Five Minute Friday: Grace

Five Minute Friday! Joining Lisa-Jo Baker (see link below) to write for 5 minutes and then stop, no editing. Today's prompt: Grace.

GO

Sometimes words can hurt. Sometimes, when you are looking for encouragement you can stumble upon something that you weren't prepared for. Sometimes, even by Christian authors.

I ran into this last week. In my quest in seeing the holy in the ordinary and reclaiming a more low key routine, some simplicity was in order. Not my strongest suit. So I did what I normally do and hit the bookstore. I found a book on reducing chaos in your life and bought it immediately. In the first chapter this particular book clearly stated that the reason women work outside the home is because we insist on bigger houses, better vacations and jam-packed calendar for our kids. I closed the book, not really willing to listen any further because my feelings were so hurt. Actually my heart broke. Again.

There seems to be an unspoken war between women. Especially women in the faith community. The five minutes we have alloted today doesn't give enough time to delve into this topic. But I have to say this isn't the first time I have run into this attitude. I just need to ask that we quit making blanket statements about the right way and the wrong way to be a woman in this world.

Can we extend to one another grace for the moment? To try to understand where someone else is coming from and accept where we are. To stop looking down our noses (even when we don't mean to) at someone else's situation and just love them? Working outside the home, working within the home, married, single, whatever. We are all just broken people trying to do the best we can. And the evil one will take advantage of every division. Let's not help him out.

STOP