17.10.25
She comes to the river,
when waters should swallow the banks.
And the Jordan opens
before her into the Pride of Canaan.
Each step is inheritance —
a girlhood stitched in Jordan’s hem,
a womanhood painted in Jordan’s hue,
In the promise she murmurs
Holy Holy Holy
for the river that stands in a heap,
and that salvation makes a way at all.
-Lele
We had broken up.
No contact; because talking would pull us back into the cycles of anger, offense, and defense.
I wrote to you; scribbling urgently on pages until I couldn’t see through the tears that made the dark ink bleed. To soothe my heart, I had committed to writing a letter every time I missed you. Every time I wanted to say something to you, I would say it on paper. After all, I did not need for you to hear or receive it. I simply needed to have shared it.
Several weeks and a full notebook later, I had accumulated a hefty stack of personal confessions, hopes, odes, and prayers. My strategy was working well enough.
And then, for whatever reason… perhaps in my naivety, I sought your acknowledgement of my feelings… I gave you those letters. In between awkward platitudes and under a sky that seemed to hang lower than usual, I handed over to you the thick envelope of my heart.
Something inside me died when I learned that you threw it away. The risk had not even occurred to me. I thought I might never write again. What you did was sacrilegious, it was final, and it was necessary.
In the wrong hands, the depth of my vulnerability is no different from used toilet paper and rotting produce.
Now I write, not to grieve, but to survive.
-Lele M
The fall. A narrative as old as time, woven into the very fabric of creation.
Genesis 3 tells of a paradise shattered, of innocence lost, and of an intimacy with God interrupted by a single choice. “What is this you have done?” the Lord asks, His voice heavy with the weight of love betrayed. And in that moment, humanity’s relationship with God—and with one another—was forever changed.
I find myself reflecting on the fall, not in Eden, but in my own life. A public union of hearts and lives, shared and celebrated, has ended. The first partner I ever called home is now no longer mine. The mighty have fallen, the poets say. Though I am no king, my heart feels the weight of that phrase. How fragile the human spirit is, how vulnerable we are when we give ourselves to another, laying bare our hopes and fears, trusting they will be held with care.
In the aftermath, I have asked myself: Was it love that failed, or was it simply us? Is love eternal, as scripture teaches, or is it fractured by the very human vessels that attempt to carry it? Perhaps it is both. Perhaps love remains pure, even as we stumble under its weight.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable,” C.S. Lewis once wrote. “Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” To love is to risk the fall, to step into the unknown with faith that the one you hold close will not let go. Yet, sometimes, they do. Or perhaps it is we who loosen our grip, weary from the journey, distracted by our own frailty.
The fall reminds me of surrender—not just to love, but to God, who is love itself. What does it mean to surrender when the heart is broken? It means to offer up the pieces, trusting that the hands that shaped the heavens can also reshape the human heart. It means to acknowledge that the fall is not the end of the story. Eden was lost, but grace abounds. The mighty fall, but the humble are lifted.
In this moment, I see the nature of man: fragile, flawed, often blind to the divine within one another. I see the nature of relationships: mirrors that reflect not only beauty but also brokenness. And I see the nature of love: a call to transcend the fall, to forgive as we are forgiven, to endure as God endures.
Perhaps this is the beginning of a new story—not one of perfect love but of perfecting love. For even in the fall, there is grace. And grace, I am learning, is where healing begins.
-Lele M
Her Style
“Elegance is elimination.” – Cristóbal Balenciaga
My style journey has spanned through the full range of creative expressions. I have donned the vintage, the artsy, the casual, the grunge, the chic, the bohemian, the sexy, and the exotic fashion style. My current style borrows artfully from each of these.
My coming to faith has informed the philosophy from which I derive my style. I invoke the word here in its active form – as a verb. Styling; to give a particular style to something, to confer a flair or finesse to the way you dress. Personally, I have always liked plain solid colours in cool or neutral tones. I enforce a maximum of three different colours in an outfit. Of course, single-colour and monochrome outfits are first prize.
I never imagined that I’d fall in love with (and feel at home in) the girly and feminine too. I never imagined that my maturing in style would mean playfulness, appreciating tiny floral prints, bows, warm colours, ruffles, and stilettos. When I purchase scents I’m looking for something that smells like food – something sweet and edible.
Watch more about my style journey here:
– Lele M
“I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.” – Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman
Over the past two years I have been consuming a significant amount of content surrounding femininity, homemaking, and womanhood. I hadn’t been taught how or what it meant to be woman, much less feminine and woman. And as I grew older and became a staunch feminist, I was not interested in learning. Now I am.
Allow me to share my five favourite women creators of content under the themes of femininity, motherhood, homemaking, and womanhood.
Elisabeth Elliot
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheElisabethElliotFoundation
Jasmyne Theodora
https://www.youtube.com/c/JasmyneTheodora
Bindi Marc
https://www.youtube.com/c/BindiJMarc
Allie-Beth Stuckey
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=allie+beth+stuckey
The Feminine Fancy
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcttgBAjjDx_llbo31UZ19Q
On this journey, I have learned to take lessons where I can find (learn) them. I draw inspiration from various sources; Scripture, my experiences with women around me, and the insights of courageous women I find online who are audaciously feminine.
Behind my fervor is my hope that what I glean will be the canon of knowledge from which I will someday teach my own daughter.
– Lele M
Her Head
“For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.” – Ephesians 5:23
His eyes widened. He was visibly stupefied.
“I don’t believe women should be pastors,” she repeated. Although her eyebrows rose to emphasise her words, her voice retained its candor and clarity. She let the words rest in the air unassumingly.
He gave her a perplexed look and both of them fell silent for a moment. He seemed to be allowing her the pause she needed to deliver her punchline. The punchline was a few seconds overdue when he realised it would not be coming. She wasn’t going to renege on what she’d said. At this, his shock turned to curiosity.
“Why not?”
Thinking of Ephesians 5:23, she said “I don’t believe the Bible teaches it. I believe in the headship of the husband over the family and congregation.”
Her matter-of-fact demeanor was disarming and his eyes narrowed in a slight reflex.
These days, I find myself wanting to qualify my position. I appreciate that I don’t have to. I simply feel I should.
I do it because I want to assure my interlocutors that they are not speaking with someone who doesn’t give thought to these issues. I want to offer them relief. I want to assure them that there would be no need for platitudinous sloganeering. I want to dare them to be honest. I want them to know that I am eager for critical reflections.
I want to play open cards. I want to ensure they aren’t seduced into conversation by the appearance that I may be an ideological damsel in distress so lost in oppressive thought and confused by the patriarchy that she couldn’t even see she needed help.
I want to offer them peace and ease about making arguments which they may think are so foreign as to offend my sensibilities, so revolutionary as to shake the foundations on which my convictions stand, and so unlike my own as to assault my very existence.
I want to dispel any presumption that I have only ever believed what I now know to be true. I want to reassure them that I have considered the contention. I care about the subject matter, I will be careful with it.
Her eyes softened and she smiled warmly. “You know, I actually used to be a feminist.” He thought he heard a note of sincerity resonate somewhere in the back of her voice.
Her attempt to put him at ease was having the opposite effect. He couldn’t understand why a dynamic and opinionated young woman living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the contemporary world would abide by archaic doctrines.
Something caught the corner of his eye as he studied her face. It hung around her neck on a delicate silver chain. It rose and fell gently as she breathed. The sleek symbol reflected the afternoon sunlight in a soft rhythm which gave it the appearance of swaying girlishly. It was the instrument by which early Roman soldiers tortured and killed Jewish insurgents. The cross.
He shook his head incredulously and smiled before he looked squarely into her eyes, reclined in his seat, and asked the question she had been expecting to hear.
“What changed?”
– Lele M
He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.’ – Genesis 5:2
In recent times I have reflected at length about womanhood – what it is, and entails. This is because of the ever increasing prevalence of gender ideology and transgenderism. Primarily it has been influenced by my coming to faith and accepting my identity in Christ as the views which shape my perspective on gender ideology are taken from Scripture.
Who and what is Woman? If you consult the internet, you may find answers to the effect of;
Urban dictionary –
‘A real woman is a woman of virtue. She allows the man to have his authoritarian role, but also doesn’t allow anyone to walk over her and diminish her value and what she brings to the table. A real woman understands that there is a two player part in what a man and woman can build together, as a unit.’
‘I would define a ‘woman’ as a person who is a legitimate foil for (white) men’s sexual, social and political dominance, and who is thus worthy of protection from (general, random) patriarchal violence. ‘Women’ exchange their subjection to general, random patriarchal violence for subjection to their husbands’ patriarchal domination when they become ‘wives’. ‘Wife’ is understood as the pinnacle of the social status known as ‘woman’.’
Oxford Languages –
‘an adult female human being.’
Scripture provides that woman was created in the likeness of God, and from man’s rib. Woman has relational capacity, a nurturing nature, vulnerability, beauty, and responsiveness. Throughout this series, I will lay my personal journey bare and present my exploration of womanhood. This is your invitation to join me on this pilgrimage, if you dare.
– Lele M
https://www.livehope.org/article/a-real-woman-defining-biblical-femininity/
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=real%20woman
https://medium.com/@OluKukoyi/who-is-a-real-woman-f5726b01d141
Directed by Justin Folk
Documentary
‘If transgenderism has reduced womanhood to its superficial characteristics, allowing anyone to don it like a Sunday hat, at least part of the reason is that our culture has spent decades divorcing sex distinctions from gender roles.’ – Leor Sapir, City Journal
I had been looking to see ‘What is a Woman‘ for a long while before I finally did. I knew of the film because I am a regular listener of the podcast hosted by the documentary’s creator, Matt Walsh. Not only had there been a thrilling buildup to the documentary’s release, there had also been robust reviews both for and against the film following its release. Writers had either been labelling the film and those involved in its creation as ‘transphobic’, ‘bigoted’, and ‘genocidal’. Or hailing ‘What is a Woman‘ as a must-watch offering of truth and tenacity.
I could hardly take my eyes of the screen throughout my viewing of the documentary. Walsh takes the viewer on a journey that is both gripping and farcical. In his critique of transgender theory and activism, Walsh’s vast range of interviewees includes doctors, psychologists, women’s march protest-goers, gender and sociology professors, university students, Maasai tribesmen, and the average thinker on the street.
Among many factors, what makes the film compelling is the manner in which some of Walsh’s interlocutors are bizarrely stumped by the clearest of questions. I opt for the word ‘clear’ intentionally. Unlike Walsh, I am reluctant to describe the questions (particularly the titular question) as merely ‘simple’. The word ‘simple’ denotes that the question is easily understood or presents no difficulty. The assertion that ‘what is a woman?’ is a ‘simple’ question is brilliantly and consistently disproved by the documentary itself. In transgender discourse, the question has in fact become complicated one.
To this end, the film is an exceptional example of ‘clarifying terms’ and ‘sharpening contradictions’. Defining words and establishing meaning is the best place to draw the battle lines in a culture war. That is why ‘What is a Woman?‘ is a film worth watching for those interested in contending for truth in the age of transgender ideology.
– Lele M
Lele Muthali 