Welcome to the first post in our Blessing God’s Way blog. We hope you will follow this blog and share with friends so a wider community can get to know the purpose of this ministry. I thought it appropriate to use this first post to share a little about that purpose and our heart, so that you might become more familiar with who we are. Blessing God’s Way is based in Strasburg, Virginia, and is dedicated to ministering to and educating women in all cycles of their lives, which we like to break down into three distinct parts: maidenhood, maternity, and mentoring. We offer classes, seminars, and midwifery services under that umbrella. For this post, I’ll focus on the education aspect of the ministry, so you can get a feel for why we believe this is crucially important in this day and age.
The Bible says in Psalm 139:14 that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. God carefully designed and orchestrated the workings of the human body to accomplish certain things to his glory, and yet on the subjects of menstruation and childbirth, the Christian community is mostly silent, and willing to let the culture fill in the blanks we are leaving in our own understanding by not seeking out God’s truth. We have gone so far in that direction, that some may even be surprised to hear God has an opinion at all about those things. It is our desire to help educate girls and women about the proper working of their body, so that they can recognize dangers many consider cultural norms, which in fact may be a very bad idea from a health and wellness standpoint. By teaching someone to recognize and walk in the truth, we hope to empower them to make positive choices that will be a blessing not only to them, but to generations of women who come after them. How do we accomplish that?
We recognize first of all that God has given the training of the children to their parents to accomplish, and that for this reason, the best teacher and mentor for a young girl is her own mother. Unfortunately, many women with girls who are ready to talk about the changes in their body and menstruation find themselves woefully unprepared to even have a simple talk without floods of embarrassment or tons of blank spaces in their own understanding. Our desire is to reach these women, and come alongside them by offering a well-thought-out course in a casual and comfortable atmosphere where they are given the tools, alongside their young daughter, to have a beneficial discussion about this new phase of her life. This course is titled “Maidens By His Design” and we have seen an outpouring of women who are so thankful for the education they have received and in turn been able to pass on to their daughters. For women who prefer to go through the material themselves at home with their daughters in a completely private setting, we also make available a mother/daughter kit for them to use.
As women move from childhood into adulthood, there is no sudden magical revelation about how the body works to conceive, grow, and deliver a baby. Yet, our culture approaches this subject as if there is that revelation, or as if it is entirely unimportant that a woman have an understanding of this cycle in her life. American women move through the system for the most part, having chosen a caregiver from friends recommendation or advertising, having five to ten minute appointments with that caregiver during which they are given little or no information about the “whys” of the care they are receiving, and then toward the end, expected to make few decisions for themselves about their labor and delivery, because, in fact, they do not have the information and education to make informed decisions, nor have they been encouraged to seek out that information during the course of their pregnancy. Our heart is to offer these women unimpeded access to the “whys” they are missing in their care, and spark in them the interest to be able to make good decisions for themselves and their baby. We offer childbirth classes and midwifery care to that end, because we do believe that in the fully medicalized culture of the United States, a woman deserves a full range of choices and education, so that she can be her own best caregiver, becoming responsible for her own body and her own choices, and reaching the end of pregnancy completely prepared for the hard work of labor that lies ahead. Instead of surrendering herself to the care of others with little or no understanding of the ins and outs of her care, she can and should be at the center of the process, driving the decision making and educating herself about the nuances of how God designed her body to accomplish this task. This builds a trust in God that will serve her far more than any tool or intervention when she finds herself in the midst of the hard work of labor.
We hope to help remove the scales from the eyes of many generations of women who desire to see God’s truth touch all corners of their lives. We hope you’ll join us on the journey!
