I have a confession to make:

I have an aversion to Christian women ministries and speakers and all of the things that come along with that.

The first time I was asked if I wanted to go to a Beth Moore conference I cringed. I did not want to go. The last thing I wanted to do was sit for a weekend with thousands of women and hear things that were “I am woman hear me roar”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great. It’s wonderful. The fact that there are women that speak and write and be means that I too can speak and write and be. I was the president of an all women’s choir in college and was on all women teams on the world race and have been for most of my life been surrounded by strong, powerful women.

So really, I should love the concept of women’s groups and ministries and speakers and conferences.

But I think honestly, we are made for more.

I think as women we sell ourselves short. I think that we sometimes allow ourselves to be ok with the sugary sweet. That we only believe we can speak to each other about women’s issues and kids. That we focus on walking with our broken pieces and frailty than walking out of them.

That we compare ourselves to the ornaments on that we place on the back of the Christmas tree because they are ugly and broken.

I’m not a freakin’ ornament.

Why does it have to come back to us being women? I know that there are pieces of us that are different and there are parts of our femininity and the femininity of Christ. We need to talk about those things for sure. But why do we wrap it in such pretty packages? Why do we use soft voices?

Why don’t we raise our voices?

Why don’t we raise our voices in the presence of men as well?

(Now, don’t get me started on women in head pastor positions or in authority and whatever. That’s an entirely different soapbox. Don’t read into all of this that and hear me saying we need to be in charge and loud.)

But what I am saying is we have things to say that aren’t about marriage and femininity and kids. We have a lot of things to say.

I’m saying sometimes we need to look at things as a human being, not as a woman. We are individuals not defined by our sex but by who we are uniquely created to be.

I think that the women in the kingdom of God need to do a few things. We need to realize we are fierce. We need to raise our voice. We need to realize that we have things in our femininity that can be balanced by the masculinity. We need to realize that bible studies for women and conferences and all of that are so good, that they are needed.

But we need to stop sugar-coating them. There needs to be ugliness and there needs to be rawness.

We need to stop being fake.

One of the words of life I got when getting prayed for my last week in Spain was that I shouldn’t diminish myself or shrink back; that I should unfurl myself to the fullness that I am.

So I too, need to stop being fake.

So here’s what I am going to do: I am going to submit writing to all of those places. I am going to write on the questions asked, I am going to write as myself and only myself and not who I think I need to write for. Now, I’m not saying that I am going to blatantly write things to offend others or write against everything that people stand for.

But I am choosing to be ok with writing in who I am.

I’m not sugar sweet. I don’t like cotton candy that much. So I’m choosing to bring that into the mix more. I’m choosing to bring the salt.

I’m choosing to share that I have wine in my teacup.