Breaking the Silence

There is a silent sisterhood among us. Attending prayer meetings, women’s conferences, and choir rehearsals. They are frying chicken and baking cakes for the Fifth Sunday union. They are serving on the Pastor’s Aide board and heading up the Hundred Women in White committee. There they sit among groups of perfectly primped and powdered ladies whose slips never hang and curls never fall. They are sitting there all the time knowing the Truth—but not getting free. Silent women passing each other hopelessly unable to connect—same past, same shame, same issues. Same silence.

Eventually these women either join the merry façade and learn to hide the facts of their journey under a cloak of self-righteousness or they decide that if we’re all going to be hypocrites, then I’ll just slip and tip and keep doing what I do. Either way we end up with a shallow, whitewashed form of Christianity and no power. Another generation of youth step into the leadership in local and maybe even national churches and it starts all over again.

The level of my power varies directly with the level of Truth I am willing to embrace. My joy is determined by my ability to separate fact from Truth. Which is the fact that Mary Magdalene was a whore or that she was the first person to whom was revealed the resurrected Christ? Which is the Truth that Rahab was a harlot or that she was the only one that was saved in her city and she ended up being in the lineage of Jesus Christ?

But blood identifies you. It holds your DNA. It separates you from the group. Even if you deign to hide among the group—deny your own process and the pain that brought you to your current position. Your blood has been found at the scene of the crime—you are identified. All of our hands are bloody. We have all sinned and come short of God’s glory. And nothing can remove that blood -- but His.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should write a blog and reveal their innermost thoughts. That was my directive. I am suggesting that we break the silence. That like Jesus’s nail prints we wear our scars like badges of honor. They are authority. They’re evidence of battles fought. And the fact that you are still standing in the Kingdom is evidence that the battle was not just fought but won.

We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. (Revelation 12:11)

Don’t deny the world your testimony.