When I was about sixteen years old, I started to pray every night Please Lord, delay Your Return until I am married and have babies. Instead of praying for wisdom to choose my adult path forward, for the courage to accept a path that appeared different from that chosen by my church friends, my mother's and aunts'; instead of praying for those outside my religious circle from whom I should seek advice; I prayed that the easy path would easily unfold for me. I prayed for a bright light on the already familiar road. The road rutted by women before me.
It was the late 1960s. The young men I went to school with were deciding between a commitment to university or to military draft. Anti-war protests were heating up even as close to home as Eastern New Mexico University. We watched news of the protests on the three television channels. We read about them in our LIFE and LOOK magazines. But there were more protests on top of these that most directly affected our thinking as high school students. Beside the antiwar movement were movements that addressed national anger with civil rights, racism, feminism, the cold war, and the Nixon regime. The nation seemed so embroiled in anger that we must naturally implode. We didn't. But I felt the anger. And I couldn't acknowledge The People's right to express this emotion because I was raised by undemonstrative parents to deliberately hide all my emotions. Except for answering the call to prayer at the church altar, often in tears, I learned at a young age to shove my personal feelings deep inside where they wouldn't embarrass myself or the family. It seemed that everyone not in one of our Baptist Bible Fellowship churches was having outlandish fun or protesting or fighting or marching or burning something. I watched and listened but could not participate.
What might I have chosen if even one adult had taken me aside and advised me to enroll at a college or seek a professional career and to give several years of young adult life to discovery and adventure? It does not matter. I didn't seek advice outside the church, and no woman or teacher at the high school where I showed myself as a quick learner made even a modest attempt to advise me. But I do not blame the adults who withheld encouraging words. I blame my lack of courage. A courageous person does not pray for a mythological being to delay a fictitious event so that an imaginary situation has a chance to become reality. This is the plea of a person who is afraid.
Enough. Enough.
I learned courage during my life after leaving home in 1971. One even stands out. In 1979 or '80, I faced the pastor of our church, Fred Drummond, because he called me to a meeting where I sat in his office, he behind his large desk and me in a chair alone across from him. It seems that as pastor of the church and the mentor of my husband's ministerial aspirations, I needed to be reprimanded before a situation shamed us all. I was told to be more of a lady and less of a thinker, less concerned about the decisions that church leadership makes. I knew why this meeting happened. During a time that my friend Hillary, Dear Leader's sister-in-law, and I were recently alone, she openly expressed her worry about many in the church who criticized our pastor's preference for nice things. (Background: the Drummond family had acquired nicer "things" than any of us who paid support to the church; things like a Jaguar and Cadillac, expensive clothing and jewelry, a Concordville residence that was once the mansion of a wealthy family.) Even though I felt sympathy for Hillary and her worries, I chose careful words to side with members of our congregation who like me had our own worries about paying bills and buying groceries. I said, "We are asked to be always on the defensive. It started years ago, and it is exhausting." Did Hillary understand that most of us were simply frustrated with defending what looked indefensible? Perhaps not. I found myself staring into Drummond's cold eyes as he tried to steer me away from rebellion. Within a year of that one-on-one with the leader of what I would come to think of as a religious cult, I was driving across country to escape it.
Why does that incident matter? Because that was my first scolding from someone other than my dad or husband. (I was still years away from telling my husband that he had no right to scold me as if I were his child.) It was the first time I felt a betrayal and a disrespect I couldn't yet understand. Now I know that as Dear Leader, Drummond was as afraid of one woman's ability to see through his con as I was of having my unhappiness discovered. Would I tell others that he was no more than a shyster? Would he tell others that I was unsatisfied with my marriage and afraid of losing my chances to have adventures and become famous? I knew then that I sat across from a man whose dishonesty and meanness was enabled by other women beside his own wife. I didn't know that my own women friends would take his side and publicly shame me for wanting to leave the church. But I learned then that cult leaders are liars and cowards. (See Donald J Trump). I learned that courage will rarely if ever be encouraged. That living a lie is as easy as submission to a church leader who had the power to publicly praise or shame me. I grabbed onto a morsel of courage as if my life depended on it. Ends up that it did.
It is a new year and an opportunity with a new government to think about responsibility and courage. What do I and millions of other women in the USA need the courage to do now? We will be the leaders who design and build a better public school system, kindergarten through state university. We will lead in the push for affordable housing in both urban and rural areas, for broad infrastructure legislation that will include equitable access to basic necessities such as internet and public transportation and neighborhood grocery stores. We will lead in policies that invest in free and low-cost 21st Century jobs training and college education for all. Because women know that investments in families and children build strong communities, safe and durable communities. Women must have the courage to eschew the selfish endeavors of our Baby Boomer generation and unselfishly support the dreams and entrepreneurship of young people and immigrants and refugees. Women must show boldness in the absolute necessity of a liberal democratic republic to end hunger and homelessness and poverty. Have not we learned that men will use power to profit themselves rather than use power to help others? As if the choice is always a dichotomy, an us-or-them situation as in Hollywood's interpretations of the old West.
We as women must grab onto courage. The easy path is rutted, not worn smooth by design and persistent effort. The easy path is submission to those with the power to wield both shame and praise. After all we have been through, women should know by now that we must encourage courage.