Among the women praised in Scripture are warriors, widows, slaves, sister wives, apostles, teachers. concubines, queens, foreigners, prostitutes, prophets, mothers, and martyrs. What makes these women's stories leap from the page is not the fact that they conform to some kind of universal ideal, but that, regardless of the culture and context in which they found themselves, they lived their lives with valour. They lived their lives with faitg. A much as we may long for the symplicity of a single definition of "biblical womanhood," there is no one right way to be a woman, no mold into which we must cram ourselves- not if Deborah, Ruth, Rachel, Tamar, Vahti, Esther, Priscilla, Mary Magdalene, and Tabitha have anything to say about it.
from A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans
She thought of Holy Rainbow's God. Could he hear Vivacite? Did he care less that this infant was a girl? Would he have kept a boy child alive? She spoke into the moonlit night, wondered if her l'Ayvoise words would be understood by Holy Rainbow's God.
"Can you carry this child in the cleft of your back?" she whispered as Vivacite lay in the crook of her arm, only slightly heavier than the fur that surrounded her. "Is she your beloved? Will you keep her from hunger when I can't? Just a few more days, the guides say. Just a few more drops of milk to keep her alive, that's all we need. Or will you make her dying be a message to her selfish mother?"
from A Name of Her Own by Jane Kirkpatrick
What do you think the role of women should be in the church (and society as a whole)?
