{"id":90916,"date":"2019-10-11T09:44:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T15:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/?p=90916"},"modified":"2019-10-11T09:44:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T15:44:03","slug":"girl-you-can-be-fierce-the-allure-of-rachel-hollis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/life-issues\/relationships\/women\/girl-you-can-be-fierce-the-allure-of-rachel-hollis\/","title":{"rendered":"Girl, You Can Be Fierce: The Allure of Rachel Hollis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rachel Hollis\u2019s book, Girl, Wash Your Face, <\/i>showcased among the top 10 bestselling books in America for the majority of 2018, and is now sporting over 10,000 Amazon reviews (80% are over 5 stars). Its sequel is #13 on Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of this, Hollis herself is the wildly successful owner of her own business empire, including motivational speaking, event planning, communications, and branding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve wondered, as an author and a woman: What is it about Rachel Hollis that makes her the “dark chocolate” of hundreds of thousands of Christian women? What does she satisfy\u2014or at least claim to?<\/p>\n\n\n

What should Christian women do about desire?<\/h2>\n\n\n

When my children were young and my life looked like a paper towel commercial, I experienced some intense inner combat. I loved motherhood and my children. Cherished its profound, intricate value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet like my mommy-paunch, my desires felt smushed, concealed, and artfully dressed for the sake of a greater vision. \u201cWorthy sacrifice\u201d was (accurately) mentioned by writers I followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But (could I have told the truth then?)\u2014I did<\/i> possess a desire to achieve. My bookshelves and journals tell the story of my exploration of desire, popping out like a muffin top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether I stayed at home or worked (I did both), Christian standards felt like they needed more teeth, more sturdiness to compete with not only women\u2019s desires, but the biblical picture of women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, I have associated desire or ambition with selfishness. Vanity. A lack of concern for others. Loving myself more than my family. Or straight-up obnoxious. I associated dreams with not placing myself beneath authority, God\u2019s and otherwise (though my husband is the loudest cheerleader of all as I charge forward).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every one of those concerns are legit, healthy, reverent fears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But occasionally, my fear of forgetting my family, or being a you-know-what, or letting my own sin show itself for exactly what it is, I have banished God-given desires and dreams to the same place. Maybe in exchange for a crock pot and other more reasonable undertakings.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cDream smaller\u201d for the kingdom of God?<\/h2>\n\n\n

Our five-plus years of living in Africa delivered CPR to a part of me that wanted to live for something bigger than myself and even my home. Finally\u2014robust work for a visionary female.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surely God hadn\u2019t given women strength or ambition as only a cross to bear? One teary night, I remember questioning if my daughter needed to dream smaller<\/i> for the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d heard for so long about the goodness of sacrifice I’d personally felt guilty for any kind of ambition or desire. Desires the kingdom of God asks of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have thought of God as wanting women to be strong, but not too strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shauna Niequist writes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019m circling ever nearer and nearer to is agency. Or maybe authority: owning one\u2019s life, for better and worse…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my experience, our culture teaches men to do this quite well. Women, it seems, have a much trickier time with it. It\u2019s only quite recently that women have been permitted to ask these questions, and we\u2019re just getting the hang of it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Christian women, desperate for a bigger dream, are willing to listen to even the person with the slightest theology say, “Crush it. Kill your lies and get out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollis is ready to trumpet it. And she\u2019s over-the-top fantastic in endearing array of traits. She\u2019s that relatable, side-splitting best friend. Despite the just-right imperfection of her Insta feed and her writing, the rest of us with spit-up on our yoga pants can see the ways \u201cOh, she\u2019s like me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And perhaps she is that friend a few steps down the road, or at least in a pair of fresh pants. She\u2019s so stinkin\u2019 entertaining and cute and cool (would you believe the descriptor \u201chipstian\u201d came up in a Time <\/i>interview<\/a>?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Christian women are burning the jumpers and appliqued sweatshirts of the past in exchange for skinny jeans and tats. Hear us roar!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But aside from the super-cute wrapping, Hollis is saying what women want to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can be whoever you want to be. Because the only one stopping you is you. And I can show you what to do about that.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is she right?<\/p>\n\n\n

Looking at a few real women<\/h2>\n\n\n

Every one of us does womanhood differently. But note this. Being a woman of God didn\u2019t mean biblical women like Miriam or Deborah or Jael or Esther shied away from bold leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I consider the word used to refer to Eve\u2019s creation as \u201chelper\u201d in Genesis, ezer<\/i>. In its 21 usages in the Old Testament, 16 refer to God. In nearly every occurrence, ezer <\/i>refers to a military ally\u2014all referring to men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A military ally isn\u2019t particularly dainty. She doesn\u2019t use her role in the authority structure to hide in passivity, to avoid confrontation or conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Proverbs 31 woman is decisive and protective, making decisions about real estate, running her own business, crazy-industrious and perceptive. She\u2019s a bit of a warrior-woman all on her own: \u201cStrength and dignity are her clothing\u201d (verse 25); \u201cher arms are strong for her tasks\u201d (verse 17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even our own Christian stereotypes can\u2019t suck this out of God\u2019s definition of womanhood. (Though I still fully believe and choose to arrange my life in what I believe to be God\u2019s order, placing myself beneath my husband\u2019s authority.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the adjectives I scrawled to describe Deborah, a \u201cMother in Israel\u201d (5:7), based on Judges 4-5. Hollis pings some of these within us:<\/p>\n\n\n