I've never been much of a girls-girl. ????????Maybe it started in elementary school when the older girls started making fun of me for wanting to join them, compounded by years of backstabs & betrayals. Maybe it grew deeper as I spent my 20's and early 30's as the only girl on tour buses full of men…becoming the “buddy-asexual-type” to make sure their wives and girlfriends weren't threatened that another woman was sleeping in a bus bunk right next to her man. Or maybe it deepened as I was a female venturing into a male church-speaker-world….preaching more like a high school football coach barking commands because A) a large percentage of the evangelical church doesn't even believe I'm allowed to speak & teach men ????, and B) I've been groomed for decades that it's MY sole responsibility not to ‘make men lust and stumble,' so I can't be TOO beautiful or they won't listen to me from the platform because they'll be too busy picturing me naked. ???? (sorry folks, keeping it real). Somehow along the way of life and pain, my femininity was seen as a burden instead of my glory—an obstacle to overcome instead of a truth to embrace. ????But as I sat in on the @darling retreat last night while @bykaraelise taught enneagram, I longed to know what it felt like to be many of the women in that room…so deeply in love with each other that they would create a conference JUST to work together, or travel in just to sit together as they learn deeper self-acceptance and femininity. If you haven't noticed, I'm not speaking much this year. In fact, I've said no to all but 3 events. I'm tired of going into the church world with a bundle of masculine energy, trying to be LIKE a man just so I'm a pill everyone can swallow. I'm to the point that I can't swallow myself. This year, as two daughters are looking at ME to teach them what it means to be a woman, I have to finally embrace being a woman WITHOUT JUDGMENT. I have no roadmap. I have no plan. I'm surrendering each day to the magnificence of the FEMALE HALF of God—the half that I've been made in the image of. I have a feeling something really beautiful will bloom from this divine feminine exploration. ❤Who's ready to go with me? ☺