Deliver us from Evil. This petition in the Lord's prayer has been a meditative mantra I have said, breathed, played in my mind and heart over and over and over these last few months. And, I realize, in so many ways, how God has delivered me, my husband and so many others from evil in so many ways, both in the past and present.

And my worst, bump in the middle of the night anxiety, is the, What if He stops now? What if the Evil spreads, and isn't stopped and it goes on and on and on and on? What if I go completely broke and can't do a thing to work? What if ? What if?

In the midst of the noise, the word that has emerged for me as the summer starts to fade from its intense light and even more intense heat where we live here in Granada, is the word, Help.

There has always been discussion about a women's role, either in the church or out of the church, and lately with a more conservative breeze in the works, all these discussions have popped back up again. Suddenly, people who shouldn't be experts on who women are (men) have a lot to say about what we are and what we aren't. And if we should be allowed to still vote, work, have a say in our healthcare, and more.

I have never been a militant feminist. Just a quiet one. Supporting women in their choices, their desire the be the best version of them, whatever moment in life they were at. My husband is more militant than I, and has soundly supported women in all sorts of things, be it career, family or more. I am grateful to work right now with a man that has been just as much as my husband is, and even more. Knowing that at one point he taught women's defense classes (being a former Judo champion) makes me super proud to know both men.

But, we have turned around and suddenly the "traditional"role, whatever that means, is being touted as the only way for work, family, career, church and more. Never mind the successful women doing all of the above, they should just quit while they are ahead, as that's not the right way.

If you know me personally, you know that this grates to the core of my being, of who I am. And lately, its discouraged me even more and more to see this being propagated as the only way.

When we establish these walls and we limit roles of people, we limit the ways in which they are able to shine as those vessels of clay carrying with in them, the treasure that is the image of God.

I cannot my image my grandmother without imaging her deep care as a nurse, mother, grandmother and friend. All of those things are her, and I've left out the wife, the cook, the hugger and the women who sat quietly on the board of a Christian Organization that took care of Children. Had she been limited in her scope of service, that help, that what she was created for, would have never been as deep and as wide as it was permitted to be.

And lets talk about well known women who made history. The last queen of English and the British Kingdom, she stood tall and proud in a world swimming of macho men, and she made her wisdom, intellect, knowledge and heart known in ways that still echo in eternity. The first member of Parliament in the UK, whose politics are forgotten, but the special relationship that was established between the US and UK as a result of her champagne fueled parties, are still here over a 100 years later. Scientist Marie Curie's discoveries, Emily Dickinson's poetry, Harriet Tubman's survival of slavery, and the list goes on and on and on and on. Well behaved women rarely make history.

And not only making history, they have provided help, true help, that echoes in time and not just for the moment. One of the current ideas going around on social media about women is to go back to the original texts in the first chapters of Genesis and to look at the word helper. Mostly, the claim is that the word in Hebrew, ezer, has to deal with fair more than what we think in English a helper is to be. See this link for a much greater discussion. But in a nutshell, a helper, specifically the woman, is to be the completion of what we are as humans. The empathy, the support, the connection, she is the help and the fulfilment of it all.

It doesn't take a much deeper look than a few brief glances to see what women in the Bible did. From driving a tent stake into her enemies head, to leading a nation to war to saving the nation from genocide to letting spies into her home and figuring out how to best conquer the biggest fortified city to preaching the resurrection women are potent and powerful and complete us in ways we don't even understand.

And some even discuss that the Proverbs 31 woman is actually an image of who the Holy Spirit is and what she completes in us. By caring, nurturing, providing, sitting at the gates of the city to buying homes and properties. So when we as women do these things, we do them empowered by the feminine divine.

But this is a deep topic for a different day, and probably not even for this blog. And maybe better over cups of coffee or something stronger.

But true Evil is this, when we distill a woman's role to ________________. And not to all that has been done or should be done or would be done or will be done. Because when we limit women, we limit the Divine's mandate for us, for women to complete humanity.

This summer, I made a deliberate return to falling in love with cooking. You see, maybe we don't think of magic anymore, or we think of it in ways that are far more romatanziced or demonized. I think both are wrong.

If you think about looking at pieces of papers that are passed down, or even verbal recipes that have been given from generation to generation, and suddenly you make that dish, that bread, that cake that pizza, you are performing a basic magic. And its best when we are taught. My mother loves bread and she taught me to make it. By 10 years old, I knew how to make bread. I've been making bread for almost 40 years. Or Kolach, or pizza or something. Yeast has never overwhelmed me. The magic of watching it bubble has enthralled me.

And so I returned to bread, and cooking and finding new ways to create in the kitchen this summer. It has completed me, and healed me in ways I didn't know where possible. In ways I needed. And, it made me realize that certain moments were done, others were closed off and new moments were coming.

When we limit the mystery, the magic and the Divine by closing it into a box and not allowing it to breathe, grow, rise like yeast in bread, we die. We regress, and we abuse the very freedoms that God's kingdom grants. Don't be sucked into those walls, safe they may feel, but sooner or later, they will become your own personal prison. May we see God deliver us and our culture from this evil.