Strong Women

Some women this week have reminded me of the prominence of women in the Easter story.  I’ve been a single mom for only 8 days while Scott is at a conference, but it feels like months.  This morning I got up to make donuts for my kids as a Sunday treat, then was called to see a staff’s very ill child at the hospital, then two neighbors who were ill, all before church.  But when I am tempted to feel sorry for myself, as if I have too much to manage, I look around and realize that Africa is full of strong women, patiently plodding on.  Melen carries a quiet dignity, her smile comes more easily now that her baby boy has been safely delivered.  Her world is one of women, Jonah’s sisters and her girls, running a nursery school and managing a family, with little help from any men.  Nurse Agnes also raises her children and works at the health center while her husband is in school 10 hours away; she’s not even from Bundibugyo so she has no extended family to support her.  Olupa leaves her baby with a relative while she comes to work.  I sat this morning with the two wives of my elderly and slowly dying neighbor, they supported him from each side as he vomited, undaunted by the inevitability of his decreasing strength.  These women clean up the messes, prepare the food, hold the sick, listen to problems, show up for work, go to the gardens.  As in the days of Jesus, when the men run away, they will be the ones washing the body for burial, mourning at the graveside.  Even though they have been treated like property for centuries, the women of Bundibugyo are made in the image of God, and His glory remains in their souls.  Even if education is a struggle, and brothers or fathers quibble to make a profit of goats off their marriages, or husbands beat them to show who is boss, these women can not help but express the creativity and competence that God created in them.  So they sing and dance in the choir, and sew colorful fabrics into attractive dresses.  They scrape together small roadside stands to sell some matches or roasted bananas.  They are not all saints, but they do hold the fabric of life here together.  I’m humbled when I think of most of their lives, and my complaining is at least muted by their reality.  God’s best plan is for men and women to complement each other, and I’m ready for Scott to get back today!!!  But until he does, I take courage from the strong women around me.