Just Because I’m a Woman

Dear Female Pollster Aghast at My Answers “because you’re a woman,”

In this day, in this age, in this time of awareness and selective cultural sensitivity (because isn’t my faith a legitimate cultural factor?), it amazes me how clueless you are about who I am, just because I’m a woman.

Why do you think you know me – how I’ll vote, what issues top my list, what causes move me, what choices I’ll defend – just because I’m a woman?

My chromosomal makeup only tells a part of my story but me, the person inhabiting this feminine form, I will tell you the rest. You can’t tell me my story, though you try, because it is my story. With your polls and your studies, your trending Twitter feed, and your superstar spokeswomen, you can’t begin to know my thoughts, my leanings, my preferences, or my needs. My story doesn’t fit inside the questions you ask over the phone. No great surprise. I’m a complex human being. Whatever made you think you could capture my essence on your piecharts?

I’ll cut my own slice, thank you, and it won’t be that sliver you’ve assigned me – that percentage labeled evangelical women, whatever that means to you. My sisters and I, we who love Jesus, we will bust through those dividing lines that try to tell our story through denominations and ethnic boundaries, with age and economic distinctions, with educational rankings and marital statuses, by regions or countries of origin. We don’t agree on everything, though that disagreement doesn’t break the tie that binds. We are a mystery to you, I grant, and so you try to analyze. Let me spare you. You do not define us with your politics or your polemics. Our identities do not rise or fall by your polls. What moves us is not determined by your rhetoric, your conventional wisdom, or your soundbite de jour.

We’ve gone off grid. We reject your entire matrix. We defy your cultural authority and refuse to bow before the idols you erect. We were once subjects of the kingdom that has you bound to the fashion of the day but then we met a man, that’s right, a man who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, who laid down His life so we might live.

We didn’t see His gender – okay, we did, we’re not stupid – but we saw more,  we saw His humanity, His deity, His power, and the love that rose above all others. He didn’t accept us despite being women, He accepted us as equal to our brothers, equally sinful, equally destined for destruction, equally in need of salvation, equally worth dying for, equally eligible for redemption because of His death and resurrection, equally, lavishly loved.

Before Him alone we bow, not the norms of our society or the cultural evolution you tout. He defines us. In Him we find our identity, our name, our worth, our story. And we have learned, from Him, that our pronouns are only a portion of who we are. The she we are is our design and it fits with the greater story He tells through all He has created but we are more than she as He is more than he. We are eternal beings, so we have a vision for the long game – a city in mind you haven’t seen.

Don’t begin to think you know me, just because I’m a woman. You think you know who I want to lead this country. As if I mark my ballot XX instead of signing my name. You think you know what choices I should value. I do care that women have control over their bodies – but I want to extend that right of choice to women (and men) who have yet to emerge from the womb.

Perhaps you think because we disagree that I haven’t used the mind God gave me to consider the issues myself. Or that I’m subject to the rule of an overbearing patriarch who discourages free thought. How insulting. Because I am a woman, I research, I study, I consider with my fine mind the subjects of my concern and I’ve reached different conclusions than you have. I respect our right to disagree, at least one of us does.

The discussion of submission in marriage made headlines this week and I’m sure you were outraged along with others who have subjected themselves to the rule of an overbearing matriarchy. Yet, I didn’t hear you express your outrage when submission was the discussion around Fifty Shades of Grey. Tell me why sexual submission is a freedom you applaud but mutual submission in the context of a loving marriage you find somehow threatening and detrimental to women as a whole. How does that add up?

You think I’m waiting for some powerful woman to free me, just because I’m a woman. You think I’m waiting for her to be my voice, to lift me up, to elevate my status, and to bestow on me opportunities and dreams, just because I’m a woman. But you don’t really see me, do you? You’ve been making speeches for so long into a mirror you’ve lost sight of me but that’s fine because I’ve found my freedom. Jesus elevates me. Jesus helped me find my voice. He lifts me up and bestows on me greater opportunities and dreams than you or I even knew existed. I’m not waiting for you or her or anyone.

So, what makes you think I’ll cave to the pressure, the rhetoric, and the policies that violate my conscience, just because I’m a woman and other women tell me it’s the right thing to do?  What makes you think I’m so easily swayed by permission to access the New Girl’s Club of America where everyone knows that power is the new black? What makes you think I haven’t already connected with a source of power that makes what you offer pale in comparison? You’ve bothered to ask but not to truly listen for the answer.

My sisters and me, we’ll politely decline your invitation to the party, thank you, as we engage in our own revolution. We’ll continue to explore our freedom, to meet regularly with other women – women from every tribe and every nation of every age and economic status in every condition and opinion – together with men, brothers in Christ, recipients of this same freedom. We live off grid. We celebrate another matrix, a kingdom come, a kingdom that stretches beyond this earthly power.

You’re welcome to join us. You ought to trust that I know what I’m talking about – just because I’m a woman. Women have been clued into the truth of Jesus and have been helping others find their freedom in Him since He arrived on scene. He is the true champion of women. He doesn’t take polls because His power doesn’t rest on how well He can spin today’s news cycle.

I’ll bet you’re sorry you drew my number. I’m sorry this all came out on you. Today I decided to exercise my freedom of speech, just because I’m a woman.

Just Because I’m a Woman https://t.co/7O5BQRQU90 you think you know how I’ll vote? #amwriting #womenvote #evangelical

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) May 3, 2016