Do You Believe This? — SheLoves

Wonderful themes going this year over at SheLoves. This month? Permission — a topic I absolutely loved writing about because I think it’s so important, especially for women. Please start that piece here and then follow the link over to one of the richest places on the internet.

Henrietta Mears

I had a boss once who used the phrase, “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.” That little sentence used to bother me a little, having lived the formative years of my life as an oh-so-obedient eldest child, one who asked permission for everything. I spent way too many minutes (years?) of my life worrying about where to go, whom to ask, and how to find permission to try most anything and everything.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned well in the past few decades, it is this: permission is highly overrated. Too often, the word has been dangled over our heads (our female heads, most especially), and with eyebrows raised and fingers pointed, we’ve been asked, “Who said you could do that?”

I grew up at the tail end of the ‘behave like a lady’ thinking that permeated North American culture for generations. Like children, women were to be seen, but not heard, ‘respected,’ even revered, but not fully included nor even invited into the story of the 20th century church.

But in 1950’s southern California evangelical circles, there was one woman who changed that trajectory dramatically. Her name was Henrietta Mears and she was a dynamo. She broke through barriers right and left. Though I never knew her, her life made a mark on mine. And then there was Roberta Hestenes, an ordained Presbyterian pastor and seminary professor who singlehandedly began to change the way many streams of evangelical mid-twentieth-century Christianity viewed women. She never asked permission for anything, she just quietly followed God’s lead and taught us all some valuable lessons about personhood, calling and obedience.

 

So in the spirit of solidarity with such women through the ages, I’d like to pause a moment and remind us all of what we do not ever need permission to do. Are you ready?

Click here to join the conversation – it’s a good one today.

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Comments

  1. Gwen Acres says

    Wonderful Diana, especially for the timid and approval seekers! Breaking free!!