Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Foreword by Lynne Hybels

Introduction: An Invitation to Transformation in Christ
1 Finding Our Identity in Christ
2 Saying Yes to God’s Purposes
3 Serving God in the Way That He Calls
4 Living in Truth
5 Escaping the Tyranny of the “Never-Enough” World
6 Cultivating a Marriage That Works
7 Embracing Our Sexuality
8 Experiencing the Transformations of Motherhood
9 Finding God in the Midst of Difficulty
10 Reaching Across Generations
11 Being Christ in the World

Appendix A: A Look at 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and God’s View of Women
Appendix B: Guide for Discussion with a Spiritual Friend

Foreword

I am reading the manuscript of Longing for More on a train en route from Dublin to Belfast. I have just visited with a dear Irish friend, a woman preparing - as I am - to enter the decade of her fifties. Last evening, as we sat under a full moon in the garden of a quaint hotel in County Wicklow, we compared notes on the busy, domestic years of our twenties and thirties when our lives revolved around the needs of our children and our husbands. Then we talked about the transitional challenges of our forties, when suddenly it seemed we received the long-desired gift of discretionary time but then had no clue what to do with it. Finally, we shared with each other our dreams of the future, shadowy at this point but offering us just enough definition to allow us to begin taking active, preparatory steps.

This morning, as I sit here reading Ruth’s manuscript, I can’t help but think how much my Irish friend and I would have benefited from this book twenty-five years ago when we were young women making choices about our future. And as the train rumbles along, I find myself wishing that I had about two hundred copies of the completed book stashed away in my suitcase. I would love to be able to stack them on the booktable at the conference in Belfast where I am scheduled to speak in the coming days. In fact, I would probably be tempted to say, “Hey, don’t bother to sit through my talk. Just buy Ruth’s book.”

I should not be surprised that this book compellingly reinforces—and pushes to greater depth—the same themes that I seek to embrace more fully in my own life and to communicate to other women. The ongoing friendship and dialogue that Ruth and I have enjoyed in recent years has shown us to be kindred spirits in many ways. We are of one mind, from our shared belief that silence can lead us into the heart of God to our shared conviction that women—strong in the strength God has given us—have the potential to change the world.

The spiritual exercises at the end of each chapter confirm truths that I have found strength in over the years. I have learned that there is great power in personal prayer and reflective journaling. I’ve also experienced the equal power of prayerful listening and discussion in a small community of women who are earnestly seeking the guidance of God. I’m glad that Ruth leads us into both.

As I was reading this manuscript I circled many paragraphs, scribbled down many quotes and scattered hundreds of exclamation points in the margins—but I keep going back to one line in particular: “It is time,” writes Ruth, “to stand for what you believe and never look back.” I spent many years of my adult life plagued by fear and by a litany of falsehoods. In the future I want to stand strongly and firmly on the side of courage, on the side of truth, on the side of goodness, on the side of the revolutionary gospel of Jesus. Longing for More challenges, encourages, motivates and empowers me toward that end. Thank you, Ruth.

Extracts from ... INTRODUCTION

An Invitation to Transformation in Christ

The freedom question, then, is not whether we can do whatever we want but whether we can do what we most deeply want.
GERALD MAY, The Awakened Heart.

It used to be that a woman’s choices were fairly simple: she went to school, got married, stayed married to the same man — for better or worse — and raised children. There were standards of conduct and morality that were widely accepted, and generally we knew what was expected.

This is no longer the case. Today we can have a career, full time or part time, at home or away from home, or we can focus our energy and time solely on family and volunteer work. We can get married or stay single. We can have children — or not. The choice to have children leads to further choices: about whether to adopt or whether to choose any of a myriad of reproductive options available today. But choices do not necessarily make life easier — they often make life more difficult, because they produce guilt, self-doubt and stress. With increased options comes an increased awareness of the possibility for making mistakes, and this awareness can produce real anxiety.

On the other hand, more choices also yield increased opportunities for good options — options for spending our time, energy and resources in ways that are life-giving for us and our world. These new possibilities touch our longing to make a difference and to know that our presence on this planet matters. These “choice points” include but go far beyond issues such as dating, career, marriage, children and money. Underlying these obvious concerns are the more subtle choices regarding our values, moral and ethical standards, life calling, and belief system. We look for role models who have successfully negotiated the twists, turns and pitfalls of the road, yet we’re not sure whose wisdom and insight to trust.

Celebrities on their second or third marriage are anxious to tell us how to have a happy marriage. We listen in as sports figures and successful business people share their secrets of success, only to find out later that their personal lives are fraught with immorality or addictions. Psychologists and other experts give advice on every issue from morality to childrearing. Add to these the plethora of friends, family and religious influences — all offering ideas about who women ought to be and what they ought to do—and things can become so confusing that it is tempting to give up and take the path of least resistance.

Of course, some of these sources do have valuable advice to offer, but even the best advice does not necessarily represent that which is most deeply called for in our own life. We are almost persuaded — but not quite. To make matters more complicated, young women today have had the chance to observe the previous generation’s choices and are finding the results to be decidedly mixed. When we are honest, many of us admit to feelings of ambivalence about the choices women have made overthe years.

In the 1960s women witnessed the power of choice as our sisters burned their bras and fought for equal rights. In the 1970sand early 1980s women experienced the initial euphoria of having the opportunity to get out there and prove what we could do. But as the late 1980s wore on into the 1990s, the euphoria wore off, and we began to experience a new realism about choices we had made. Reluctantly we began to admit to a new set of questions and concerns. Now in this new millennium we recognize some of the discoveries we’ve made.

1. Most have learned the hard way that there’s no such thing as Superwoman.

The physical exhaustion that many of us have experienced from managing a home and career has helped us to see our limitations.

2. Many have experienced guilt and sadness as a result of our choices.

Our small children hold on tight and cry when we have to leave for work. We find it very hard to keep up with friendships. On the other hand, those of us who are stay-at-home moms wonder if we are failing to develop our gifts and fulfill our potential.

3. Our choices have brought a sense of disillusionment.

In her article “The Failure of Feminism,” Kay Ebeling observes, “In general, feminism gave men all the financial and personal advantages over women. What’s worse, we asked for it. The reality of feminism is a lot of frenzied and overworked women dropping kids off at daycare centers.”

4. We’ve realized that choosing one thing means saying no to something else.

An executive vice president of a Fortune 500 company acknowledges the price she has paid to get where she has gotten. “I don’t take care of the house. I don’t cook. I don’t market. I don’t take my children to the malls and museums. And I don’t have close friends. I am frequently too tired to tell my husband about my day . . . or to play with the children.”

5. There is an uncertainty that underlies our confidence.

Peggy Orenstein describes our situation at the beginning of a new century as “a state of flux.” She points out that “Old patterns and expectations have broken down, but new ideas seem fragmentary, unrealistic, and often contradictory.”

Even as we talk about all the options women have today, many times we feel that our own choices are limited. In fact, at times in all of our lives we feel downright stuck. We don’t have all the choices we would like to have — choices about income level, how we are treated by our husband, educational opportunities, the size of our home, our looks or body shape, whether we have children. Mothers of young children go through periods when the most basic choices — when to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom — are determined by someone else’s schedule and needs! Single women who may long to be at home raising children find themselves climbing a corporate ladder they would rather leave behind.

Most of us must deal at some point with situations that narrow our range of options, such as a dead-end job, a difficult marriage, demanding toddlers or singleness. How does one experience spiritual transformation even when our outward circumstances are not what we would choose? What are our choices when we feel we have none?

IN SEARCH OF FREEDOM

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” Paul says (2 Corinthians 3:17). Indeed the whole spiritual journey could be characterized as a journey into freedom. That doesn’t mean merely the physical freedom to come and go as we wish or the freedoms we experience as citizens of a free country. For Paul, these kinds of freedoms came and went. Here Paul is talking about an interior freedom.

It is the freedom to be completely given over to God and to others in love in any given moment. It is the ability to live from an inner security, freed from self-interest, self-consciousness and self-protection. This is the freedom to live a life of utter responsiveness to the Spirit of God within us and among us rather than being limited or driven by the expectations of others. When we are living in this kind of freedom, we are no longer defined by our vulnerabilities and weaknesses, but at the same time we are willing to bless others through our vulnerability and weakness in this world. This freedom moves us from the perfectionism that binds to the grace of embracing what is most authentic within us and offering it freely to our world. This is the path of spiritual transformation in Christ.

To be honest, this has not generally been my experience. In my early thirties I began to acknowledge a growing awareness that I was not free in all the ways I wanted to be free. There were places in my life where I was in bondage — to expectations and limitations (real and perceived) placed on me by others, to my own inner compulsions and to popular misconceptions of what life in Christ is all about. I was ambushed by questions about what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to be a Christian woman, and what it meant to be surprised by a strength and passion within me that didn’t seem to fit existing categories.

As disturbing as it was to start being more honest about such questions, there came a point where I realized that it was time for me to stop fighting the questions and instead allow them to start leading me into deeper levels to truth. “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” Jesus said (John 8:32). I was ready to see if that was really true.

At first it was exhilarating to give myself the freedom to ask new questions, make bold statements, take brave steps. But when the initial euphoria wore off and the journey began to take me to unknown places, it became a bit riskier than I had imagined. All of a sudden I had more responsibilities. I was stretched to the limits of my competencies and gifts, spirituality and wisdom. I found I was worried about different things. I worried about my children and how my choices were affecting them. I worried about myself and the pace I was keeping. I wondered whether I was adequate for all God was calling me to. It felt a little bit like the Israelites’ grand exodus from Egypt. It was easy to be brave in the beginning, excited as they were about following God in new directions and leaving their bondage behind. But once they got a little farther from home and were truly on their own, they began to realize the enormity of the choice they had made and the new levels of responsibility that were associated with greater freedom. It was all so daunting that they started to question the wisdom of the whole thing. I know the feeling! The only thing that kept me going was my longing for freedom to follow God more fully and my growing awareness that the movement toward freedom is indeed the heart of the spiritual journey. ...

ON A PERSONAL NOTE

This book is largely an offering of discoveries claimed in the wilderness of my own questions and empty places — which is where most real change takes place. Just I was beginning to grapple with new questions, I was also being guided into the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence, spiritual reading, spiritual direction and spiritual friendship. These disciplines were absolutely necessary, because they were the means by which I could give God access to the deeper places of my soul at a time when I needed to hear from God more than from anyone else. They gave me a way to listen, and they created quiet spaces within which God could speak. These practices sustained me and continue to sustain me in the wilderness places of my journey and beyond.

As a way of engaging the themes in this book more deeply, I invite you consider establishing a rhythm of spiritual practices similar to the rhythm that anchored me during this time of intense learning and transformation. I encourage you to commit yourself to the disciplines of solitude and silence, spiritual reading, prayer and journaling, and spiritual friendship as you read this book. At the end of each chapter there are spiritual exercises that guide you into these disciplines and create a context in which you too can listen to the issues and questions God is stirring up within your heart.

If you are one of those who can’t put a book down once you’ve started it, go ahead and read the book through to get an overview. But make the commitment to go back and read it a second time more slowly, engaging in the spiritual practices and allowing God to speak deeply into your life. ...