HOW ARE YOU, REALLY?

This week, I was a part of a meeting where we are attempting to establish a women's ministry at our church. I was glad that I was there and that I had just come from leading the women's study that I do on Sundays. My women's study is a time where women come with some really deep hurts and seek to know Jesus more, studying His life, and applying his Word to our lives, hurts, and struggles. As I was in the meeting for the women's ministry, I realized that the women who tend to plan and lead these types of women's ministry meetings are typically all similar personality types. We who lead are usually very outgoing, which often doesn't sit well with those who are in a great amount of pain. I realized that if we plan the women's ministry around us, we who are outgoing and often very loud in our outgoing-ness, then we can push away those women who are very quietly hurting deeply right now, like the women in my study that I had just been around. As I suggested this to the rest of the planning team, and as I thought about it more, I started to ponder on the way we women seem to feel like we really need to look like we have it all together all the time. We want to look strong and pretty and competent, while Jesus came for the hurting and broken and needy. If we put our energy into making church more like Jesus would make it, instead of putting out energy into the way we appear to others, life would be so much sweeter for everyone.