I'm not entirely sure what I can at this point in my life - this very immediate point - bring to the table or even what table I'm attempting to bring something to.

Really, what I'm doing is prayerfully coming here because my heart is wildly experiencing something so brand new and it seems that maybe if I work it out here, something will come of it.

I have said that, for me, the thirties have brought into my life an element that I had not expected and maybe this is all the more true at this very moment.  Because I am working out a new identity.  And at the same time, asking God to be the one to work that identity out.  And honestly, it's scary.

There was something very safe and comforting about the practice of contentment and quiet submission in my twenties.  And now suddenly I find myself single but with children. This is not a slight thing.  Because without the marriage part of mothering, a giant piece of what a woman has attempted to attain is now under question.  Of course, my job as a mother is the same.  But with the housewife role stripped, this woman within, flounders a bit for herself.  And this, may be one huge reason against divorce.  It is unnatural to the way of things in a family setting.  And yet it is what it is.  And here I am, mapping out this new course.  Somehow.  I'm barely touching the surface of it all because my mind has barely touched the surface of it all.

If the husband is to be the head of the household, the manifestation, in a way, of Christ's love for his wife (even if this was an unsuccessful endeavor) and he is then gone, then in many ways woman is now face to face with the real Christ and there is the Lord's face, asking the woman a question.

How can it be that I felt for so many years, that I was already walking alone with Christ and now that I truly am, feel that I must not have been, then before?  Marriage served as a protection.  Faulty, but there in its own sort of way.  And now I totter, here, ungrounded, the world beckoning in its beguiling way as never before, the Lord in His quiet manner offering peace which surpasses all understanding.  My flesh has risen to its occasion, if only with temptation and I feel compelled to say that Every Woman's Battle is not every woman's battle until it is.  And I am not merely talking about sexual temptation.  I am talking about the cry of the spirit to hide until these storms have passed and the skin prickling with whispers of freedom, forgetting that it is the truth which truly liberates.

I feel that as a Christian writer, my work will never be the same.  That there will be more than ever, many who must turn their face as I speak, the words unable to penetrate, the experiences I have to offer, unrelatable to many.  But still, I must write. Bring this struggle and its beauty to life on page and that requires a raw honesty that in actuality loses audience.

Brand new idols are showing their face,begging for worship and I have to choose, hourly now who I will serve.  I also have to be willing to confess that this is the case. That new territory is being trudged and that though I know where my help comes from, there are times my hand reaches toward a mirage or a mirror.

And maybe, if I can bring this fight in its authenticity to this small table, in a minor way and with few gritty details but at least the essence, then I, myself, will find sustenance and perhaps, just perhaps, if it is God's will, one woman might find some little thing here which brings her closer to her Maker.