed, silenced, and patronized throughout history, is God's final touch. Woman is the pinnacle of His holy creation. We are spin-offs of HIS nature! We have a purpose, and it is not to be minimized. Since the fall of mankind Eve, and all of her daughters, experienced (and are still experiencing) the pain of vulnerability. We have been wounded, and it has caused us to hide and to doubt ourselves. We feel guilty for being too much to handle and we feel an aching that we will never be good enough. These fears have silenced us, always causing us to doubt ourselves, and inevitably God. And the world is dying because of it. We are a world at war, and God calls for times of war. But because of war, there are too many people hurting. Where is their peace? What the world needs now more than ever, is women. Their voices, their love, their peace. I don't know my purpose yet. I'm still searching. Perhaps it will never be revealed clearly to me. But... I know that God is calling me to Himself, leading me down a path of purpose, out my fear and my doubt. And I will try to shake off the rags I have worn so long to become that crowning glory of creation that He desires for every woman to emmulate.