Welcome, Dearest Friends, to the next guest post in our Love & Making It series, written by Esther Emery, a woman after God’s own heart.  I began stalking (aka following) Esther through twitter long before we became friends through the Story Sessions.  She fights lions and tigers and lies for the sake of her family – not just with words but with her bare hands and brave guts.  She gives me courage and has helped me find my own voice. The following words are hers; read them and let them read you.

Enjoy the force she harnesses to clear the fog and reclaim her story. You will agree and you will disagree. Pay attention to what and why you feel the way you do.  Read yourself as you read her story.

Love and Making It is a series all about sex and sensuality.  Join us in finding the way back to confident joy in our bodies and in our bedrooms. 

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Wild Girls Dancing by Esther Emery

I wrote a post recently that triggered a pornography firewall. Exciting, don’t you think? It fits with my rebel image. The trouble is, that post wasn’t about sex. At all. It was about my four-year-old.

 

Girls. Wild. Dancing.

 

Those three words. That’s all it takes to trigger a firewall.

I tried to think it was funny. I tried to say, “Oh, that’s the way the world goes, isn’t it?” But I couldn’t let it go. It kept reminding me of something.

How old were you, when you learned about the dark power of a woman?

The stain? The sin? The trouble that came in through us like an open gate?

We had a power, they said. To incite. To attract. To distract. Who knew? We were just twirling in our skirts. But we learned that the dirtiness, the exploitation, was ours somehow. It lived in us like some kind of a beast we had to control.

How old were you, when you first heard about the dark power of woman?

Were you just four, like my daughter? Or were you eight, trying on your mother’s high heels and makeup? Was it later, when they told you not to wear that, not to stand like that, sit like that, not to walk alone in the streets at night.

Or was it earlier? Was it when someone did something to you that you knew was wrong and told you that you couldn’t tell?

It was a lie. It died under bright lights. But it thrived in the shadows, underneath the surface. As a collective, especially among Christians, we swallowed it. We tucked it in pockets underneath our breasts, under our thighs, beneath the skin.

It is a lie with teeth.

 

Pornography is what happens when wild girls dance.

Sin is what happens when wild girls dance.

Satan – the King of Darkness – has a vision for Woman. She is the door into darkness, the foothold of evil in the world, the one that takes the blame, the creature abused, humiliated, silenced.

But God has a vision for woman, too. She is the last-created thing, the pinnacle, the crowning jewel of a masterpiece, the creature who when created makes the mud man burst into the Bible’s first love song.

I have seen Satan’s vision for womankind. I have seen it spread parent to child. I have seen it lifted up by the church. I have seen it laid on women by other women. Mother to daughter. Sister to sister. Friend to friend. This lie.

Sin is what happens when wild girls dance.

But I have seen the opposite as well, and I lift it up. Women reaching out our hands to one another. Voice to voice, stories told in bathroom stalls and over baby bottles. From a whisper to a shout, women sharing freedom instead of shame. Encouragement. Hope for healing. The promise of redemption.

We take back our pride, and our power. We take back the beauty of our sexuality. We take back our sacredness. Our createdness.

Free.

And wild.

And dancing.

 

We are wild girls dancing.

In the dark, in bedrooms, underneath the covers. In the light, in churches and at microphones, telling our stories. Alone with a mirror.

We are wild girls dancing.

We claim the arched back and the swinging hips – even this, as safe space. Our space, God’s space. This moan, God’s breath.

We are wild girls dancing.

Reclaiming, inch by inch, our own skin. Unbinding our breasts and wiping off the paint. A free woman is not Satan’s woman. A dancing girl is not Satan’s girl.

We are wild girls dancing.

Not white sheets to be stained by whatever a man spills on us, but living, breathing image-bearers. Our God lives here.

We are wild girls, dancing.

Make room for us, men. And other women. It is a slow dance to healing, and we bump into our triggers in the dark. But redemption calls us all to freedom. And we are walking our way.

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Esther Emery

 

Esther Emery used to direct stage plays in Southern California. But that was a long time ago. Now she is pretty much a runaway, living off grid in a yurt and tending to three acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She writes about faith and rebellion and trying to live a totally free life at www.estheremery.com. Also, connect with her on Twitter @EstherEmery.