Lyndsey Medford

justice + joy

lyndsey medford

Why Feminist Lent?

by 1 Comment

It started with a promise to practice taking up space—because our shrinking never serves anyone.

Feminist Lent might seem odd. Getting bigger for Lent isn’t the norm. But here’s the thing: Lent is about humility. And for women, humility probably doesn’t mean becoming less.

It probably means taking the risk of showing up with all of ourselves—when standing down gets you safety, comfort, acceptance and the crumbs of privilege for following unspoken rules.

It probably means doing something scared.

It probably means refusing to hide anymore.

And here’s the thing about feminism: it’s not just about grabbing Girl Power for yourself. It’s about living into a world where everyone is free.

It’s about paying attention to how power operates in every sphere of life, and choosing to be led—not just by women—but by women on the margins: Black women. Indigenous women. Single women. Older women. Fat women. Trans women.

All of those are things many of us need extra prayer, encouragement, and care to do. They are ways we need God to remind us who we are as we are practicing them. They are courageous actions of breaking free from old habits that need to die little deaths before we celebrate the resurrection.

Jesus chose the margins. Jesus chose a physical body. Jesus chose rest. Jesus chose to upend expectations.
That’s why Feminist Lent.

If you want to join me, just sign up below! You’ll get a note from me (about like this one, or shorter) about one of the six practices above most days during Lent.

Then share this post with a feminist friend!

I can’t wait to spend this beautiful season learning and loving with you.

peace, love, bread, and wine,

Lyndsey

what if my body doesn’t feel like a good body?

by Leave a Comment

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”

My friend walks with a cane. The cane is a new thing, a hard thing. Sometimes she and I bond over chronic illness, navigating doctors’ offices, fatigue, needles, and food—but sometimes I can only say, “I know it hurts. I know it feels so lonely.”

When we’re told our value lies in what we produce, in living up to beauty norms, in our physical strength, our ability to be fun (or at least smile)—these bodies don’t feel quite as good as the ones we wish for.

“The body of Christ, broken for you.” I always cry through serving Communion anyway; my friend smiles thanks, and suddenly I feel the holy ground of this high-school cafeteria. Where else can I speak good news to us? Where else does a broken body have any meaning at all?

Here we do not have to grasp at slim hopes that pain can be transcended somehow; and we do not have to let pain swallow us whole. We three broken bodies—my friend, Jesus, and me—are allowed to simply be here, together, for one another. We touch, we share, we eat, because these are the things we were created for.

I don’t understand the problem of pain better than anybody else. I don’t pretend every moment of my friend’s suffering has some grand purpose that could possibly warrant such pain. All I know is that God does not watch us suffer from a pitying distance or even a parent’s remove. Instead, Christ chooses radical solidarity in the form of flesh, of birth, of growth, of betrayal, of brokenness, of utter loneliness, of death. Everything that has ever been desperately wrong, every violation and every wound, has torn open God. Something about this creation is too precious to abandon, and God descends to the depths to rescue all, all, all—every last atom and cell of it.

Somehow God is not content to cheat death by splitting us from the body that dies; instead God redeems us whole by walking the way of dirt and pain, breath and laughter. In a world where sin’s divisions reach all the way down to alienating us from our own bodies, the good news is that the incarnation and resurrection are stitching us back together.

My sick body is still good. She is still me. She is still wise and strong.

My female body—to which others believe they are entitled—is still my home. She is still my power.

Our stressed and strained bodies are waiting for us to return to them, to trust God’s word that what is wounded can also be good. We’ve spent so long judging our bodies from other perspectives, we’ve forgotten how to inhabit our own selves. God with us is teaching us to be with, to be present, so we can reclaim this matter that matters, and connect more deeply to the wounded world around.

Many days I cannot see, only try to believe, that my broken-bodied self counts as priceless treasure—not junk heap—to this hell-bent, rescuing God. My childhood God who’s interested only in innocent, immortal souls still seems more sane to me.

Then again—when the leaves of the backyard pecan tree jostle to greet the dappled afternoon sun and the same breeze stirs my hair; when a sun-warm tomato pops in my mouth and satisfies down to my toes; when a piece of bread is pressed from hand to hand and for one moment we are three bodies in one—I think I see it. How God could want more than angels, more than words, more than perfection, and throw their lot in with some dusty, beautiful, bodily creatures belonging to a fragile little planet.

Because all it takes is to gather in a high school cafeteria and share little bits of bread to be love to each other, and to remember that this moment is all there is: being present with the crusty crumbs and the warmth of hands and the sound of another’s name, and the Love who is present when the stuff of life is freely given and received.

So maybe if this body in this moment is precious to God, I can allow it to matter to me. Maybe I can finally choose the joy and the right and the responsibility to care for myself, to pursue creativity, to stretch and dance, to encounter the natural world and meet others in relationship with my whole heart, mind, and strength—choose the neglected wisdom and the buried beauty of these muscles, nerves, and bones. What if this is all untapped light, something the world doesn’t want us to see? What if the strength and courage and creativity we’ve been searching for have been in our breath, waiting for us to simply open to them this whole time?

Bodies and all, we are more than pain. We are more than perfect. We are worth breaking for.

P.S. Today is the day! My book of essays, practices, and journaling questions is officially here! AND We’ll have a Facebook group discussion with me and Anna for everyone who buys theirs by tomorrow (June 26). Grab your copy, then head over to the group and ask to join!

So many thanks to the launch team, my family, and everyone who’s ever sent an encouraging note or started a conversation based on something I’ve written. I know it sounds cheesy, but writing is a vocation to lonely work in order to make others feel less alone. As long as people keep letting me know I’m accomplishing that goal, I’ll keep writing and sharing. You make this work worth doing!
Now go get your book, love, so we can dive into it together. See you in the group!

how to quit without giving up

by 1 Comment

There’s the textbook definition of a word, and then there’s the story of it. Theology degrees or no—you say the word “sanctified” and you take me right back to seven years old, potlucks and Bible quizzing at the big brick Church of the Nazarene.

I was small and the word seemed big, heavy and important—but also nice and kind of glowy. Legs dangling off the ugly greenish-bluish chair in that wide sanctuary, I learned “sanctification” meant the Holy Spirit and many, many years could make you sinless—could make you perfect.

Who knows? Maybe the day I learned such a word was the day I got myself hooked on religion.

I wanted to know what it was like to be Sanctified, but they said perfect people are too humble to know they’re perfect, so there was no one to ask. I probably asked God sometimes: would you just forget how to sin? Or at least never really consider doing it? How perfect is perfect? Like, if someone near you was about to sin, and you failed to stop them, would you lose your Sanctified badge? Also, wouldn’t it be just a little boring to be Sanctified? Like you’d beat the final level of a video game, or read all the books on your shelf?

Those concerns aside, I figured that if getting Sanctified took so many years, me and the Holy Spirit had better get started.

I didn’t obsess over sanctification as much as I internalized the idea at my core, where it had snapped perfectly into place next to my tiny perfectionist soul. In fact, I hardly thought about Sanctification at all after we moved away from the Church of the Nazarene, and I even learned that plenty of Christians think the whole idea of Entire Sanctification is pretty wacky. It didn’t matter; I didn’t need to think about Sanctification anymore. The pursuit of perfection was a part of me.

And I’m not sure it will ever go away.

No matter how far I travel away from those Nazarene potlucks, it will remain. The part of me that, had I been born in the Middle Ages, most definitely would’ve become a nun. There will always be this vision of a better self, who gives generously and looooooves praying and says astoundingly wise things to people on buses and laughs at herself all the time, and who is loved by babies and animals and smiles beatifically at people and makes them feel like they’ve been visited by Oprah herself.

Maybe tomorrow I can be a little bit more like her.

And the thing is, I don’t even know if I believe in Entire Sanctification at all anymore; I’m pretty sure I don’t. I’m pretty sure if anyone has ever made it to some sort of mountaintop of sinlessness, they fell right off as soon as their husband left his dirty socks in some weird-ass place again. I’m pretty sure the mountaintop of sinlessness would be a lonely place to dwell.

But whatever I believe about theology, I definitely believe in that better, beatified me.

Only now, after all my church and studying, she’s gotten even better. Now she’s not only saying wise things and radiating internal beauty, but also carrying a picket sign and growing organic produce for homeless people and patiently explaining whiteness to white people because she remembers the old days, back before she solved all her own riddles of racism. And classism. And homophobia. And ageism. She also exercised today, didn’t forget to email you back, never lets anyone get away with catcalling her, and writes every day whether she feels like it or not. And she edits with fervor, too.

It turns out, Better Me long ago morphed into a monster—but only lately have I begun to realize it. Only lately have I seen her for the obnoxious, unattainable, plastic tyrant that she is. Because it’s hard to see your idols for what they are.

Even before Better Me turned grotesque, she’d been an innocent-looking but greedy little god. That vision of myself consumed all of me and demanded more, then more, and more.

I’d gotten the impression that more and more and more was what it meant to be Sanctified. That of course no one could ever achieve everything the Best Good version of ourselves would do; but getting Sanctified would mean you’d tried.

Because of Jesus’ infinite power and love, the argument went, you can be and do it all. Therefore you should be and do it all. For everyone. Today.

It has its own internal logic; only the harder I ran, the farther away that finish line seemed. The more I helped the world, the worse it got. The more I tried to do the right thing, the worse I got. Perfection promised me peace; but in reality, there was never any rest.

Meanwhile, with so much work to do and Bible to read, there was hardly ever any time for Holy Spirit. Not until Better Me and Better World had become a menace, an unbearable burden, a constant drain on that light and kindness I thought I was trying to shed to the world—not until then did I finally ask Spirit to give me some hope. And here is what She said:

Because of Jesus’ infinite power and love, there is nothing you have to be or do before you and this world can be fully redeemed.

Nothing.

And as I enter into an unfamiliar stillness, the practice of receiving this mad, scandalous outrage of grace, Spirit gives me back that childhood dream of being simple, humble, good, and kind. Only the fulfillment of that dream, she whispers, isn’t a matter of striving and puzzling and discipline that tries to substitute itself for love. No, the fruits of the Spirit wait on the other side of rest; they’re borne by discipline that shows itself as gift; they’re found along the way, walking out a calling in confidence—not driven by a fear of inadequacy.

Only months ago it would have seemed foolish, but now I’m in the midst of an experiment: I have erred long enough on the side of doing things myself. It’s time to make room for Spirit to work—maybe in secret, maybe unglamorous. It’s time to do more and more and more nothing. More delighting. More waiting. More playing. More of the restful rhythms of love, as strong and sure and inevitable as the mountains, who neither strive nor strain; and yet I know, somehow, they give and pray and laugh at themselves with all of Spirit’s might.