hiking2christ

For many centuries women lived in close fellowships with other women – gathering at the well, down by the river, preparing meals – many occasions for femininity to just sort of naturally pass from older women to younger women. Our intuition, our keen eye for relationship, our ability to grasp matters of the heart made any sort of formal “passage” into femininity unnecessary. Nowadays those opportunities are nearly gone. When we meet as women, it tends to be in high-stress situations – corporate meetings with deadlines, ministry meetings with agendas, PTA meetings with concerns. The home is the only place left for this vital transmission of feminine identity.

The way you see yourself now, as a grown woman, was shaped early in your life, in the years when you were a little girl. We learned what it meant to be feminine – and if we were feminine – while we were very young. Women learn from their mothers what it means to be a woman, and from their fathers the value that a woman has – the value they have as a woman. If a woman is comfortable with her own femininity, her beauty, her strength, then the chances are good that her daughter will be too.

From our mothers we receive many, many things but foremost above them all is mercy and tenderness. When my sons were young and got hurt, their dad would say something encouraging like “cool wound.” I would cradle them in my arms and tend their injury. Our mothers show us the merciful face of God. We are nurtured at their breasts and cradled in their arms. They rock us to sleep and sing us lullabies. Our youngest years are lived within the proximity of their apron strings and they care for us in all the meanings of the word. When we get hurt, moms kiss us and make it better.

And as for our Question – that is primarily answered by our fathers.

Little girls need the tender strength of their fathers. They need to know that their daddies are strong and will protect them; they need to know that their fathers are forthem. Above all, a little girl learns the answer to her Question from her father.

From them, we learn that we are delighted in, that we are special…or that we are not. How a father relates to his daughter has an enormous effect on her soul – for good or for evil.

-John & Stasi Eldredge, Captivating, 61-62

Picture Credit: Michael Anderson