Just Us Girls

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Several years ago, when our daughters were post-homeschooling and still living at home, we took a traditional folk dance class together. Our family had long been English country and contra dancers. This class was different. We did mainly European folk dances. I remember enjoying a Greek dance and an Israeli dance especially. Both were lively and fun.

The class met in the daytime and every class member was a woman. I love the Eastern European tradition of group dances for women, dances passed down through generations from mother to daughter and danced with other women in their local community.

Working girls enjoy folk dancing at Fall River Massachusetts, in 1916.
“Factory girls” enjoy folk dancing at Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1916.

One particular dance tore at our hearts. After all these years, I don’t remember the specific country of origin. Being a woman, I do remember the dance’s story and its emotion. The dance, which originated in a mountainous country on the Balkan Peninsula, told the story of a daughter who was about to marry a man from beyond the mountain. She expected to move beyond the mountain and never see her family again. The dance re-enacted a long goodbye.

You can imagine the feelings of us women as we danced this traditional dance. Ray’s mother lived a modified version of that story. She was an 18-year-old English girl when she married Ray’s 30-year-old dad. He was an American soldier, serving in England during World War II. When the war was over, he came home. Then, she came over on a ship with hundreds of other “war brides” — a term she detested.

Ray’s mother saw her family again when Ray’s older brother was two years old. They went across the Atlantic on a ship. Ray’s brother came home with an English accent. It would be more than twenty years before she saw her family again. Ray didn’t travel to England to meet his relatives until he was in his forties.

I am deeply grateful to have been able to maintain close in-person relationships with my parents, brother, and our children throughout my life. If you have lived the dance we danced that day, I am deeply sorry.

The heart-wrenching dance and the dance class itself illustrate something beautiful. God created women to need deep personal relationships with the other girls and women in our families and with friends.

Exodus has a beautiful example of women celebrating with one another. God had just dried up the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk across on dry ground. He had saved the Israelites from the advancing Egyptian army. Moses’ big sister Miriam — the one who had guarded him as he floated in a basket among the reeds of the Nile River — took up her timbrel. All the women followed her. Together they praised God and celebrated their victory.

Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister,
took the timbrel in her hand,
and all the women went out after her
with timbrels and with dancing.
Exodus 15:20

When I was a younger mama, I listened to the parenting wisdom Dr. James Dobson shared on that old-fashioned listening device, the radio. He used to talk about the need that women have for women. He said that it doesn’t work for wives to try to get all of their emotional and social needs from their husbands. He said that God simply wired us women differently from the way He wired men. It was Dr. Dobson’s firm conviction that we women need each other.

I imagine that some of you are reading this with pain. You know you need other women. Your mother and sister may be distant, either in location or in relationship. You may be missing a friend who has drifted away or turned her back on you. Perhaps you just can’t seem to match yourself up with other women who know the same thing you do — that you need them.

I don’t know how universal this pain is. I only know what I have learned and experienced myself. I know firsthand the pain of the drifting friend and the back-turned friend. I know the loneliness of being new in town and living the reality of having no local friend to call up for lunch.

We have a Savior Who understands. All of His friends turned their backs on Him. He longed for the closeness He had with His Father before He went far, far away to earth. He is our example of loving when people don’t love us back and being the initiator to start a new relationship.

Jesus loves us, even when we don’t get relationships right. He loved Mary and Martha, who certainly didn’t always see things the same way . . .

“Lord, do You not care that my sister
has left me to do all the serving alone?
Then tell her to help me.”
Luke 10:40

. . . said Martha, when Mary sat listening to Jesus while Martha busied herself with housework.

In one of His last teachings before He “gave up His life for His friends,” Jesus taught us how to be one.

“This is My commandment, that you love one another,
just as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this,
that one lay down his life for his friends.
You are My friends if you do what I command you.
No longer do I call you slaves,
for the slave does not know what his master is doing;
but I have called you friends,
for all things that I have heard from My Father
I have made known to you.
You did not choose Me but I chose you,
and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit,
and that your fruit would remain,
so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name
He may give to you.
This I command you, that you love one another.
John 15:12-17

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One comment

  1. Thank you for this post, I’m tear-y eyed now. I’ve had three close ladies who have challenged me to grow and learn in the past twenty years. They have all made me a better person. Last year, two of them moved away to different states and a summer incident between our children has led to (requested by my husband) distance from the third. I feel like I’m daily grieving the friendship loss. Though each is still a close friend, texts and calls are sadly becoming occasional instead of frequent.
    Dr. Dobson was wise, every woman needs her little group.

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