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I am a Christian and I am a writer. But I have never, ever called myself a Christian writer.
So when I was invited to speak at the Southern Christian Writers Conference this summer I was reluctant to accept. Eventually, though, I said yes, but I was sure I’d spend the entire weekend feeling like a fraud.
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On Wednesday, January 2 — the same day I published a blog post and an Instagram post on the importance of believing you can actually achieve your 2019 goals — I went to my church’s first Wednesday service and the preacher talked about the power of positive thinking. He discussed the power of positive speaking, too. We have to speak God’s Word over ourselves, over our lives, and over our situations, he said.
For me, this was confirmation that I needed to get serious once again about reciting (and sharing) daily affirmations, a practice I started last year but abandoned.
Related Reading: Affirmations for Women Who Blog
So I took some of my favorite Bible verses and used them to write 10 affirmations for Christian women who write.
God doesn’t speak to me — at least not in the way I’d prefer. According to the Bible (and Father Lantom on Daredevil), God speaks in whispers. But the world is too loud. I need that burning bush kind of communication.
Over the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve been getting little messages here, there and everywhere that I believe may be divine.
You can read Faithfully Feminist (Part 1) here.
For most of my childhood, I was oblivious to gender roles and stereotypes. I climbed trees faster and more fearlessly than the boys in my neighborhood because no one ever suggested that I couldn’t — or shouldn’t. My mother didn’t care if I wore dresses or jeans. My father was the one who cooked Sunday dinner and most other meals, too.
But it was the church that taught me girls were to be seen not heard. It started when I got kicked out of a vacation bible school class one summer at my cousin’s church for asking too many questions about Proverbs 31. When I got older and even more interested in religion, I told my Granny I had thought about being a preacher one day and she told me that would never be allowed because the Baptist church believed the pulpit was no place for a woman. This was long before I called myself a feminist, long before I even really understood what that word meant. Yet, when my well-intentioned grandmother said those words something stirred within me and gave me a command as clear as God’s to Moses through the burning bush: “Rebel!”
Long before the popularity of the “Jesus Is My Homeboy” T-shirts, I considered Jesus my BFF. More accurately, he was my hero, protecting me from the being much more terrifying than any imagined monsters underneath my bed — God.