Helen Martin’s Blog

Susie Larson says her latest book, The Uncommon Woman: Making an Ordinary Life Extraordinary, is the “book of her heart.” She wrote it to help other Christian women reject behavior that is beneath them and reach up to live a life that, apart from Christ, is beyond them.

If you buy the book and only read Chapter Five, you will have gotten your money’s worth! It centers around our usual reaction to the conflicts that arise between women, contrasted against what our response could and should be. When we are divided by hurt feelings, annoyance, or even malicious talk and gossip, the damage that is done goes beyond what we could ever imagine. And our effectiveness as Christian women is diminished.

Susie speaks tenderly, yet does not mince words. She honestly communicates to her readers from experience, both from the perspective of the catty woman, as well as she who has been scratched. She points out that when a woman dislikes another woman, she can tend to define that other woman by her faults. That might be common knowledge, but do we see that it’s a wrong behavior? And what’s more, do we see a deeper truth behind that tendency? Read this and see if it isn’t tremendously insightful:

“When our hearts are muddied by self-righteousness and pettiness against someone, we don’t get to see what God is doing in and through them. Our eyes are blinded to the blessings in them because we’ve lost the right to see into their lives. God won’t let us in on the precious treasure of their strengths because, right now, we’re mishandling their weaknesses.”

Instead of running away from a difficult woman, Susie suggests that we go toward her; “receive her.” When we do, she writes, “We get to be on the receiving end of all the treasure within her.”

She continues,

“When we stand shoulder to shoulder with our arms linked, our enemy will have a hard time knowing where I end and you begin. Then, suddenly, my victory becomes your victory. My fruit becomes your fruit. And when we stand together, Christ commands a blessing.”

It was my great delight that Susie Larson was the speaker at the retreat I attended last month. During one talk, she called a woman up on the platform with her, took the woman by the arm, and got right up next to her as a visual aid to the above lesson. She added that our enemy knows that, “One can put a thousand to flight, but two can put ten thousand to flight,” Deut. 32:30.

Why is it that while Satan knows God’s math and its power, I can be so ignorant of his schemes? Keeping Christians at odds with one another prevents us from doing a lot of damage to his realm; but I want to do much damage! I will never forget Susie’s visual aid at the retreat, and I intend to purposefully put the lessons I learned from her into continual practice in all my relationships.