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Devi Abraham

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The rain is pouring down on this the 12th day of w

The rain is pouring down on this the 12th day of what is technically our fourth lockdown, and it feels like the only thing I can do everyday is:

Drink enough water

Go to sleep as early as I can

Move

Pray

That’s it. Everything else is an exercise in letting go.

It’s been over 12 months now in this masterclass none of us chose, and I was well and truly in the “what did I learn” phase of pandemic reflection. Our lives were normal again. And now I sit here listening to children talking to classmates and teachers over Microsoft teams while I try to write a grocery list and plan the week.

It’s weird. It’s hard. It is dancing to “Dynamite” and homemade jelly donuts. It’s waiting on end. It is everything.

#thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup

I moved to Switzerland as a newlywed then got preg

I moved to Switzerland as a newlywed then got pregnant six weeks after before I had my work permit. But this fit because my plan was always to stay at home with my kids.

It’s what the most excellent, godly, successful mothers I know did. Success in that their homes were clean and orderly, their children, obedient, their husbands, happy. (For the glory of God.)

This is what success meant.

Ideas stick when they speak to our deepest fears, and I’ve never met a woman Christian or otherwise who isn’t afraid in some way of being abandoned with their young to care for. Evolutionary biologists say it informs how we mate and choose our mates (we pick for stability).

Complementarian thought leaders speak to the same fear by giving us a vision for the family; they said it was spiritual — “the Bible says.” This is how we prevent the breakdown of society. But it was also economic. The white American Dream version of the Christian family.

Perhaps the irony is that by sectioning women off in this way, Complementarians created a pathway for their women to, wait for it, work.

I read Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney before I got married. It’s supposedly a teaching on the Titus 2 women (a manual for godly homemakers), and the thought flitted through my mind: How much did she get paid to write this?

We have to marvel at a system that told women to stay home because it was what the Bible said they should do all while paying *some* women to perpetuate the system.

This is how we know a system is built on lies: It will always privilege a few at the expense of the many. Its vision is limited.

What about the single woman? Is she supposed to keep her life on hold? Where’s the space for her in this vision?

What about the woman who is a skilled judge or lawyer or teacher or painter?

What about the widow, the divorcee? What do we do with a single woman who adopts children and works to provide for her family?

What do we do with the woman in the Philippines or Sri Lanka who provides for her family and extended family?

When your tent holds a privileged few, it’s worth considering who built the tent.

It wasn’t God.

When do we say the house is on fire? What headlin

When do we say the house is on fire?

What headline are we waiting for to say our theology harmed?

How long will it take for someone to admit that we got it so very very wrong?

I lived eight years in the towns around where Josh Duggar lived. I was at the Bible studies and pot lucks with all the people who homeschooled their kids or sent them to Shiloh, the big Christian school. Nothing was supposed to go wrong. Godly discipline. No worldly influences. My god I can still remember a video with Jim Bob talking about the software that kept porn off the family computers.

Who will say it was a sham?

Who will say to the generation before us, you were so full of your own dysfunction, your own shame, all you wanted was kids who would get right what you got wrong.

The culture war generation yields its fruit, and the rot stinks. It oppressed the weak, it victimized, it lied and it lied and it lied.

Friends, I don’t know about you but this news today and always reminds me again: there is no hope in ideology. There is no promise in systems that elevate a few.

Get out.

Listen to survivors, there are so many, and there are many more to come.

Do the right thing that’s right in front of you.

Fight for an undeceived life.

Let the fire burn the lies all the way down.

Years ago in therapy my counselor told me that ang

Years ago in therapy my counselor told me that anger isn’t a primary emotion. It is secondary, which means something is underneath.

Anger is an arrow.

I’ve been thinking about this in the past weeks as it seems like I’ve been watching outrage and anger all around. From my kids fighting to online cancel mobs, anger comes to an easy simmer fast.

And I wonder if we should not be surprised by any of it. Last year was many things, but it was also a year of loss.

Weddings that weren’t what you thought it would be.

Months on end without touch.

The loss of personal freedom, being able to go where you want, when you want to.

Jobs and income, homes and security.

Burying loved ones to whom you couldn’t say goodbye.

We endured a brutal experiment in loss, and we did it locally, globally, everywhere.

@aliajoy has a line in her book Glorious Weakness, “Grief pressed down comes out sideways.” And I wonder if the anger and rage that seems so easily accessible is in part the rumble of our collective grief.

I don’t know what collective healing can look like, but I know I can start by telling the truth about myself and recognizing the truth in others.

I’m sorry it’s been so hard.

I hate that this happened.

I wish it was different.

Then follow it up with actions that support the grief, that allow for grief to run its course.

The anger in our world can grab our attention, but what would our communities look like if we paid attention to what lies beneath?

There was a poetry to Easter in the US, Switzerlan

There was a poetry to Easter in the US, Switzerland, and Sweden. The daffodils popped out of the ground, buds on bare branches, the temperature warming. There were signs of life everywhere.

Easter in Australia feels strange because it’s the middle of autumn, and around us the world turns inward to die.

Leaves fall off trees. I cut down the dahlias. It is colder and darker with each passing day.

I think whatever we believe, we bear witness to different forms of living and dying. Each of us are in varying stages of death and resurrection.

So for me here, on this bright Good Friday in Melbourne as the world goes to sleep around me, I do the work we all have to do whatever the season may be.

Hold on to hope.

New life will come. Better days are ahead. It is a law written into the fabric of the world. A grain of wheat must fall into the ground to die for there to be more seeds. Trees need to sleep to live another year. We spend our love that others might live.

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Devi

Home
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Menu

Home
Start Here
About
Blog
Speaking
Podcast
Motherhood
Contact

Home
Start Here
About
Blog
Speaking
Podcast
Motherhood
Contact

Home
Start Here
About
Blog
Speaking
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Motherhood
Contact

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