Karon Williamson

Musings on Moving

If you are anywhere near my age, you probably remember the original Batman. Nothing like today’s cool, handsome Batman guy with the deep, sexy “I am Batman” voice kind of hero, but the Adam West men in tights kind of hero and his protégé Robin who set out to save Gotham City from sure doom every week. When faced with an unexpected turn of events and no clue what to do, Robin would turn to his mentor-in-tights and sum up the problem in a clever series of “Holy” exclamations: 

Holy smoke, Batman! 

Holy bat-trap! 

And my all-time personal favorite: Holy switch-a-roo, Batman!

When a monkey wrench was thrown into the works and Robin knew he was in over his head, he cried out to his leader and all-time Gotham hero when the impossible was at hand. 

Batman always knew what to do.

Most of us have dreams of being a super hero, but we never dream of being the side-kick. That’s why I always insisted on being Batman and made my younger sister play Robin when we were little girls saving Gotham in the countryside of rural Georgia. I would tie a towel around my neck and jump off the front porch to wrestle our cousin, the Joker, but mostly to feel my towel-cape flap in the wind. 

Feeling the wind in your cape is exhilarating.

Being the side-kick is not nearly as much fun as being the hero. I know, because here I am after my life took an unexpected turn last year and my heart is yelling, “Holy Monkey Wrenches!” 

And I can’t even find my cape.

It must have been lost in the move. Holy Monkey Wrenches for sure!  When I was Batman and the wind was in my cape, I thought I had it all figured out. It’s been a year now since we moved a thousand miles, from the place we had always called home, to a place we are learning to call home. As a Christian, I know that my identity is bound up in Christ, but in this move, I realized my identity was also bound up in a bunch of other things, many of them good things, that made my cape fly in the winds of a happy, contended life. We had friends and family, attended a thriving church, and raised our children in an old house we loved. My garden grew sweet tomatoes and my friends would pop champagne for my birthday. We did have to battle thick southern humidity, Palmetto bugs and an old leaky roof from time to time, but we loved our life there. Our church family ministered to us, taught us, challenged us, held us accountable and grew us into a people who loved the people of our city.  

We just never dreamed we would be loving the people of a different city.

There’s snow here. Lots of it. I had to trade my cute shoes and silk dresses for LL Bean boots and wool sweaters. Socks are no longer optional and the beanie I wear so my ears don’t freeze and fall off messes up my hair for the entire rest of the day. The people here are really nice. But y’all, they talk funny.

Probably because they’re so cold.

A monkey wrench was thrown into my carefully curated little world and my identity has been shaken. Here, I am not Batman. I am not even Robin. At least Robin had a little cape.

 I think I hear my sister laughing all the way from Alabama.

I was recently reminded in a sermon, that my identity, like my salvation, is not something I achieve, it is something I receive. As that began to sink in, something shifted, and I remembered it’s not about how great I am in this new place,

It’s about the great I AM in this new place. 

Here’s the thing about monkey wrenches: they are used to tighten up nuts. As a child, I remember seeing these tiny, seemingly insignificant parts litter the floor of my father’s workshop. Somehow, they had worked loose from their place of service and ended up on the floor. My father would never throw them away; he would sweep them up into a box he kept on his workbench. When he noticed something in his shop was wrangling loose, like his lawnmower blade, he would grab his trusty monkey wrench, look for a nut that fits perfectly, place it where it needed to be and tighten it securely to keep the mower working well. Without the right nut in just the right place, he knew blades may fly loose, wreaking havoc all over my Mother’s roses, or worse, the grapevines from which he made sweet red wine. 

I am thankful I serve the Father who recognizes the worth of small parts in his good, good plan. The same Father who picked me up and kept me when I moved has carefully placed me into a new place of service, tightening up this nut with his holy monkey wrench, making me ready for the good works which he prepared in advance for me to do in this place. (Ephesians 2:10) 

Y’all, I managed to make it through my first winter in the world of boots and beanies. The snow melted, the ice thawed, and it’s beginning to feel like home. Now when I miss my cape and cry Holy Monkey Wrenches, as I still do at times, I am reminded that I am a small, but important part of the Kingdom of God. I remember how he never let me go and I know, with all my being, the Spirit is tightening me up securely in Christ, making me holy as he is holy. And that is just where I need to be, lest my new neighbors look over one day to see this nut jumping off the front porch with a towel trying to feel the wind in my cape again.

“Karon is a good student, but she talks too much.”

Almost every report card of mine as a young child included some such comment. At six-years-old, I didn’t understand why this was a problem. I loved school. I studied. I made good grades. And I was sure I did not talk any more than the boys because they were mostly leading the discussions. When I walked into first grade sporting an unruly pixie cut with one curl on the right that stuck out from a hair twirling habit I’ve never been able to shake, I had a voice, and I liked to use it. I am sure I drove teachers crazy with all the questions in all the world that I insisted be answered. The voices of children are typically born open, free and curious, but somewhere along the way, as little girls mature, they learn to dial it back a bit, be less assertive with their voice and end up taking a back seat to the boys who are encouraged to develop theirs fully.

It never occurred to me to quiet my voice before first grade, living in a household of five verbal daughters. To this day, you would have better luck silencing a hurricane than trying to shut us up when we are all together. We had the freedom to speak, and we learned to work things out when we didn’t agree. Our father relished in the constant chatter of our home. Our mother joined right in.

Schools were not as accepting of my free voice, so I learned to speak less, as I fear many little girls still do. I understand there are many factors at play to explain why little girls begin to quiet their voice, and I am not blaming teachers here. It is a complicated issue. Girls step back not only in classroom settings but in many public settings. As a fifty-something graduate student in a predominately male seminary, I still sometimes struggle to find my voice in that setting. My concern for our girls who learn to question if what they have to say is important is the dangerous consequence of increasing their vulnerability.

In a recent talk to church planters, Bible teacher Jen Wilkin described how women, unlike men, typically maintain some degree of life-long vulnerability. Please take the time to watch her entire message here:

Female vulnerability is most likely what Peter is referring to in his letter when he calls wives “the weaker partner,” and instructs husbands to be considerate of them. (1 Peter 3:7) The vulnerability of women may be harder to recognize today because women have opportunities like never before in history, but I think it is critical in understanding why we must be proactive in protecting and celebrating the voice of women.

History has proven over and again that we tread with great danger in places where voices begin to be marginalized or silenced, especially in the vulnerable. Oppression and abuse thrive freely where there is no voice. We know this. Evil feeds and grows on the silence of its victims as real-life monsters Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar have well proven of late. Too many women and tragically, too many little girls who learned to quiet their voices have paid high prices for societal marginalization and sadly, distorted religious teachings that value female reticence over healthy female expression.

It is time for this to change.

“Speak out on behalf of the voiceless, and for the rights of all who are vulnerable.” (Prov 31:8) We often overlook that it was a mother, someone who understood vulnerability,  who gave this Proverbs 31 instruction to her son, King Lemuel. Let it be an important reminder to us that the church is particularly charged to protect and seek the flourishing of every image-bearer of God, but especially the vulnerable and voiceless. That means speaking up for those who cannot. That means making a space for the vulnerable to be heard. More often than not, it means taking the time to listen and responding with moral purpose. Vulnerable voices prove to be valuable voices only when given the opportunity to be heard.

May the Church of Jesus Christ lead the way.

“How much is a little girl worth?”, Rachael Denhollander repeatedly asked in her now famous courtroom statement at the sentencing of her convicted abuser, Larry Nassar. These profoundly simple words by this present-day Esther figure should strike every decent heart of humanity at its core, especially those of the church. Many of those little girls who were victimized managed to muster an enormous amount of bravery to use their small voice to tell someone, only to be told they were mistaken or just plain wrong and sent right back into the hands of their abuser. (See her statement: here)

In light of this, we must ask ourselves why we as a society devalue the voice of girls and women and as the church, we must ask ourselves if distortions of biblical texts and teachings on the roles of women have been complicit in some way. If we do not, or worse, will not value the voices and influence of women in the Kingdom of God, we cannot begin to protect our little girls. So, church, let me ask a slightly different question:

How much is the voice of a little girl worth?

First prophesied in the Old Testament and later fulfilled at Pentecost, we live in the time where God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh when sons and daughters prophesy and the young see visions and the old dream dreams. (Joel 2:28, Acts 2:17) The Bible uses the term prophecy to describe church teachings gifted by the Spirit to both women and men. Jerram Barrs of Covenant Theological Seminary summarizes the Apostle Paul’s definition of prophecy this way:

“It is speaking with the mind, after reflection on God’s truth, for the strengthening, comfort, and encouragement of people. It includes declaring in an intelligible way the good news of the truth about Jesus Christ so that the unbeliever is convicted of sin and comes to repentance and faith” (1 Corinthian 14:1-25). “Prophecy is also edifying God’s church by clearly instructing his people with the truth. This gift of prophecy, of communicating God’s truth, is a gift that all believers, all women, and all men, are to seek and to be ready to exercise.” (Jerram Barrs, Through His Eyes: God’s Perspective on Women in the Bible (Wheaton, Crossway: 2009) 311.

For our daughters to fully exercise this important gift of the Spirit, for the benefit of the church and this world in which we serve Jesus Christ, it takes a voice. We not only make our girls more vulnerable when we value the words of men over those of women, but we also cripple the effectiveness of the church at large. It takes both male and female to reflect God in carrying out the mission of God and our little girls and boys are watching how well we value the unique giftedness of each gender.

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.” (Proverbs 1: 8-9)

This biblical principle teaches us to listen to our father’s teaching without explanation but takes care to warn against forsaking the teachings of our mothers. Perhaps this related warning is necessary because we tend to give less importance to the teachings of women in general, but the church needs the voice and influence of faithful women. Some argue there is no difference in how Christian men and Christian women think about God, talk about God, image him and enjoy the blessings of his goodness and holiness, but how we experience God in our world cannot be separated from the experience of being female or male in our world.

In her book, Love Thy Body, Nancy Pearcey delves into life and sexuality seeking to restore the human body to a place of honor, thoroughly integrated with mind and spirituality over our society’s current dualistic teaching that gender, body, and mind are unrelated and potentially fluid. She quotes Paula Johnson, a cardiologist in support: “Every cell has a sex–and what that means is that men and women are different down to the cellular and molecular level. It means that we’re different across all of our organs, from our brains to our hearts, our lungs, our joints.” Our very biology tells us gender matters and because it does, it should matter to the church and we must not devalue the important experience of being female in our theology and church teachings.

My goal is to encourage the church to recognize the important theological legacy of women as necessary to fully know God and to fully bear his image. We know that the glory of God is too big to be contained within the confines of any one human mind, male or female, therefore when the church forsakes, ignores, or silences the voice, influence, and legacies of faithful women, we run the risk of representing an incomplete or narrow view of God to the world. For the church at large, in both complementarian and egalitarian settings, the principle application of the proverb seems clear: The collective faithful teachings of our Church Fathers and Church Mothers crown the church with the gospel of grace and adorn it with beauty. (For a complementarian setting, this resource is very helpful:)

Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church Ad Interim Committee Report 2017

I often dream of the day predicted when “…the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14) Would the knowledge of the glory, the goodness of God, shine through to us in new places on earth today and in fresh ways by giving an ear to the voices of women? Would giving worth to the voices of girls and women strengthen the church of Jesus Christ today and tomorrow in ways that would glorify God and spread his name throughout the earth? Would the church be humbled to seek repentance for marginalizing the important work and voice of the whole people of God including women, minorities, the poor, the weak, the abandoned and the refugee? The salvation of the world, our only hope of glory, was accomplished by Jesus Christ. It is only through him that we may come to know the God of glory and Jesus Christ has promised to make all things new, even in places where the glory of God was once neglected or dimmed by racial, gender, and cultural prejudices. When we marginalize any part of the body of Christ, we are choosing to continue to look at Christ through dimmed eyes rather than eyes opened to the glory. My prayer is that the church would so desire to see the beauty of Christ lifted high and holy with un-dimmed, clear eyes that all prejudice and fear would melt away until we see him and only him.

This week our world celebrated International Woman’s Day and a New York Times commercial spot honored the day with the line, “The Truth Has a Voice.” As we recognize the hard-won accomplishments as well as the particular struggles of women from all over the world, may the church lead in valuing the voice and influence of faithful women in ministry, seek to learn from, protect and promote their voice, offer opportunities for them to be visible, heard, and positively impact the Kingdom of God for the glory of God.

Yes, Truth has a voice and He speaks to us today in the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

Why would Jesus Christ come to us as Word? Because he is the embodied gospel itself, the Good News! Because this Good News is a message meant to be shared, spoken, passed down to our children and our children’s children, even the children yet to be born. (Psalm 78) The timeless, unchanging message of Truth is to be told over and again across the ages by every voice who kneels in submission to Jesus Christ. It takes all faithful voices in the mission of God. May we never be guilty of silencing another single one.

 

I need this time, so I go.  My shirt is wrinkled after a rushed morning, my hair is frizzy from this blasted humidity and my jeans are cutting into my waist as I bend to get into the car, reminding me that I haven’t been to the gym in weeks.  No time to change, though.  Maybe I can discreetly undo the top button underneath my wrinkled shirt when I get there so I can breathe.

Whoever decided high rise jeans were back?  Please. 

I need this time, so I go.  My lesson workbook, that I did not find time to open this week because…well…life, lies open on the car seat beside me where I threw it in with my purse.  All the unanswered, blank questions stare at me inducing a familiar guilt, so I place my Bible directly on top of it to cut the glare of empty white pages. With envy, I think of Leslee’s color-coded answers in her workbook from last week—green, blue and pink marking up all the white of her pages, even the margins.  I love her, but she makes me look bad in Bible Study.  I’ll sit beside someone else in small group today so my blank pages won’t be so obvious.

Forgive me Lord for coveting Leslee’s beautiful workbook. 

I need this time, so I go.  I’ve been beat up by life this week and my attitude needs adjusting (or maybe it’s the jeans that need adjusting…)  I need my community of sisters who walk this path of life with me.  I need Anne’s calm nature and Martha’s sweet smile.  I need Amber’s sound teaching and Leslie’s keen insight. I need Shannon’s realness.  I need to hear Elena laugh out loud and see baby Esther snuggle into her mother.   I need Vanessa’s sound advice and listening ear. I need to be with women who are not perfect and do not claim to be.  This morning, I need to bow my head in collective prayer with these sisters, take my focus off of self and seek the important, the eternal.  I need this because I see Jesus in this body of believers.

And I need to see Jesus.

I need this time to pour over the words of God, discuss and digest them, put myself under the authority of them, trust the Spirit to apply them to my life and change me through them.  My sisters show me more of who God is in each of their unique voices and talents as we pour ourselves into the holy scriptures.  These sisters speak into my life, echoing the voices of the church of the ages, to whom

“…Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph 14:11-13)

These sisters were given to me to help me see the fullness of Christ.  I need this, so I go.

These sisters help me grow as we focus on Jesus, together attaining to the whole measure of his fullness.  I do not need just part of Christ, I need the full measure and I’ve lived long enough to know I will reach his fullness with greater joy if I travel there with other believers.  So, I go.  Yes, I can stay home alone with my Bible and God will meet me there.  Every time.  I can stay home and struggle alone with the mysteries of scripture and the Spirit will always point me to Christ.  But we were not made to go it alone.  We were made to know Christ in community.  Just as the Trinity lives in relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are made to live, work and worship in relationship with others.  “You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)  My sisters are the steel who sharpen me, challenge me, and push me toward the fullness of Christ.

Like Leslee, with her colored-up pages, who encourages me to prioritize my time in the Word. 

I need this, so I go.  And I’m always glad I did.  When I close my Bible and say goodbye to my sisters, I leave with my load a little lighter.  Even my jeans don’t feel quite so tight.

Did I button them back before I walked out?

But I really do not care.  I’m not even thinking about my frizzy hair or wrinkled shirt and no one else is either.  I’m thinking about how good my God is to meet me here this morning to show me more of himself in his Word through my sisters.  I am thinking about God’s perfect provision of the Son, Jesus Christ, who loves me for no other reason than because I am his.

This love is what I need and this is why I go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was the typical Sunday morning, this morning. You know—getting the kids dressed, hair done, teeth brushed, some semblance of breakfast, get in the car, tell the kids to not touch each other or talk to each other, and answer as I do every Sunday morning, “No, son, I do not know what we are having for lunch at 9:45 in the morning. “

Deep breath, check lipstick in car mirror, and begin to worry if I am wearing enough layers not to freeze in the 200+ year old sanctuary where we worship.

“I should have worn socks,” I think to myself, “My feet are cold already.”

Don’t judge. I’m sure similar profound theological thoughts were bouncing around in your head on the way to church this morning.

Park the car, herd kids into the church, speak to friends, casually ask about their Thanksgiving plans this week, admire the babies and cute little girls in their Sunday best, and walk into Sunday School. Late. Again.

That’s OK, we just missed the fellowship time, I think. We should be in time for the speaker.

What I witnessed when I stepped through the door stopped me cold.  About a hundred people were gathered around a sweet sister and faithful servant of Christ in prayer.

Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

The usual hurriedness of my morning fell away and fear rose in my chest.

Forming a human hedge of protection against whatever was threatening, our church family circled around her and her husband, embracing them, hands gently laid on their shoulders, faces bowed before our God in urgent prayer.

Others knelt and those too far away to touch her reached out and laid a hand on the person in front of them in one love, one spirit, and one mind crying out in faith on behalf of this precious sister. Many cried openly, others wiped away precious tears of love quietly.

Those who could form words prayed aloud humbly asking the God who authors life to spare hers from the cancer that threatened to take her from us, from her small children and from her husband. The grief in the room was palpable.

But so was the glory and the glory was bigger than the grief.

I stood by the door and didn’t move, trying to memorize every detail of the scene unfolding in front of me.  I worried that if I moved or knelt or even closed my eyes, I would somehow disturb the glory that hovered over the body of Christ at work.

My eyes moved to her face.  In the midst of the crowd who had bowed their heads in a reverent mixture of fear, grief and love, she stood tall among them in the center, the only one with her face lifted upward, peaceful and radiant in a way that is hard to describe.

Glorious light fell on her face.  I wonder if others saw it.  I hope they did because we do not see glimpses of holiness everyday.  Our God came near this morning and in our great grief, he ushered in his great glory.   I’ve never seen anything more beautiful and I walked away changed by it.  That’s what the glory of God does.

God sometimes allows his glory to break through in the darkness of our lives. We most often see it in the faces of those who are struggling, as I did in my sister this morning. It is something rare and precious, a true privilege to witness. Those glimpses are a sweet assurance of the love of God and makes us long for the day when that same glory covers the earth, eradicating all darkness.

We do not know what the days ahead hold for her and her sweet family. We are not promised a trouble free life. I am sure she will wrestle with doubt, anger and fear as she walks this path, but there was none of that in that moment. She was secure, steadfast, and sure and seeing the glory of God resting on her face in turn made me secure, steadfast and sure with her.

While the body of Christ was ministering to her, she was ministering to me. I watched as the Spirit lifted her head from a state of worry and fear, and gently tilted her face toward her Savior. That is when, without uttering a word, she shared the gospel of peace with all of us, and God was glorified.

“But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.” Psalm 3.3

“As an older Godly woman, what advice do you have for us?”

It took me a minute to realize they were talking to me. I was eating breakfast with four young women from our church before attending the first day of The Gospel Coalition Women’s conference last week when one of them posed the question. Not loving the “older” part of the question, while simultaneously cherishing the “Godly” part, I wasn’t sure which description caught me off guard most.

Yes, I am older than them, by many years, and even though being older is not how I like to describe myself, it is true. My mind raced for a few seconds. I suddenly thought I should find something else to do, something important like checking Facebook, because I was pretty sure the “Godly” part did not apply to me.

There was no escaping, though. They looked at me with a sweet expectation that I somehow knew something they did not.

Do I?

The mirror that so honestly details the wrinkles tells me I should know a few things. Maybe being the mother of five and my new status as grandmother serve as some credentials, but oh the parenting mistakes I made, and still make! The sins I struggle with day in and day out quickly paraded through my head.

If only they really knew me, they would not be asking me for advice.

Nope. I am not qualified, I decided.

One of these precious women worked for me as a nanny in the past, practically living with me day in and day out, a direct eye witness to all my failings. She should tell them I am not qualified; she knows me well.

The great irony I could not escape, though, was realizing she was the very one who posed the question.

Without a doubt, there are many better role models out there, but on that day, in that moment, I was all they had and I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee of the day.

Where do you begin when eight wide eyes are looking at you waiting for precious jewels of wisdom? I did the only thing I knew to do—I looked down at my eggs, took a deep breath and prayed frantically that I would not mess this up.

I can’t remember exactly what I said. Something about cherishing our place in God’s redemptive mission, being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, staying in the Word and before I knew it, breakfast was over and they headed out to hear the likes of Tim and Kathy Keller.

They were asking me for advice when Kathy Keller is in the building? The second great irony of the morning.

I don’t know if anything I said resonated with them, but that precious mentoring moment at breakfast has stayed with me. As inept as I may have been in the moment, sabotaged off guard with their question (and before coffee even), I do cherish that time. I left feeling the important responsibility we older women have been given to share Godly wisdom and advice to younger women who desire to follow Christ and live their lives in His service.

If they are asking, they surely want to hear and I suspect that many of those who aren’t asking want to hear as well.

They probably won’t have Kathy Keller to go to everyday, but they have me and they have you, with all of our imperfections and failures, and just maybe they need to hear about those. Maybe they need to see how God works in our rejoicing and our lamenting, watching us live out our lives as a part of the body of Christ.

If they are asking, we need to be answering. If they are not asking, we should be seeking them out and forming relationships as God puts them in our path. Women, if we don’t invest in this next generation by sharing our lives and words of encouragement rooted in Christ, who will?

There are many voices out there.  To whom will they listen, if not to us?

I loved hanging out with these younger women at the conference. I learned that there are some pretty cool benefits for us older women when we are with younger ones. It’s not a one way street, this mentoring relationship. They could actually see the tiny print on my schedule to tell me what workshop to go to next without me having to dig out my reading glasses. They saved me seats among the mad dash of women trying to get as close to Kathy Keller as possible when the conference doors opened. We laughed over dinner together, delved deep into 1 Peter together, and they loved me, regardless of my age, and they loved me well.  Maybe being the older woman in the crowd isn’t as bad as I once thought.