ladies first

Yesterday I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. They had moved my appointment, asked me to come in early, and yet were running late. At first I enjoyed the extra time, reading a book and people watching.

Cute pregnant women sat with husbands. A married couple chatted in Spanish, although it was obviously not the wife’s native language. Two women discussed books and authors. Lots of people spoke in hushed tones. A generous few shared every word they had with the whole room.

A couple walked in, the wife doubled over in pain. The nurses whisked her back, and then soon after wheeled her out of the office in a wheelchair.

I read a book about the poor. I thought about women who would stand in line all day for the chance to see a doctor, and felt embarrassed that I was a little irked to be inconvenienced with waiting an hour. I thought about the luxurious education I was given because my culture considers it my right. I wondered how the woman wheeled out in the wheelchair was doing. I remembered how her husband walked beside her. I thought about women who have no husbands to walk beside them, or food to feed their children, or chairs to sit in.

Western women are plagued with comparing themselves to one another. Who is prettier, smarter, more successful, better dressed? Whose house is cuter, better organized, cleaner? Whose husband is more attentive, has a better job, makes more money? Whose children have the states and capitals memorized, make better grades, are starters on the football team?

I faced the reality that if we were born into homes with solid roofs, electricity, and have clean drinking water, we have more than most women in the world. If we have chosen where to give birth, who will be our doctor, or what vitamins we want to take we are in the very small and very lucky majority of the world’s women.

Once I was escorted back to a room (so that I could wait some more), I could hear a sonogram going on in the room next to mine. I listened to the beautiful whoosh-whoosh of the heartbeat of a baby.

I said a prayer of thanks to God for that sound. That sound changed me from the inside out. By the time I heard my fourth baby’s heart pounding, I was done with all that comparing business. I was too overwhelmed with the daily labor of child-rearing to care if I measured up. I was humbled. I was lost in my own need to grow bigger than my circumstances.

When you know no one can ever be good enough on their own, and that only Jesus can lift us above our lack-filled souls, it doesn’t matter who has more stuff or a better life.

We are all in it together, trying to become more like Him, waiting for God to meet our need. Designer mascara runs just the same as the stuff from the drugstore. Golden crosses covered in diamonds tell the same story as rugged wooden ones.

I listened to that whooshing some more and asked God to help me find ways to help more women, and I thought of the women who have helped me through the years.

To all of you wonderful women who are in it with me: Thank you for loving me in my weaknesses and sin, and for treasuring the good God has done in my life. It is a privilege to call you my friends, and I love you.