I’m from a culture that suggests a woman’s threshold is
where the kitchen tile meets the living room carpet. Perhaps through a bout of
prescience, I made a decision when I was five years old that I would not learn
how to cook subji; I would not spend my days chopping
onions or grinding spices. My dinners would have to go without my rolling out
whole wheat dough and standing over a cast iron griddle, singeing my fingertips
with every flip of roti.
I wasn’t boycotting delectable cuisine or the art of cooking;
I rejected the sense of slavery associated with the cultural demand that women
ought to be the sole cooks in families.
My immigrant father, who had married a blonde American
woman, never questioned my decision. Instead he ushered me through academic
milestones in high school and paid the tuition for my bachelor’s and master’s
degrees. When my daughters were born, he presented them with envelopes assuring
their future college plans would be blessed, too.
When I started a serendipitous
career
as an English instructor at age 23, it never occurred to me that my gender
would have anything to do with my future success. As I engaged my students with
fascinating texts, lucid lectures, and rigorous assignments, I thrived in my
calling, and administrators took notice.
Even when I forayed into teaching international students, I
as a young, dark-skinned woman in a department comprised entirely of women, did
not shrink back when I saw that the students were predominantly men from
cultures that infamously subjugated their women. Although I had my battles with
certain men—and women—from these backgrounds, I had a responsibility to defend
my actions inside and outside the classroom. If students tried to argue with or
manipulate my policies, I shut down the conversations. I won every time, not because
I held my ground as a woman but as a professional authority.
I navigated romantic opportunities with similar dignity and fortitude.
As an overcomer of sexual and psychological abuse, I took precautions in
selecting a spouse. I didn’t date because I have always thought—apart from any
biblical associations—that dating was a waste of my time. I don’t know how to
chit-chat. Halfway into dinner if I realized this person and I were not meant
for each other, I had no problem calling it a night. I’m sure my dates
eventually appreciated my forthrightness. As a woman in the United States, I
upheld my choice to abstain from societal expectations, and when I finally did
get married at almost thirty, I was not only willing but ready.
Shortly after Greg and I married, however, a dogmatic,
demonic ideology rear-ended and lied to me. Perhaps the thought-pattern was
actually satanic; maybe it was self-abasement for getting married “too late”
in life: had I been too outspoken, too intimidating? The lie told me Christian
women, the kind God liked and approved of, couldn’t speak up in their marriages.
It whispered that my husband’s opinion was the one that counted and, so long as
I abided in his preferences, my marriage would thrive. I would honor my God, my
husband, myself, and my future children, with the “fragrant offering of
submission.” But submission had nothing
to do with my conduct. In actuality, my behavior was identity suicide.
As a result of that decision, I nearly chucked my marriage
into a ditch. Greg didn’t marry me so he could “create [my] world, and allow
[me] few liberties in it” (
Fitzgerald).
What captivated Greg about me were my feisty articulations, the ones that whipped
silence out of the air and lashed against deceit.
I am a truth teller and an advocate. Greg married me, in
part, because I’m his favorite conversationalist. He needs me for my insight
and collaborative character. The Spirit behind Scripture guides our
relationship: we submit to one another. This could mean that sometimes Greg “gets
his way” while at other times I “get mine” but, realistically, our simpatico
marriage actually simultaneously grants both our desires. It helps that we equally
prefer Williams-Sonoma over Wal-Mart.
Early in my marriage I shut down because I had felt like I
needed to be tame, to defer incessantly to my husband. What resulted was my
retreat into a cave. I was hollow and unresponsive, except for the echo reminding
those who really knew me that somewhere inside of me, the woman Greg had
married was still there.
When I withheld my sacred feminine—the woman God not only
had created but formed and called me to be—Greg felt as if I’d abandoned him. I
imagine God felt similarly.
I came back last year, in speaking and in writing. My friends
and readers are witnesses to the release of words trapped within me, suffocated
by my silence.
In the same year, I faithfully resigned from teaching,
believing that once my husband earned his doctorate, it was time for me to set
down the mantle God had placed in my hands a decade earlier.
But humans cannot remove an anointing so easily.
I returned to full-time teaching this semester with
conviction that I am where I have been called. I’m abiding in the principle
that God does not operate under religious expectations. I flourish at work,
knowing it is my mission field. As a result of my service, my husband, my
children, and my students are blessed; God welcomes the glory.
I find this glory most copious among a body of likeminded
believers. However, for too many years, I cowered at the back of mainline churches,
silenced either by my own panic of rejection or by the unspoken (and flimsily
interpreted
in English Scriptures) rule that women shouldn’t speak in church, and only
those with a microphone are allowed influence.
Our
organic
church is different not just because there is no pastor; it’s unique
because there is no agenda except Jesus Christ. There aren’t power struggles
because we submit first to the Holy Spirit and then to each other. Our time
together is not about who leads, but about waiting for the Holy Spirit to lead
us collectively, and then allowing each other to be guided individually by this
Spirit. Within this body, unlike in many corporate religious bodies, I have a
voice. Within the context of church service, I speak when prompted; outside of
worship, my church family not only accepts my unique perspective on life, they respect
and cherish it. I am a Christian woman unencumbered by gender roles or limitations.
The Kingdom of God functions most wholly when everyone
unites to reveal the full personality of their creator: a God defined by both masculine
and feminine attributes. What’s more, Jesus is a Savior who stops walking
through a crowd because a woman’s grasping the hem of his robe arrests his
compassion; who circumvents cultural faux pas by entering a Samaritan village
and speaking with an adulterous woman; who redirects a scene by preventing
rocks from escaping clenched fists. Jesus invites a woman to interrupt dinner
and bathe His feet with her tears. When we listen for an ancient voice of
evangelism, we hear
Magdalene’s
gallant soprano announce His resurrection.
Jesus empowers women. I know this because I’m a woman whom
Jesus empowers. In education, profession, marriage, and church, I am invited to
the table not only because I contribute value to the conversation but because I
belong at the table.
Jesus invited me.
My husband and I don’t sit at the heads of this table. We
allocate these seats to others and to the Spirit who dines with us, as
promised.
Still, when my family feasts together, our dinner table is a place where we and
our daughters speak with candor. It’s a loud banquet of grace.
In my marriage, with my husband taking the lead, I have learned
to prepare aloo gobi and bertha—food I had previously ladled onto
$8.95 buffet plates. Cooking together is sexy. Greg currently reigns as king of
a wery, wery tasty chicken tikka masala, and his lamb curry rivals only my masterful dad’s.
But I enjoy standing beside my husband while he chops onions and garlic. I
watch minces slide at the command of a blade’s edge, from the cutting board to sizzling
pans of olive oil.
These days, when I step across the thresholds of one
identity to another—scholar, professor, writer, wife, mother, minister, chef
extraordinaire!—I see a legacy created by a God whose authority breathes life
into mine. He doesn’t question my motives or cringe at my words. Instead He
beckons me to walk ahead with Him, in the assurance that where I am called, I
go, accompanied by the resounding clickity-clack
of my high heels.
