My story

I have always loved words. Ever since I can remember I have devoured books. Novels, nonfiction, anything I could get my hands on.

I began journaling when I was in 2nd grade. When I finally earned a look in the prize box at school there was this Aladdin notepad that began my journey with creative writing.

I wrote my first story when I was 13. It was a fiction piece about a princess named Alexandra and this dream like quest she goes on complete with a barking lizard.

The best part of my passion for words is how it has overflowed into a passion for the word of God. This wasn’t really awakened in me until college when I was first introduced to the literary elements of scripture. Now, I look into the Bible and see the face of God in ways I never could have without this fire for words.

Forever I have had a dream of teaching and publishing my work. To see my passion for scripture pour into the world so that those it touches may see God!

Enter struggle

I’m easily discouraged.

It’s unfortunate to note that those that care the most about you are often ok with you living your life for them and their glory instead of fulfilling Gods calling on your life.

For someone with low self esteem and self loathing tendencies, like me, it can be easier to pour your life out in service to other people and their whims than to ask, “What is the purpose that God has created me for? What skills do I have that I should be using?”

Unneeded

So what finally prompted me to write?

When I had my last child (#4) in 2016 I realized I was on the brink of something new. Even before that, while I was pregnant with my third, I tried to press into ministry at my  church, but was, for lack of a better term, unneeded.

What makes a woman feel unneeded? In short, classifying womanhood very narrowly. Making being a God honoring woman about providing childcare and soul nourishing meals. Telling a woman that her highest calling is to her family, and then leaving no room for other feminine callings in your ministry plan or teaching vernacular.

It was a very confusing time for me. The best way I have found to understand what has happened is to know that God is wanting to use me in this form of ministry right now. Plus, I am building myself a future.

Launching into the next season of my life. (What I like to call the “full quiver phase”.) Made me face things in myself and the church in ways I never had before. I am looking into my future, life after childbearing, and realize there is more that Christ has gifted me with that I should be using for the edification of His body.

Why Hadassah

And so, why “The Modern Hadassah”? What does Esther of the Bible have to do with all of this?

Well, when plugging in at my church didn’t exactly look the way it should I began to evaluate what I was doing.

I realized that the church hadn’t failed me, I had failed me. I had failed to see significance in the gifts that God had given me to use for His glory. It had less to do with the men and women of my church undervaluing my contribution (which was a problem I had to face separately) and more to do with me undervaluing my talents, desires, and gifts. It wasn’t just other people who didn’t value a woman with a gift for looking into the scriptures and teaching. It was me. I was one of those people. And I believed it about myself. This struggle continues as I discover more things that are affected by this wrong thinking. Slowly, God will weed them out.

Hadassah is a reminder to me of all the women who are in hiding. She changed her name to hide who she really was, who God had created her to be, in a culture that was hostile to it. Even God in the book of Esther is incognito. His name is not mentioned at all!

Many women live within that reality. It’s almost a part of what it is to be feminine, a hidden mystery.

And so, that’s what this is. A place for me to share the ways God has gifted me, within a culture that can be hostile to these gifts.

In the same way that changing her name didn’t make Esther less Jewish, less a part of Gods call on her life, having the discretion to not shout from the rooftops that I am being passed over doesn’t make me less of a woman. Actually, I will learn from her example and allow God his timing in making truth known. This is the first step toward the time He is calling me to with my gift for words, only He knows where it will end.

And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Esther 4:14