I heard that a woman had been kidnapped and murdered while out running at 4:30 in the morning, and then I heard the person reporting such news ask why in the world she’d be out running that early. Admittedly, I thought to myself, “What an absolutely ignorant question.”
Without knowing anything at all about the woman, I was certain I knew why she was running before dawn. That’s when lots of women do things that matter. Her family is not yet awake, and so is unlikely to need her. There is nothing else on the schedule that early, no other entity — work or school or scouts or sports — to claim that window of time. She can count on quiet, on a chance to be awake and alert, but alone with her thoughts. For many women, the hour before dawn is a sacred space to care for oneself. There is no other hour like it in the day.
The mission is clear: to surround oneself with what is good in order to wage battles against what is bad.
Women seek to do good; they seek to care and to comfort and to craft lives of virtue and value. In the effort to bring peace and beauty to their lives and the lives of the people in their care, they come up against chaos and ugliness. The devil is not a fan of peace or beauty and he will do his very best to bring the very worst to fruition in a home or a family or even a workplace, frankly. It’s all fair game to him. As a woman feels the full force of ugliness wage war against the good, and the true, she must endeavor to fill herself with quiet and ordered calm. Sometimes, that looks like pulling weeds and snipping deadheads and arranging cut blooms. Sometimes, it looks like the rhythmic cadence of footfall in the early morning while inhaling heavy late summer darkness. Whatever the medium, the mission is clear: to surround oneself with what is good in order to wage battles against what is bad. These carefully curated pockets of peace are not self-indulgent pampering. They are the gathering of forces for engaging in spiritual warfare. They are a deadly serious necessity.
I did not carefully follow the story of the pre-dawn runner after that initial conversation. It is not my intent to discuss her in particular. Instead, I want to point to the need to support women as they care for the world (literally). The other day, my vacuum cleaner stopped effectively sucking up debris. It was running, but it was just not doing its job. I stopped, flipped open the lid, wrestled an overly full bag of junk from its place and replaced it with a brand new, empty one. Not once did I consider whether the vacuum had earned the right to a new bag or whether I could just keep insisting it do its job with the old bag. I just took care of the vacuum. I live in a dusty 250-year-old house with no central heating or air conditioning. My vacuum works really hard, and I’m very diligent about its care.
I work hard, too.
And in order to be able to work well, I need rest, recreation and replenishment. I need to look after my own needs at least as well as I look after those of my family. The devil is cunning. He knows that the best way to distract me from caring for myself is to tell me that I can only do that when it’s no bother to anyone else and it requires no support. I might believe him. I might sacrifice sleep for the great gift of being awake and in the quiet of my house. Or, I might go for a run by myself before dawn.
Maybe, the better plan is for women to articulate the need and ask for support and prioritize self-care the way we do other-care. Maybe then, we bring true peace and order to that time. Maybe then we truly own it, instead of stealing it and having always to look over our shoulders lest someone tear it away.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
Credit: Source link
