Leanne Shawler, Artist

I promised on Friday to write a post about the women of valor in my life, after having read A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans . A woman of valor, or eshet chayil in Hebrew, is a blessing you bestow upon women after an achievement great or small. It might be making something from scratch, fixing a hole in the wall, getting your kids to school on time ... Eshet Chayil! It comes from Proverbs 31, which is a poem about a woman but told using heroic epic language (think David or Hercules). Orthodox Jewish men, according to Evans' book, memorize this to say or sing to their wife during Shabbat. Actually, I have the perfect picture of me from an interactive play space at the art museum when there was a tapestry exhibition... Here are the women of valor in my life in no particular order: Kieu, for fixing my mistake in two places, eshet chayil! Mum, for washing curtains,  eshet chayil! Clare, for her grooving for the Lord on Sundays and encouraging me to ...

Last evening, halfway through reading this book, I found myself leaving blog comments of eshet chayil!  (woman of valor) here and there. It's even fun to say because the "ch" sound is kinda as in "loch" with a bit of spit. By Rachel Held Evans, the full title is A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master" . Thanks to eating too much rich food on an upset stomach (yay Thanksgiving), I stayed up past midnight to finish reading it. This may be the third most influential book for 2012. (Rachel doesn't come in third. It's just the third book this year I've found.) For me, I hasten to qualify, for where I am right now in my faith journey. Your mileage may vary, but it is a darn good read. The other two (in no particular order except the order I read them in) are Ann Voskamp's A Thousand Gifts (which okay, technically I read at the end of ...