fighting to be a feminist.

Three years ago I purchased a book at Perimeter Church's bookstore titled Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood by Piper and Grudem. I was in a new promising relationship and I decided that maybe it was time for me to figure out what I was supposed to know.  I read about four pages and put it on my bookshelf. The book is over an inch thick, paperback.

I then progressed to thinking, well, I'm never gonna read that book but some(boy) is going to be super impressed that I have it on my shelf. I'll look cool when he comes over. Through the years my thoughts progressed to realizing that the kind of man that would find that book sitting on my shelf attractive is not one that would work for me. Oddly, the book still sits, receipt shoved in the cover, dog ear four pages in on my living room shelf. Maybe that's why my love life and my sister's (roommate's) seem cursed in 2013.

I'm not even sure what a feminist is but I want to be one. I have been learning lately that I am my own worst enemy in this endeavor. I disgust myself. 

For most of my life my best friends were boys. Especially in college, other than three great girlfriends almost every person who pulled me through was a male. Just to be clear, I did not date in college, these were platonic relationships. I've always been close to my (male) pastors and even my mother would agree that I'm a daddy's girl. It's taken me years to realize that I regard advice from men much more highly than I do from women. If I could choose a teacher, even for my French class, I'd pick a male every time. My best friend from my masters program is a 51 year old male and he is now my advisor on all things medical. If you've ever heard me talk about my future children you've probably heard me say that I'm only having boys. I realize that even genetically I don't get to contribute to that decision, but I'm still only having boys. 

Even as a nurse I have always preferred male patients. They are less complicated, easier to manage, are more fun to joke around with and at least in Georgia, they love the SEC. I'd sign up to care for the grumpy old man over anyone who possessed a vagina, every time.

Just a few months ago I again became disgusted with myself in my endeavor to become a feminist when I realized that the Tanzanian child whose tuition I pay is of course, MALE. I thought back to my experience visiting that school and would guess that about 65-70% of the children, supported by American money, are boys. 

You can see I'm an excellent feminist. What I have been wrestling through is why am I this way? Was it how I was raised in a evangelical christian southern community where I was taught that the best (though not only) model is for the mom to stay home with the kids, the dad to bring home the bacon and the preacher to wear a tie?  

Is it because in Georgia women still wear hose in the summer and too often stand behind their husbands or in the kitchen?  Is it because maybe the Bible really is misogynistic and I just never realized it?  I remember spending prayer meetings in college begging God to show me how to be a Proverbs 31 wife...ahem...woman.  While that passage is still quite valuable, is it all relevant?  Don't get me wrong, I actually know how to sew but I change the oil in my car and mow the grass more often. (Two things my father insisted his girls know how to do before we graduated from high school). 

"Women hold up half of the sky"...that's the proverb Half the Sky gets its name from. It's arguably the most influential thing I've read in the last year. It's where nearly every feminist thought in my head comes from. I learned that most African girls miss a week of school every month because they have no sanitary napkins. Five to seven days a month!?! That means that the small percentage of teenage girls who are in school in many developing countries are missing 25% of their education simply due to female bodily function.  This should cause outrage. 

Because of Half the Sky I follow nearly every facebook page that opposes child brides, supports votes and education for women and preaches against female genital mutilation.  I don't have enough feet for all the soap boxes I'd like to stand on. But is that enough?  What does a "like" on facebook mean anyway? 

An article this week in The Wall Street Journal said that women in 2012 are making 76.5 cents on the male dollar down from 77 in 2011.  My little sister understands this more than anyone as she works in a company where men with the same education and years of experience often outrank women by two or more levels and earn a 33% higher salary. Why are we still working for companies like this? Furthermore, why do they still exist?

I used to honestly believe that bit the church tells young women that men are supposed to be the leaders in companies and families because overall they are more level headed and make less emotional decisions. I used to believe the sermon saying the reason mankind fell was at least in part, because Adam didn't act like a man and Eve did. Since then I've actually dated a few men. I have usually been the less emotional, more level-headed member in the relationship. This is a personality type.  Not a gender description.  

Rachel who I have mentioned many times before stated, when I was a little girl, I knew I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, except a pastor...the whole thing bothered me a little bit because it made me feel like God had reserved all of the important, spiritual jobs for the boys, like he thought that girls are second best. As I've mentioned before I've never really thought that any job is second best, but I will say that as a girl who wanted to be a missionary from the time she was thirteen...I always thought I'd have to have a husband to be one. 

I am not sure where this frame of mind came from.  Was it my church, my family, my college ministry or my culture?  I don't even care.  All I know is that it exists in myself and I would argue that it also exists in many other women I know, especially Christian women. 

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending EQUAL political, economic and social rights for women. I am on board with that.  

My future daughters will be too. 

relating to the nakedness.

I have 14 students. As a part-time job between finishing my masters and getting a job as an NP I decided to teach.  I take seven first semester nursing students into the hospital for eight hours, two days a week.  For most it's their first experience in a hospital. It's been a little crazy.  It has been full of joy.

I did it for three reasons.  Mainly because I needed the money, but also because I loved precepting students when I worked in the ICU...watching them "get it" for the first time and understand what it's like to be responsible for another living body, a living soul.  It's remarkable.   I also did it because I had a terrible clinical instructor in nursing school.  For some unknown reason she hated me.  She hated me and I wasn't used to it.  I had always been the teachers-pet-my-parents-are-in-education kinda person.   My how that has changed.

Regardless of my reasons I am glad I took the job.  It has not all been easy.  There are the slackers and the strugglers and the know-it-alls but when I look at the whole experience I have been so blessed.  I often forget to write about the joy in my life because I don't need to process it like I do the sorrow and anger. However, I'm learning to take more time to process everything these days.

A few weeks ago a patient allowed me to perform a full head-to-toe assessment on him while my students watched.  He began to tell us his story and I tried not to look at my watch. He told us about his job with the CDC and how he's worked all over the world...I listened a little bit. He told us that healthcare providers are among the most important people on the planet.  He told us that he could not fully express his appreciation for nurses.

I was beginning to feel like I was in a Johnson & Johnson commercial when I noticed that at least three of the seven students in the room were in tears.  They were so moved by his affirmation that they were doing the right thing.

I had forgotten that part.  How terrifying it is to stick someone with a needle for the first time.  To inflict pain upon a body even for a good cause.  To see someone naked....their naked broken body and often their naked soul.  To be the one that is with them for twelve hours while they walk for the first time on a new joint or experience what it's like to function with the tumor gone.  To listen when a patient knows what they want to say but is unable to express it because of the blood sitting in their brain. I had forgotten what it's like to be that person and the whole time wonder if you're supposed to be.  If you're cut out for it.

My students are probably most afraid of waking patients up when they are sleeping and causing pain. These are two things that I don't even think about anymore. Almost never. At first it was adorable and now it's just annoying. But I'm realizing that even eight weeks later my students are still trying to figure out how they are supposed to relate.  As a friend, as a servant, as an enforcer, as helper, as a nurse.  It took me at least two years to get the patient/nurse relationship down.  To be in charge and yet always be the most sympathetic person in the room.  To negotiate the things the patient doesn't want to do and yet allow her to feel as if you are her biggest fan.

I probably tell my students ten times a day that patients are just people.  Just talk to them like they are people!  They aren't animals in a zoo. They are a lot more rationale than you think.  Unless of course they are 85 and demented and think that you're trying to kill them...but they'll learn that communication too.

It's been an incredible job to read my students' journals each week and see them progress from questioning what in the world they were thinking entering nursing to now being confident that they are right where they are supposed to be. Affirmation is such a vital part of moving forward. Their patients, their peers and hopefully their clinical instructor have helped them to see what it's like to work among the nakedness.

I know it's cliche to say that my students have taught me more than I have taught them...it's probably not even true. But they have reminded me what it's like to care in a different way.  To be touched by a patient's....a person's thankfulness and to be moved by their pain.  To take time to listen without looking at your watch. To approach their nakedness with a heart that still feels something.

Nurses need to be reminded of these things often. Maybe we all do. I'm glad my students have reminded me.

the Jesus in Atlanta.

This is what I don’t understand.  Rachel spends an entire chapter talking about how she felt the closest to Jesus in years working with orphans and widows in India.

I get that. I get what it’s like to rock Tanzanian orphans to sleep that rarely feel physical touch. I get what it’s like to take food and medicine to widows in mud huts.  I even get what it’s like to walk with a 17 year old HIV+ girl through the decision to place her son in a Haitian orphanage so that he would receive the treatment he needed.  I get how it feels to hold her while she weeps and watch a white lady take him away.

I can’t really say that Jesus was always on the forefront of my mind as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and my desire to help people eat and fight off disease and live another day was more often my focus.  But I get that part. The part about how Jesus is often seen among the least of these.

What I don’t get is why Rachel makes it sound like I have to be in one of those places to feel close to Jesus.  To feel like I can make a difference. To have a spiritual awakening. 

I think that’s crap.  I hope it is.

I know that the reformed theology which I’ve heard since the age of five, and finally began to grasp around seventeen plays a role.  I know that everything in life is spiritual.  That it’s all sacred.  That I can equally honor God working a 9 to 5 selling popsicles or serving in a developing country.  I’ve never struggled with those questions… probably because I was always the girl that wanted to live in the mud hut…but regardless…I get that part.

What I don’t understand is this feeling.  Why is it that I (or Rachel too in this case) must travel to Haiti or Tanzania or Honduras or India and work with the orphans or the widows or the dying to feel Jesus?

I don’t buy that.  I don’t believe it. But I do feel like it's true. 

In India I was introduced to the kingdom of heaven- not as is exists in some future state but as it exists in the here and now, where the hungry are fed with both physical and spiritual bread, where the sick are saved from both their diseases and their sins, where an illiterate widow taught me more about faith than any theologian ever could, and where children from the slums sing with God. In India, I learned that the gospel is still special.  Jesus still matters and can make a difference in people’s lives.

I don’t want to have to go to India to be reintroduced.  

I want the Jesus in Atlanta to still matter.