Being Woman
A single red dot, circular and small. I sound the alarm from the tiny bathroom at the back of our house. “Mom!” She comes running at the fear and confusion in my voice. Her face mixes smile and frown and wonder like flour and sugar and salt in a bowl. I realize then that this has something to do with a becoming. “You’re a woman,” she tells me.
That was decades ago, and I still don’t fully understand what this phrase means. You’re a woman. I think of other times that have brought these words into my mind. As a bride walking down the aisle on the arm of my father, whose deep breaths are the dam holding back his tears when he tucks my wrist into the tuxedo sleeve of my groom. Later that night when all that’s been forbidden becomes holy and I am naked and unashamed. When I am on the table of a doctor with an ultrasound wand in her hand and she is looking at the quiet screen and telling us, “I’m sorry.”
Didn’t all this spill out from that single drop, a red sea without the parting? And there’s more to being a woman than just these events. Something in my girl bones knows this as I watch the mamas and grandmas, the big sisters and aunties, the single adventurers and the seniors with their coveted casserole dishes on Sundays. I want to know what it means to be a woman on the inside, too, in the places where the shouts come from and the river of tears begins and the laughter rolls out like thunder.
I go hunting in Genesis for answers because it is the beginning of all things:
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. (Gen. 2:21–22)
People who mean well use these words to build definitions and limits and expectations around femininity like fences. And it will be too many years before I read what Sharon Jaynes says in How Jesus Broke the Rules to Set You Free, when I begin to really understand.
The Hebrew word “helper” that is used for woman is ezer. It is derived from the Hebrew word used of God and the Holy Spirit, “azar.” Both mean “helper”—one who comes alongside to aid or assist. King David wrote, “O Lord, be my helper” (Ps. 30:10 NASB). . . . Ezer appears twenty-one times in the Old Testament. Two times it is used of the woman in Genesis 2, sixteen times it is used of God or Yahweh as the helper of his people. The remaining three references appear in the books of the prophets, who use it in reference to military aid.1
When I discover this, it’s like a sledgehammer to a stained glass window. Shards and color and the only perspective I could see for so long are sent flying in every direction. And all these pieces settle into something new, a mosaic of beauty and mystery and wildness I did not know I was allowed.
We are women and this is a powerful thing. It is an echo of God’s heart and a display of his glory. He speaks this world into being—let there be light—but when he makes woman, it’s intimate, and personal.
Imagine the scene. Adam drifting off to sleep in the sunlight, the whisper of God’s footsteps on the grass, the bend of his knees as he reaches down. He touches Adam’s side, the place closest to his heart, and takes hold of a rib. Perhaps the animals gather to watch. A porcupine with sharp quills who’s trying not to be socially awkward sits next to a chubby panda having another afternoon snack, while a squirrel deliriously runs circles around them all. Then a hush comes as the Artist begins to work. He stretches the rib out long and adds curves and flesh and eyelashes. Yes, a freckle just above her lip, a wrinkle on her elbow, a softness in the palms of her hands, and a strength between her shoulder blades.
I think God smiles.
Soon all that beauty will be marred with sin like spitballs on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He will curse her. He will not give up on her. And later a Messiah will set her free. But even after that the woman circles the borders of Eden, never completely reclaiming the truth. She forgets her story. The people around her tell her different versions. The world is a web of lies and she is the butterfly with paper wings struggling in the corner.
She doesn’t see she is lovely. She becomes untethered from the fierceness inside her. She tries on shoes like Cinderella in yoga pants and eats leftover cookies alone in the middle of the night and sees the plastic surgeon for one more touch-up, the knife splitting her skin’s surface like the hurt splits her soul. Or she hides and tries very hard to be very good. She joins every committee and says yes to bathing one hundred poodles for charity and grows dim in the flicker of the television light.
And all the while, the One who made her is calling her back, still walking in the garden of her heart in the cool of the day and saying, “I am with you.” He offers what she longs for most—for him to tell her who she really is, to whisper in her ear that he has made her funny and wise and strong and brave. That she is tender and resilient and complex and wonder-filled. She is mystery and unveiling. She is salty tears and the sweat at the finish line and the lioness in the corner office and lullabies in the night. She is not an afterthought; she has been an essential part of the plan all along.
Somewhere a snake hisses and a Savior on a cross declares, “It is finished.” A single red drop falls to the ground. The curtain splits and the curse breaks and the promise of Eden comes back to us. All the sisters and the daughters and the mamas say, “Amen.” Redemption joyfully roars back, “You are a woman.” And it echoes through the ages all the way down to a tiny bathroom in the back of a house.
When I listen closely, I can hear it still.
Holley Gerth
Holley Gerth is a Bestselling author of You're Loved No Matter What: Freeing Your Heart from the Need to Be Perfect, life coach and counselor.
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