By NEENA GAYNOR
I always think of author and journalist Hal Borland’s quote this time of year: “March is a tomboy with tousled hair, a mischievous smile, mud on her shoes, and a laugh in her voice.”
While the daffodils have braved their peeks, green grass remains cautious. One trip out to the bees or to the barn, and my boots squish through the stinking mud. One moment, I’m zipping up the boys in puffy coats or raingear. The next, we’re all shedding layers faster than broadleaf weeds can take over flooded garden beds. Is March a tomboy? Or is she more a menopausal woman? Is there anything feminine about March at all?
March is Women’s History Month. Muddy march… And this is when we remember women. I love it!
Rain water courses down the hills to the pond. Where we live, the frogs croak louder than music blasts or trucks zoom. Lambs are born. Chicks hatch. Crocus blooms. New life teems in the fields, creek, hives, coops, stalls, and woods around me. Even I found myself with new energy as the sun warms some spot within me, seemingly asleep or dead from winter’s gray, cold days.
The farm is an easy place to hide away. Tucked safely between hills and hard work, sometimes I forget what’s beyond these curvy roads. It can take all day before I sit down to catch up on the world’s current crisis, confusion, and chaos, but one click, and it’s there. I read (on Instagram) that the average social media user scrolls the length of the Statue of Liberty every day. When I compare the world’s message to women with what I’m seeing on these beautifully muddy days, I’ve gotta say… it doesn’t match.
We celebrate Women’s History Month because there is no shortage of extraordinary ladies. Scientists, homemakers, social workers, farmers, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs, inventors, political figures, or warriors--all of them. Thank you! But I know men in all of those roles, so let’s not qualify (or limit) women just by their various occupations, salaries, or vacation days.
Let us celebrate how God created women exceptionally. Women are uniquely designed to be receptive to love and life. We’re entrusted with the capacity of generosity not only physically, but hearts sensitive to human longings and spiritual motherhood. What women bring to the world is more love—love in the home and in the workplace. Love in the cities and in the farm fields. Love in communities, in families, and in the seeming solitude of prayer.
In a month where we remember great women, I ask that we’d be emboldened by those who exemplified service. Yes, service—not “servitude” as the world corrupts the message—but those that have willingly given of themselves for others. Women who gave their time, their vanity, their fortunes, their conveniences, their homes, their work, and their lives. Just as Jesus did. All people, male and female, are here to serve, not be served. Only through Jesus Christ who chose to be born of Mary—the ultimate example of womanhood and service to the Lord—will we have life more abundantly.
Happy Women’s History Month. Here’s to more spring times (even the mud)!
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FIRST-PERSON: Celebrating women - Kentucky Today
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