The Lion and the Eagle

Hello world.
 
Today is the day that we have been building up to as a nation for nigh on to two years now. This is perhaps the most important election that any of us have participated and possibly will ever participate in. Our nation has been on a rocky road climbing up a mountain the past few decades and now we have reached a T, not a Y. One way will, eventually, lead us to destruction and the other will, eventually, lead us to a more peaceful future. Neither is the best choice for our nation, but they are our choices nonetheless. I don't want to see any ostriches around me. I want to see lions using their rights to fight for what they believe in. If a lion does not use his teeth and claws, then what sort of lion is he? If he doesn't roar and let himself be heard, how does he establish his territory? I'm not going to tell you to vote for Hillary and I'm not going to tell you to vote for Trump. Who you vote for is your choice and none of my business. Yes I believe one candidate is far better than the other. Yes I will probably be upset if my candidate doesn't win. But, I urge you to consider not just the surface issues that have come to light these grueling past few months, but also what lies beneath. A river may look peaceful and inviting on the surface, but underneath it may be home to many dangers to any who jump in. It's not the surface, the outside that will harm you, but the heart and what lies beneath that will always bring harm. As For King and Country said Sunday night, let's not fix our eyes on what happens today. What will happen will happen. Regardless of the outcome, let us fix our eyes on the King of Kings, the only One Who really controls this earth. Our ruler is not the president of the United States and certainly no official set in place by man, but is God in Heaven Who created this earth and established the nations and their rulers. Today, let us be in prayer for the fate of our nation, as it is the fate that is being decided today. Don't be led astray by what the enemy wants us to believe and hear. Listen to your heart. Let the Spirit guide you. And be at peace. "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Don't let the Founding Fathers' efforts be all for naught. Roar, and let yourself be heard. Don't hang back because you don't think your voice matters or that you don't see a better way. Your voice does mater.

Blessings.

Building Walls

Hello world.

It has been a while since I've posted anything on here. Life has been crazy and busy on this side of the screen.

In that time though, I've found quite a bit of inspiration to write about here, thoughts to dump, wisdom to pass on. One such piece of inspiration was in my memories on Facebook from two years ago. I saw it and decided to expand a little bit on it... The original post was this:

In the book of Nehemiah, we see heartache and discouragement as the children of Israel are coping with the loss of their home and the desecration of their beloved city of Jerusalem. But this is more than just a low time; it is a set up for faith and trust, as so many situations in the Bible are. Nehemiah was a cup-bearer to the king of Persia when he learned of the horrors that had befallen the holy city. He was devastated at the news, and he could not hide his grief from the king, who asked him what was wrong. When Nehemiah told him the reason behind his low countenance, the king asked what it was he wanted. This is the first test of faith and trust in this story. Nehemiah prayed to God in that moment, and asked the king for permission to leave the kingdom and travel to Jerusalem to rebuild his ancestral city. Now, the king could have refused and made Nehemiah stay. But he didn't. Instead, he asked how long he would be without his trusted cup-bearer. Nehemiah made arrangements with the king to leave, and left for Jerusalem with letters of safe passage and soldiers in his possession.

The king didn't have to let him leave; he didn't even have to send soldiers with him. Yet he did. In fact, this particular king was known to be a more compassionate king than most others were; that's not to say he didn't have a temper, though. So, it is because of his kinder heart, and the favor which he bestowed upon Nehemiah (which I will talk about in a moment) that he allowed his cup-bearer to leave with the assurances of safe travel and supplies.

Now, for the favor of the king. For a person to win the favor of the king was, and is, a high honor not experienced by many people. To possess this favor is to have a closer relationship with the king than all but the advisors and the queen. And to be the royal cup-bearer meant that a person was trustworthy and could be relied upon (for those who aren't quite sure what a cup-bearer did, he would serve the royal drinks and taste them for poison to ensure the king was not threatened). Nehemiah didn't just wake up one day and discover he had the favor of the king; he worked to earn it, proving himself trustworthy and dependable. That in itself says a lot about his character. And judging from the way he interacted with the king in this very brief bit of scripture, he had a good relationship with the king, although I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a personal relationship. So what exactly does this mean for the story? Well, as I said in my original post, God provides what you need when you need it. So what I see happening here is God placed Nehemiah in the position to catch the attention of the king, long before Nehemiah himself knew he would need it. He didn't rise to this prestigious position by accident; he rose because it was God's plan for him to rise. God turned the king's eyes to Nehemiah so that he, and not some other servant, could be in a place of honor that would allow him to lead the Israelites in rebuilding Jerusalem. As Nehemiah himself said "And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests." God does not allow accidents to happen; everything happens because it is supposed to happen.

There is one part of this story that I love, and it shows Nehemiah's strength of will and his determination. It happens at the end of the second chapter. Here are the verses:
 
¹⁹ But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. “What is this you are doing?” they asked. “Are you rebelling against the king?”
²⁰ I answered them by saying, “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.”

 Look at how Nehemiah responds to this challenge. He doesn't back down; he doesn't leave; he doesn't even try to reason with them. He steps up to the challenge and claims the authority of heaven to rebuild the walls. But what I love most comes after it. He essentially tells them they are trespassing, that they don't belong on that sacred ground. In no way is Nehemiah timid about this claim. I imagine him saying the first part of his response calmly, and as he begins to reference them his tone starts getting more fierce and his posture becoming more menacing, defending the ground which God gave to his ancestors and upon which he would rebuild what had been destroyed.

This is somewhat of a constant theme throughout the building process. Someone will challenge or doubt Nehemiah's actions and intentions, and Nehemiah will tell them that God is in control of this and He is the only one Who can say what will happen. Throughout all of these events Nehemiah never stops trusting God, he never loses his faith. He believed God would send him what he needed when he needed it, who he needed when he needed them. It was this belief, this trust, this faith that inspired the children of Israel to rebuild their wall.

So, what can we learn from Nehemiah? Three things: Listen to what God puts on your heart and never let it go; trust that He will provide what you need to accomplish what He puts on your heart to do; and to never pass an opportunity that may possibly lead to greater things.

Nehemiah listened to God's calling to rebuild the wall. He didn't simply push it to the back burner and think that someone else would do it. No, he acted and didn't back down once he started.

Once he decided to follow God's direction, he never lost faith that everything would be provided. From the bricks for the wall to the timber for the gates to his house to water and food for the people, he trusted that God would provide exactly what was needed. This can be seen when he petitions for different letters from the king for safe passage and for supplies; he trusted that he would receive what was needed.

Nehemiah didn't see his time in Persia as a terrible thing. In fact he made sure he flourished there. This is made clear in the fact that he was the king's cup-bearer. He didn't just sit around and wait for a divine sign to appear in the sky; he made himself worthy of the king's attention and worked his way up the ranks to a trusted position by the king's side. How can we apply this to today? Simple. Don't let yourself be one of a crowd, don't blend in. Instead, let yourself stand out and shine, make yourself worthy of the attention of others. You never know, it could take you places you never thought were possible. Trust God, and He will make your path straight and guide you to where He wants you to be.

That's all I have for now. If you have anything you'd like to add to this, or any other comments, please put them in the comment section!

Go make yourself shine!

I Am a Feminist!

Hello readers.

Wow, it has been a while since my last post. Two months to be precise. I must say it has been a crazy two months, to say the least. October went by so quickly for me, I don't even know what happened to it! There were about a hundred (or at least that's what it felt like to me) school assignments, appointments, meetings, etc. within the span of a single month. But I have had some leisure time, thank goodness. And that is sort of where the inspiration for this post came from. A few weeks ago I went to play laser tag with some high school friends, and a new friend. In between games, one of my long time friends asked me an interesting question. I cannot remember the exact conversational context this question came out of, but I do remember thinking it was somewhat relevant to the topic. His question was this: So, Catherine, what do you think about feminism? Granted, those aren't the exact words he used, but the meaning of the question is still there. It caught me off guard, but thankfully that is one of the things I know my stance on very well. It is something that I have had plenty of time to think about and pick apart to determine exactly what I think about it. So, my answer was this: I believe in feminism; but not the way it is defined today. We didn't have much time to expand on that answer, but he understood what I meant by that. Well, the past few days it has been bouncing around in my head, so I decided to let it bounce off my fingers and into this post.

As I mentioned, I believe in feminism, just not modern feminism. What do I mean by modern feminism? For starters, today's feminists, in general (and this is just part of the reason why, when I hear the word feminism or equal rights or anything along those lines, I cringe and back away mentally), have this mantra where women are superior to men and don't need men in their lives, and a common theme that I see is "if men can do it, why can't we? Why do we have these standards that men don't have? Both genders are exactly the same". This is where we get into the difference between what I call old feminism and new feminism. New feminism says that women are the same as men in every regard. Old feminism says that women are equal to men in all areas. These are two completely different ideas. Now, before you get your hackles up and start hissing and clawing and saying that I don't know what I'm talking about and these are one and the same, let me explain why I think this way.

In the beginning of the feminist movement, women were seen as merely ornaments to place in a man's home, to be seen and not heard, to entertain but not think, especially among the nobility. This is where the fight for women's rights first began. Women were not allowed to attend any university or school of any kind; they were not allowed to read, in most cases. The only education they were allowed, unless their family was particularly unconventional or very rich, was a base education in the general studies and a thorough education in domestic arts, such as spinning, weaving, painting, homemaking, etc. If girls were not wed to a man of their parents' choosing, they spent their days as either an old maid keeping house for their siblings or in a convent. Very few options were given women, while men had the world at their fingertips. Granted, even men had limitations on what they could and could not do, but their options were more open than those for women.

The first known feminist, according to my research, was Lucretia Mott, a quaker-born teacher in Massachusetts. She first became an advocate for equal rights when she noticed that, even though the cost was the same for their education, men received a much higher pay than women did in the teaching profession. The injustice of this caused her to advocate for gender equality.

This is just one of many examples of women being the leaders that they were created to be, and stepping outside of the conventional boundaries that society set for them, to be treated as worth less than men, and doing something about the injustice. The problem that Lucretia saw in her time is one that we are still facing today, although it is not discussed much. On a side note, it has been a topic of discussion more than once in my business classes, and my opinion in these discussions is no matter what your gender is, if you do the work, you get paid for it, end of story. Some may call me a hypocrite or two-faced when I support this movement but don't support the other new movements, but that's okay. I'll explain why in a minute. But, back to the topic, this is what I believe is the true feminist movement, pushing for equal legal rights and paving the way for women who will come after us. This is why I support old feminism instead of new feminism. I believe that feminism has been and always will be the equal legal rights of women to men. In fact, the Merriam-Webster definition for feminism is "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities". This does not say that it is the belief that men and women have the same physical rights, or that women should not care about how they present themselves, or that men should lower their respect for women, or even that chivalry is no longer applicable. Oh no sir.

Women like Lucretia did not start this movement so that girls today could use their independence to "make a statement" by not practicing general hygiene practices that have been a part of the typical self-respecting woman's routine for a very long time (I won't state an amount of time, simply because it is so easy to misstate something like that). And going along with self-respecting, that is what I do not see in today's feminist movement. Sure, girls can call it what they want to, being "an independent woman who don't need no man" and refusing to let a man or boy act the way his mama taught him by holding a door open for her or extending a little more courtesy toward the fairer sex than he normally would to those of his own kind. Sure, they can call it breaking free of the social norms and foregoing the oh so strenuous task of shaving underneath the ball and socket joint that is their shoulder, an area also called the underarm, or not taking the time to smooth up their legs (which I can almost understand, that is a pain, but oh it makes me feel pretty after the grueling task is done!). Or even call attention to themselves by baring their chests for all the world to see. But you know what I think about all of these things? I think they are just what I said two sentences ago. They are trying to get attention. Yes, feminists of ages past did participate in parades. Yes, they held signs and picketed. Yes, their tempers may have gotten a little out of hand. But, not once did they take their clothes off, not once did they mention things that are meant for the ears of close female relatives only, and I have yet to hear of a lady refusing the assistance of a man in getting in and out of a carriage or holding a door.

And that is what is wrong with the feminist movement today, I think. Women have lost their self-respect. There is a quote that my mother wrote down for me years ago. It is in regards to dating, but I think it can hold true to this particular topic. The original quote is "if you like yourself more, you will like him less. If you like him less, he will respect you more." For my purposes right now, I can reword it as this: "if you like and respect yourself more, others will like and respect you more." In other words, the more you respect yourself and don't pay attention to what others may say, then that is a surefire way to gain the respect of those who are watching you. The keyword here is respect. That is something that today's society is severely lacking. Sure you might hear about a story or two every day about some good Samaritan doing an act of goodwill for someone who didn't ask for it, but then you turn around and the majority of society makes you think that story was made up or is an old story. People have no respect for themselves, and they certainly don't have respect for others. 100 years ago it would have been unseemly for a woman to show her bare elbow or ankle, much less a whole arm or practically a whole leg from hip to toe, as is the norm today (granted there are exceptions to these, but I am speaking about society in general). Women complain about men showing them no respect and treating them like a piece of meat, and yet they don't do anything to rectify the situation, other than posting pictures and saying they don't need a man, or coloring their underarm hair, or any outlandish thing such as that. What this tells me is these girls don't respect themselves, and so they couldn't care less what people think, all they want is attention. But what it could really boil down to, and I'm not saying it is, is insecurity. They are not comfortable with themselves or their bodies, and so they feel like they must draw some sort of attention to them in the hopes of getting something positive.

I don't think that feminism is inherently a bad thing. In fact, I think it is great for women to fight for their rights in a world built around men. Man and woman were created together, side by side, and were created as equals. God told Adam that Eve was to be his helpmate; she was created from his rib, and so like the rib, she would be there by his side to support him as he walked through life and set his hands to the tasks laid before him. God did not say that they were two completely different kinds of people, with one being over the other. Not on your life! He told them to help one another, that they were to be each others' companions. Now, I won't go so far as to explicitly say that feminism is Biblical, and that is why we must embrace it. No. But, there are times in the Bible when a woman stepped forward and took into her own hands what any man could have undertaken and accomplished just as easily. We see Deborah leading the nation of Israel as one of the judges; she took up the sword, leading her people to battle; she was snarky when it came to dealing with men (see Judges 4:9; I laugh every time I read that verse); she delivered wisdom; she was respected among her people. We see Esther saving the nation of Israel; she stepped up and took upon herself the daunting task of becoming queen of Persia and all the political implications therein; she did not back down, but rather demanded respect by her actions; she was and still is respected. These are but two of the women in the Bible who did not back down from what they were called to do. They demanded and received respect, whether consciously or not, and they did not let the world tell them that they could not do it just because they were women. And neither of them intentionally drew attention to themselves by making themselves indecent or doing something completely improper. I think if they could give advice to women today, it would be this: believe in yourself, have faith that God will give you what you need to do what He has called you to do, respect yourself and others, and don't be afraid to set a man in his place if you have to (okay, maybe that would just be Deborah).

All in all, feminism is not a bad thing to believe in. To sum it up, I think feminism at its roots is simply an instrument with which to gain respect, and to regain the equality set in place by God when He created man and woman. The purpose of feminism is not to belittle men and make ourselves look like the superior sex. Oh no! It is to keep men in their place as our guides and raise us back up to their sides as helpers and equal companions.

I may come back to this in the future. Who knows? I might do that for every topic I write about. I just know that there is still more bouncing around that didn't quite make it to the keyboard that will come out sooner or later.

Anyway, I hope this post got you thinking. And if you want to tell me you agree with me then comment away, and if you want to tell me that I am a complete eejit and don't know a thing about the way the world turns then post your comment too. I love to hear from my readers, even if the comment is an unpleasant one.

Until next time!