Eshet Chayil! in ink.

February 2019

✨Eshet Chayil!✨ a Hebrew phrase meaning Woman of Valor. February 2019

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In 2011 I joined a small group with the hope that I could endure the awkward small talk and perhaps make a friend. What I ended up with was entry into a 90’s ‘sisterhood’, what the hipsters now-a-day call ‘my tribe.’

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Together we have been witness to & present for all of the big & small deal happenings in each other’s lives. And although this looks like a homogenous group of white girls 🙋🏼‍♀️ there is so much variety of belief & thought process, & rules, & politics & theology.  We regularly go to battle alongside each other to wrestle hard with God on what’s being thrown our way. Though we don’t all agree- on where to go to dinner or what God meant when He defined marriage- we keep showing up.

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We know the warrior stories behind the smiles in this picture. The infertility, miscarriages, premies, foster care, adoption, healthy home births & awesomely medicated hospital births, NICU,  botchilism, custody struggles, marriage, hospitalizations, votes democrat and votes republican, house closings and messy houses, financial struggles and wicked luck, Job loss & deserved promotion, new life & unexpected death, & so, so many meal trains😳.

✨Eshet Chayil!✨ a woman who has great courage in the face of danger.

They’ve cheered me on when I’ve had the self confidence to proclaim that what I had done was ‘Eshet Chayil’ and they’ve whispered the same truth to me when my own voice was lost inside the pain of circumstance. If I’ve been to them even a fraction of what they’ve been to me, then I’ve done well.

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So yesterday (Feb, 3, 2019) I took a break from hospital life, lifted my eyes above the waves, surrounded myself with (some of) my tribe and we heartily looked around at one another and humbly proclaimed, ✨Eshet Chayil!✨ with ink.

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