BOSTON (AP) 11/10 – “LeBron James said he was sorry for using the word ‘retarded’ in a post game news conference.” I know it’s been a while since this was “news” but the “R WORD” hasn’t gone away, so it’s still news….current to each of us who has a child with mental “RETARDATION.”

I was eager to see if there would be a follow-up broadcast to that comment. Indeed, LeBron later apologized for using the “R” word saying, “If I offended anyone, I sincerely apologize.” I’m pretty sure I can stand in the front of the line with many whose children have special needs and say, “It’s not IF he offended anyone.” He did.

When that word is spoken, those of us in that “circle” try to be gracious to spare others embarrassment - but we hear it. And we heard him.

The apology would have been better phrased, “To those who care for the special needs population of the mentally disabled/challenged (mentally retarded), I am very sorry for my insensitive comment. I understand my comment may not be understood by those who are challenged mentally, but I do understand that I have deeply offended those who care 24/7 for those with special needs of this kind.”

Furthermore, I would love for LeBron (and others who use the “R” word) to offer public service to those who are mentally challenged, to learn what the special needs world of “effort” looks like. Those who have trouble learning, speaking, holding or throwing a basketball or baseball have likely spent hundreds if not thousands of hours and dollars in PT (that is Physical Therapy), OT (Occupational Therapy), and SP (Speech Therapy) only to get to a less than hoped for outcome after many years of hard work. These therapies are not working out to better prepare an athlete after a sports injury, rather these therapies are helping the patient to learn to do some of the very things we take for granted. OT helps those who are mentally slow to learn to use their fine motor (fingers and hands) skills for something as noble and simple as feeding themselves. PT was very helpful in teaching my son to balance because he couldn’t sit up on his own – that took a good year and a half to accomplish that one skill. ST was something that took some 12 years in the making to get my son to a point where he could make and form words. Just 12 years.

Yes, all those things took place at the rapid speed of what Webster calls retarded: “slow or limited progress.” Many who are “mentally challenged” or “retarded” have worked like an athlete to achieve little to no recognition; instead they’ve earned the cheers and applause of their parents, siblings, teachers, therapists, (and some family and friends), as they accomplish the mundane. There is also another group who’s worked hard and I commend and applaud those caring for those with special needs. May you “go the distance” with grace and dignity - because I know it’s not with ease or comfort!

And JFYI – I’ve waited over 30 years to write this – and it’s written with hope to initiate change in how the “R” word is used.

One who knows,

Cindi Ferrini

Fearless is a series about women living fearless lives. The words fearless and courageous are used interchangeably, however I like the word “fearless” more. I’m not sure why, I just do.  A shortcoming of the word “fearless” is that it tends to communicate a lack of fear. So, what do I mean by it? To that, I look to the great John Wayne who said, “Courage is when you’re scared to death, but you saddle up anyway.” For the purpose of this dialogue, that description is exactly what I mean by “fearless.” Not without fear, but not controlled by it either.

************************************************************************

There are defining moments in our parenting journey. These slivers of time also align with the defining moments in our children’s lives. Simple, but we often forget that the choices we make in these moments shape our children for good or ill.

Often we botch it. I’m grateful for the Grace that undoes the damage I cause and repairs broken roads.

But, the times that we tap into the power of God and get it right reverberate in the souls of our kids forever. We had one of those moments not too long ago.

One of the prayers that I consistently pray for my children is that they will get caught in every lie that they ever tell. My parents always prayed the same for me. It might seem like an unusual prayer, but I want dishonesty to become so unworkable, so ineffective for my kids that they stop attempting it. Even in the times when they aren’t found out by someone else, I pray for the Holy Spirit to make them so uncomfortable, so disquieted that they confess to their lies just to have relief.

You see, God put a conscience inside us all. Once we invite the Holy Spirit to indwell us, that conscience becomes super-charged. But, if we consistently repress it; If we beat it back and ignore it for long enough, we can become immune to its leading. God save us from ourselves in this sin! I pray that all the members of my family always remain sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and to the restlessness that our sin ought to bring.

Recently, one of my daughters had to face a lie. Well, actually, a cheat and then a lie to cover it up. After she confessed to me  and the watershed of guilt released, she knew what she would have to do in the morning. She had to come early to class, me by her side, and confess to her teacher what she had done, ask for forgiveness and then face whatever consequences that came.  It was a double lesson in honesty and courage.

It was a lesson in courage because she was terrified to talk to her teacher, but she did it anyway. Often we think bravery and courage come because we don’t feel afraid, but in reality, courage means doing the right thing even in the face of frightening circumstances.

Lord, may I always teach my children that sometimes the path of least resistance is the current pulling us over a waterfall; that what is right is not often what is easy. Most importantly, make those holy truths present in my life, so that I will go first and lead my children to You.

Fearless is a series about women living fearless lives. The words fearless and courageous are used interchangeably, however I like the word “fearless” more. I’m not sure why, I just do.  A shortcoming of the word “fearless” is that it tends to communicate a lack of fear. So, what do I mean by it? To that, I look to the great John Wayne who said, “Courage is when you’re scared to death, but you saddle up anyway.” For the purpose of this dialogue, that description is exactly what I mean by “fearless.” Not without fear, but not controlled by it either.

************************************************************************

Esther 4:14

¹⁴ For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

 Mordecai’s words have echoed through many a Sunday school lesson and women’s devotional study, and rightfully so. He wasn’t so much asking her, but stating to Esther that God had hand-picked her to be His instrument of liberation and justice for an entire race of people…not because God needed her, but because in using her, liberty would be so much farther reaching then a single race or creed of people. Obviously, preventing the genocidal extinction of Jews rippled through generations of time. But Mordecai wisely pointed out that deliverance for the Jews would come with or without Esther’s obedience.

Esther lived in an era where even the queen of a nation was little more than an indentured servant. As a girl, she was kidnapped and taken from her family, along with hundreds of other girls like her and sentenced to one of two fates. The first, and likely fate of all was as a concubine for the King. The second, was as Queen. It was assumed that the Queen would be the one that the King found most beautiful and sexually satisfying, although the story says that it was Esther’s intellect and courage that endeared her to the King. Regardless, even as Queen she could not come to speak with the King (her husband) without being invited. To do so put her life at stake. That sounds like slavery to me.

So God asks Esther, the highest slave inPersia, to risk her life to save His people. We all know the story. The King has already issued an executive order to his armies that all Hebrews in every corner of his kingdom were to be destroyed. Esther carefully uses her intellect and gifts of hospitality to host 3 dinners for King Xerxes and Haman (his advisor and the architect of genocide against the Jews.) It’s not until the final night, when she has “wined and dined” the King and Haman that she reveals that Haman’s plan will exterminate her people. The King is furious and Haman is put to death.

Even the King cannot revoke his own executive order, so he issues a second order that the Jews be allowed to take up arms and defend themselves against the coming onslaught. And they did just that. The Jews, male and female, young and old, strapped on their swords and annihilated the Persian soldiers that came for their demise. They were more than a little outgunned but they prevailed because they had Moshia, Deliverer, between them and the enemy.

God expects courage from his daughters. The book of Esther is clear evidence of this. Her courage has echoed through generations of Hebrews, but it ought to influence all women who call the Lord their Father. Our God is the same Moshia. When we live a life of fear we are not pursuing God’s best for us.

Whether it’s fear of rejection, fear of judgment, fear of being alone, or fear of suffering we must set it all aside and keep our eyes fixed on our Deliverer.

Where would we all be if Esther had chosen to stay silent? What if she had made her decision based on her fears rather than on her faith in God. She heeded the advice of her uncle Mordecai and recognized that God had destined her for such a time. And though she must have been terrified, she obeyed. Her courage was her obedience.

There is a greater message that God is trying to communicate to us, His daughters, through the story of Esther. I believe He wanted future generations of women to have this story to look back on to spur us on to courage. We needed a matriarch of valor to affirm the warrior that lives inside us once we have the Holy Spirit’s power. Esther’s legacy is one that says that fulfilling our God given purpose means that we can not listen to the Enemy when he tells us that we aren’t strong enough, influential enough or valuable enough to be used by God.

There is a time that you have been made for. You have been placed in your job, in your marriage and in your family for a purpose. You have been given royal status in the Kingdom of God for such a time as this…for such a time as now. Listen to His leading and be ready to respond with courage when He calls.

Fearless is a series about women living fearless lives. The words fearless and courageous are used interchangeably, however I like the word “fearless” more. I’m not sure why, I just do.  A shortcoming of the word “fearless” is that it tends to communicate a lack of fear. So, what do I mean by it? To that, I look to the great John Wayne who said, “Courage is when you’re scared to death, but you saddle up anyway.” For the purpose of this dialogue, that description is exactly what I mean by “fearless.” Not without fear, but not controlled by it either.

************************************************************************

For the most part, I am able to appear fearless to the people around me. I tend to charge toward the difficult, complex and unknown with what appears to be confidence. It doesn’t hurt that, “Ready! Fire! Aim!” is one of my life mottos. Not thinking something through definitely gives one the false sense of security needed to bolt into fearful circumstances bold and breathless. Oblivion can look like fearlessness from the outside in.

A few years back, God really put that faux fearless front to the test. All at once, the walls of my safe haven were collapsing in around me. First, the economy blew up, which was hard for everyone, but proved almost fatal to new start up businesses like ours. Needless to say, this put enormous stress on my husband, his Crohn’s disease flared up with a vengeance and he spent a month in the hospital recovering from major surgery that saved his life. It took several months for him to regain his strength and the stamina to run his company. In the process, he lost 40 pounds, had to let all of his staff go and we gave up the house that we thought we were going to raise our girls in.

To be fair, we made some major rookie mistakes both in our business and our personal finances. Rookie mistake number one…Never assume. We had worked under the assumption that real estate values averaged a net gain and any losses were temporary and quickly recovered, (because that had been true for the previous 25 years, and seemed a safe assumption.) When real estate values fell by 50% we had a serious predicament on our hands which proved to be the most costly mistake: leveraging our home to start our business. Rookie mistake number two…recognize permanent market adjustments when they happen. When the stock market adjusted and everyone’s investments were worth half of what they were the day before, economic pandemonium ensued. As a result of this instability in the market, our business’ sales dropped by 60% nearly overnight. Unfortunately, it took several months for us to realize that we weren’t just having a bad sales stretch, but that this was the new normal. We spent all of our personal savings making payroll and even borrowed money to try to float the business until the market got better. Rookie mistake number three…Never throw good money after bad.

Through that time I spent lots of energy white water rafting down “Denial River.” Lots of misplaced prayers for God to just rescue us and make this easier on everyone. I got almost complete silence back from God except for one small whisper…a verse that I had memorized as a child looped continuously in my mind, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted on the earth.” Psalm 46:10. I kept crying out in pain for rescue and God’s answer to me was “be still.”

For a while I was indignant. If He wasn’t going to help me then I was going to work my way out of it. I’d find a solution by my own power. But no solution came other than the inevitable storm.  I was drowning, and God was telling me to be still. God was so loving and patient with me during that time. I finally started listening to His urging for me to be still, but I didn’t understand it. As I often do with passages of scripture that I don’t understand, I became suspicious that something of the original meaning has been lost in translation. I turned to my trusty Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible, and learned that the phrase “be still” in that passage is translated from the Hebrew verb “rapah,” which means, “To make to fall. To let go.”

God was telling me to let go, and letting go very often means that the object you’re holding is going to fall.

“Let it fall.” He said.

I’d always thought of myself as pretty courageous, but I soon realized that there was a precious inner sanctum that I governed with an iron fist. I was basically saying to God, “I trust you as long as you don’t cause me pain and suffering in these most precious places of family, health, home and financial security.” We all do this. We might be open handed with the majority of our lives…but there’s always the deep recesses of ourselves that we keep locked up and guarded. Those places are where our deepest fears lay waiting. We think if we keep those places under our control that we might not have to face those fears.

Why do we do this? It makes no intellectual sense that we trust the easy things to the Creator of the Universe but not the hard things. If we were going to try to do things in our own strength, doesn’t it make more sense that we’d attempt the easy stuff and relinquish the hard stuff to God? We don’t though! We do the exact opposite of that!

I know with me, it just points to my fallen nature and my default to sinful self-focus. In my last post, I tried to help establish the idea that fearing anything other than God is sin and it is a distinct part of our fallen female nature to default to fear. We have to dicipline ourselves to put our fears at the feet of Jesus.

Once I decided to be still, to let it all fall, I had a revelation: I’m not afraid anymore. I’m standing firm upon the hand of the One Who is Mighty to Save, and come what may, I am safe. God has laid it on my heart to testify, especially to my fellow sisters in Christ, that when we release our fears to Him, only then are we truly free. Freedom from fear is what God desires for us.

2 Timothy 1:7, “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self discipline.”

I saw Him save my husband from severe illness, provide a very unlikely but wonderful place for us to live and raise our business from the ashes as a more streamlined, profitable version of its old self. In the process, He pruned out the gnarled branches of fear in my life so that I could grow in freedom.

Romans 8:15 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship(adoption.) And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

So tell me…What are you holding on to?

What do you need to let fall?

Fearless is a series about women living fearless lives. The words fearless and courageous are used interchangeably, however I like the word “fearless” more. I’m not sure why, I just do.  A shortcoming of the word “fearless” is that it tends to communicate a lack of fear. So, what do I mean by it? To that, I look to the great John Wayne who said, “Courage is when you’re scared to death, but you saddle up anyway.” For the purpose of this dialogue, that description is exactly what I mean by “fearless.” Not without fear, but not controlled by it either.

************************************************************************

The Ideal Godly Woman

“A virtuous wife who can find? For her worth is far more than rubies…” Proverbs 31:1

 The words of Proverbs, Chapter 31 probably ring very familiar to your ears if you’ve been a woman in a church for any length of time. It’s a more comprehensive look at the godly woman and the issues specific to womanhood than you’ll find anywhere else in scripture.

I know when I read through it, there are some line items that I feel better about then others. For example, when it says that she, “Bringeth her food from afar.” As long as they are referring to food that does not originate at home (i.e. take out), I think I’m getting an A+ on that virtue.

Then, I read just a few phrases down that, “She giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens (read servants.)” Wait…servants? This chick’s got servants!?! Well, wouldn’t that be nice. Maybe that explains a few things as you read further down that she, “Is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household is clothed in scarlet.”

Excuse my while I go put that load of “darks” in the washing machine.

In all seriousness, something that has always struck me about the ideal woman outlined in Proverbs 31 is that she’s fearless. In fact, the word from verse 1 and again in verse 29 translated to “virtuous” in most English texts comes from the Hebrew word, chayil. (My keyboard won’t let me type it in its Hebrew form. Please, seminary students, don’t email me.) According to Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible, Chayil means, “Force. Strength of mind or body.” Strength of mind, in particular, denotes courage.

How different the pages of the Scriptures would read if Rahab, Ruth, Esther, Mary or Lydia would have let the fearful circumstances around them dictate their choices. What if they would have chosen safety, security or caution? Making choices based on fear would have had severe consequences. I’m sure they didn’t feel fearless. They were probably scared to death. But, instead of listening to the fatalistic voice of fear, they snatched it by the throat and submitted it valiantly before the only One we ought to fear…The Great I Am.

Let’s Call Sin What It Is

I’m passionate about women living courageous lives because I believe that fearfulness is a carnal trait. As a general rule, we tend to default to our sinful nature. Being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit means that we often are called to live counter to our nature through the strength we are given by Christ. So much weight has been given, for example, to men breaking their natural bent toward violence and promiscuity. Christian men are called to act against their sinful tendencies and pursue purity, faithfulness and gentle hearts. On the other hand, women, in general, aren’t as tempted by visual sexual stimuli like pornography. We aren’t wired that way…but we often claim our “self control” as strength of character. It’s not a virtue if it comes naturally.

Women tend to be driven toward fearfulness. It’s our nature. By this, I don’t mean the emotional feeling of fear. We cannot choose our emotions. What I mean is living out our fear; acting and choosing from a position of fear. It’s allowing fear, rather than faith, to set our agenda. Yet, within the evangelical Christian culture, women’s tendency toward fearfulness is not often called the sin that it is, but even worse is defended as caution and a desire to create a safe environment for our families. It’s a sin that’s a bit easier to dress us as something else than say, sexual immorality, but it is no less sinful, and no less damaging to our ability to live within the freedom that Jesus bought for us with His life.

Can you even imagine what the world would be like if we all committed that we would never make a decision based on fear? What an anthem that would be, “Never fear, for Jesus is here!”

In future posts, I want to share my story. My passion to call women to be courageous doesn’t come from self righteousness or a perfect track record. None of this comes easy to me. I continue to struggle against the intoxicating lure of fearful living. However, I’m passionate about raising up women of courage simply because I have been given a glimpse of what it’s like to live fearing nothing but God. It is freedom.

Please join me in this dialogue. I plan to write several posts talking about different aspects of fearless living. Obviously, these posts are a specific call on the lives of women, but I’m eager to hear the perspective and experiences of both men and women as we study this together. I don’t know how many posts are coming. I guess we’ll talk about this as long as we have to.

If you’re willing, please leave a comment about the areas of your life that are subject to fear. Don’t worry, there’s no judgment, just support…If you’re tired of being fearful instead of fearless, let’s face our fears together!