Phenomenal Women

Phenomenal Women

What a summer!

On June 1st my second daughter traveled over 5500 miles to Bolivia. She is spending her summer working in a Hospital of Hope. This morning my oldest daughter flew to a major city to work in inner city missions work through the July 4th weekend. And Monday my two youngest daughters will travel to my Alma Mater for a week-long teen convention.

My daughters. I have written about them before; I have talked about them frequently. They are incredible women. Actually they are phenomenal women.

Recently I discovered Maya Angelou’s piece Phenomenal Woman. Then shortly after I stumbled across a random CD of Ruthie Foster. Foster recorded Maya’s poetry as a song, and it has played quite loudly in my car many times since. (Luckily when I sing the car is empty!) I saw and heard my daughters in its voice.

(If you would like to read the poem, follow this link: www.poemhunter.com/poem/phenomenal-woman/ )

My heavenly Father has transformed, conformed, and formed incredibly phenomenal women in my four daughters. I see his handiwork and fingerprints all over them and it expands my heart. They are such wonderful, lovely and gracious blends of their father and me—but, and even more, they are all unique.

Phenomenal is defined as something or someone who is highly extraordinary. Very early on the girls’ father and I strove (and still do) to instill independence and strength and compassion in our daughters (there are times when I laugh and think we might be guilty of overkill).

We wanted them to be phenomenal—extraordinary.

Maya speaks of the “inner mystery of a woman and that it is to be found in the arch of her back, the sun of her smile, the grace of her style, the fire of her eyes, and the flash of her teeth.”

So today I was thinking about my daughters. And on the back of my eyelids, clips and movies were rolling—power points of each of them. For a split second I could see the sun of Anna’s smile, the flash of Katherine’s teeth, the fire of Abby’s eyes, the arch of Olivia’s back.

I am blessed. Utterly blessed.

This week, Katherine will pull a Bolivian child into her arms and make him not only smile, but laugh. And she will splint a broken leg with cardboard. This week, Anna will hand food to a homeless woman and look her in the eye. And Anna will never forget her face. This week Olivia and Abby will attend a conference, but more importantly they will participate and be involved in a community. They will laugh, cry, encourage, and pray with this community and begin to learn what it means to be an integral part of God’s Body.

And Momma?

Momma will pray.