How to Wreck Your Daughter {A Review of ‘A Voice Becoming’} + A GIVEAWAY

If you have a daughter, A Voice Becoming provides practical ideas for how to walk beside her with intentionality and humility as you guide her into what it means to be a woman.

We didn’t bathe or use toilet paper other than crumpled-up leaves and ferns for two and a half weeks. As an 18 year old, in-coming college freshman from the suburbs of Tampa, Florida, this rustic experience in the Upper Peninsula of Wisconsin wrecked me. Carrying 25 lb backpacks, we hiked, canoed, hiked some more, spent the night alone and shivering on the shore of Lake Superior, then, leaving our bags to be transported, we ran ten miles back to camp.

As a professional educator, I can testify that experiences are better teachers than books, writing papers or listening to lectures could ever be.

Blisters, freeze-dried food, digging holes for a fire pit (and “toilet”), and leading nine other girls using only a compass and 1960’s logging topo map smashed my nose up against the window of discovery.

Who was God? And who was I apart from my family? I wasn’t sure, but walking into the room the first day of freshman orientation sure seemed less daunting after encountering my physical capabilities and deficiencies.

Ancient cultures often subjected their pre-teens to rituals and experiences to celebrate and honor the rite of passage of children becoming adults. Noticing a void in these types of rituals in American culture, Beth Bruno planned an entire year of adventure, homework and exploration of what it means to be a woman for her 12 year old daughter.

She set out to wreck her daughter, then wrote about it in A Voice Becoming: A Yearlong Mother-Daughter Journey into Passionate, Purposed Living.

Instead of prescribing how to live, she wanted her daughter to discover a paradigm of being that “elevates God to being so big we can’t fully understand Him and yet small enough to intimately know us” (p. 22). Beth planned a year to examine what breaks God’s heart in hopes her daughter’s heart would also break for those things.

Raising daughters requires us to do some soul-searching of our own. Who do we want her to become? How do we as mothers help her get there? How does our story impact hers? Though my daughter is just three years old, as her mother, I am already laying the foundation for the type of woman she will become.

If you have a daughter, A Voice Becoming will provide practical ideas for how to walk beside her with intentionality and humility as you guide her into what it means to be a woman.

Everyone else is vying to raise our girls—the internet, T.V., schools, their friends, and even Sunday school teachers. But what if we mothers took our roles as our daughter’s first teachers more seriously? What if instead of waiting for her to absorb the messages of the culture around her, we equipped her with the tools she needs to analyze, assess and one day even alter that culture?

A Voice Becoming is a challenge to women to step away from lackadaisical parenting and take back our girls. Beth models a move from passivity to actively engaging our daughters and walking beside them as they encounter the world.

She expertly weaves biblical stories, as well as her own tale of “becoming” throughout the book as she tells the story of guiding her daughter from the launch trip, through the five scaffolds of her year of Becoming, then culminating in a “legacy” event tailored to her daughter’s interests. She spends eight weeks on each of the five scaffolds: women lead, love, fight, sacrifice and create, integrating service projects, films, books and articles for her daughter to analyze throughout.

It would be difficult to read A Voice Becoming without being moved to action. That action requires purposeful planning to implement. It forces us mothers to excavate our own pasts to uncover and share our stories with our daughters. Planning this rite of passage for our daughters exposes our own fears, questions, gifts, and passions, so beware.

If you have a daughter under the age of 18 and long for her to love God with her feet and not just with her lips, I highly recommend reading and implementing the ideas in this book. Although some of the suggestions may be out of range for those with modest budgets, Beth provides creative ideas for funding and planning your daughter’s Becoming year.

In the final pages of A Voice Becoming, Beth’s activist heart bleeds with these words: “I want to be a hope-pusher, a darkness-disrupter, a justice-warrior, a grace-clinger. As I lead, love, fight, sacrifice, and create, I want to bring the fullness of who I am to the kingdom of God” (p. 162).

As mothers, one of our greatest privileges in life is to walk with our daughters in their journey of becoming strong women who love and live lives of love in a broken world; A Voice Becoming is a welcome companion on this journey.

Click To Tweet

***

WIN A FREE COPY OF A VOICE BECOMING!!!

Th A Book Review of A VOICE BECOMING {plus, A GIVEAWAY!} is week, I’m giving away two free hardback copies of A Voice Becoming.

One will be to those who comment on my Instagram post by midnight (MT) of January 18th and tag friends you think would be interested in this book. I’ll enter you one time for each new friend you tag!

Another will be for new subscribers to my newsletter between now and midnight of January 18th. Sign up for my mid-month digest and end-of-month SECRET NEWSLETTER here:

On January 19th (my birthday, just FYI;-) ), I’ll announce the Instagram winner in the comments section of that post and email the winner of the newsletter sign-up!

You can buy A Voice becoming from Beth’s site or here on Amazon:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BETH BRUNO traded the Blue Ridge for the Rocky Mountains after two decades in mega cities. Upon graduating from Northwestern University in Chicago, she and her husband moved to an even larger city, Istanbul, where they led campus teams with Cru. Ten years later they moved to Seattle where Beth received an MA in International Community Development and launched a nonprofit aimed at preventing domestic minor sex trafficking. Beth regularly speaks and trains around the topic of trafficked youth, including interviews with local radio stations and lots of coffee with the FBI, Homeland Security, and local law enforcement.

**This post includes Amazon Affiliate links.

Follow along as we explore these themes on Scraping Raisins this year:

Scraping Raisins Blog Themes

January 8, 2018January 8, 2018

How We Raise Strong Girls

Do you want to raise a strong daughter? Here is a prayer for moms of daughters.

I want to raise a strong daughter. Of course, the word “strong” means different things to different people. Here’s what it means to me.

I’ll start with my daughter and the strength I already see in her.

She bolted ahead of us on the trail yesterday and picked up a white, round stone, her pigtails capturing flecks of the falling sun as she hoisted the rock into the river. At three years old, my daughter knows her own mind. She feels no shame and would gladly spend her life as a nudist if we let her.

She exudes confidence, curiosity, playfulness, humor, and bravery.

She stretched out her tiny hand at the museum last week and held a blond tarantula, earning a green sticker that said, “I held Rosie.”

Moving over to the next museum worker, she stroked the shiny, ridged back of a two-inch cockroach. Chills ran down my spine. I abhor cockroaches. It took everything in me not to shout and yank her hand away. Calm, and not realizing she just did something most adults wouldn’t be willing to do, she touched two of the most feared creatures without a thought.

I dread the day my daughter dresses in the clothes of shame, fear and self-doubt so many of us wear each day. When she’s embarrassed to be naked, aware of what others think of her and terrified to try new things.

“Are they yucky?” she asked me, pointing at a terrarium of black scorpions.

“Do you think they’re yucky?” I asked.

She looks to me to define the yucky things in life for her. When you’re three, people, places and things can be easily categorized as “yucky” and “not yucky,” as “good” and “bad.” There are good guys and bad guys and very little in between. But just because I dislike certain bugs, foods or activities, I want to be careful not to influence my daughter to have the same likes and dislikes as me. I want her to be herself, not just a clone of her mother.

We moms are our daughter’s first teachers. A good teacher provides the means for students to learn at their own rate, in their own way and through their own experiences.

We moms are the curators of experiences for our daughters, gathering artifacts and inviting our girls to touch, taste, see, hear, and search for glimpses of God in the museum of life.

As I perch at the beginning of this journey as a mom to a little girl, what does it mean to raise her to become a strong woman? What wishes morph into prayers as I watch her toss stones into rivers and cradle deadly spiders?

Perhaps they’re the same prayers you have for your daughter?

To me, each of these prayers is a plea to see strength birthed in her:

I pray she knows she’s adored by God and by her parents.

I pray she is radiant, full of light and life.

I pray she weeps with compassion, bends to the ground in humility and allows others to march first in her life parade at times, though she is strong enough to lead on her own.

I pray she asks questions, listens to answers, bucks social norms, embraces a holy curiosity and has reverence for diverse people, rugged nature and God-sightings in the ordinary.

I pray she knows her gifts and how to use them.

I pray she tastes, sees, touches and hears heaven on Earth.

I pray she learns early on how to say “no,” but has the courage to say “yes” when the time is right.

I pray she falls in love with Jesus. The real-deal Love, not just the cultural Christian variety.

I pray she intuits a need and meets it if she can.

I pray she laughs often and chooses humor over negativity and critical words.

I pray she holds few regrets in a long life.

I pray her life experiences–the suffering, celebrating, successes and failures–cultivate patience, peace, and wisdom.

I pray she is not afraid to love wildly and be wildly loved.

Sure, I hope she enjoys what I like–reading, sleeping to the sound of cicadas in summer evenings, dramatic thunderstorms, running her hand from mane to rump on a horse, trying exotic foods, and collecting fascinating friends, but I also need to give her space to try on different personalities to find out who she is meant to be apart from me.

To have a strong daughter, I need to be strong enough to keep quiet at times and let her live into that woman. My prayers spoken over her as she sleeps with her small arm tossed over her stuffed dog culminate in a simple sentence–that she knows who she is and who she’s not.

This is what I mean when I say I want to raise a strong daughter.

What we want for our daughters is ultimately what we want for ourselves.

To be cherished.

To be respected.

To be safe.

To make a difference.

To be strong.

***

What about you? What is your prayer for your daughter? Who do you hope she will become? What is your role in her journey?

***

Join me this month as we explore this theme of raising strong girls. I have way too many ideas and not enough time, but my goal is to post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays this month. Shoot me an email at scrapingraisins (dot) gmail (dot) com if you’d like to guest post on this topic.

As it’s sex trafficking awareness month, I’ll also be sharing some resources on that topic. Sign up for my mid-month digest and end-of-month secret newsletter to stay updated on all the posts as well as to get links to interesting books, podcasts, recipes and articles I’ve come across this month.

Dear Daughter

What I Want for My Children

May 2, 2016

Dear Daughter

Amber and Seth Haines’ new book, The Mother Letters, is a fabulous compilation of letters from over 30 women written to encourage moms at every stage of motherhood. I’ve been a mom less than four years and am expecting my third child, so I‘m still in the thick of it, but I want to share the mama dreams I have for my daughter in the link up on Amber’s page. I‘m also honored to share this letter today at Self Talk the Gospel.

Dear Daughter,

I see the way your attitude already changes as you discover you’re being admired. You shrug your shoulders and peer back at your admirers in a coy way, hoping for more attention. You’ve already received more compliments for your wispy blond pig-tails, wide blue eyes and perfect little toddler body than your brother has had in over three years of his life. And it’s not because you are more adorable than he is.

No. It’s because you are a female.

It caught me off guard at first when grown men would stop and compliment your eyes, because no man had ever done that with your brother. You were no more than six months old, so it all began so much earlier than I had expected.

Of course I want you to be admired, but I also want you to be seen. Right now, you and your brother are equally cute, intelligent and playful. You are both developing in your own ways and have your own strengths. The world is wide open for both of you. So I dread the day when you find your first gate to walk through that is for you alone and not for your brother simply because of your gender. And there will be many more to slow you down in the years to come. But they are gates, and not walls, so I don’t want you to turn back.

My prayer for you is that you grow up knowing you are loved by your family, but especially knowing that you are held, cherished and adored by Jesus. You do not need to be loved by a man to have value. Period. You are already a beloved daughter of the King (1 Jn. 3:1). He–not a man– will fill the empty places in your soul (Eph. 3:19). Never believe that Prince Charming will save you. Instead, remind yourself, “I am my beloved’s and His desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). I pray that you fall deeply in love with Jesus as your first love (Rev. 2:4).

I want you to feel respected, honored and trusted by the men in your life and especially by men in the church, who too often belittle women and make them feel invisible. Jesus sawwomen and raised them to a higher status. I want you to have healthy relationships with men as you respect them and honor them as much as you expect them to respect and honor you (Mat. 7:12). There are good men in this world, so I hope that you surround yourself with the ones who treat you with kindness and dignity; as Ephesians says to “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (4:32).

I want you to have the freedom to pursue your passions, gifts and callings without guilt or apology. While women and men have different strengths and weaknesses, a woman should not be told that she “can’t do” something because she is not a man. I want you to be as educated as you want to be and to find pleasure in all that God gives you to do. Being a mother is wonderful, but it is not the only calling for a woman, so I hope that you find joy using your gifts however God has crafted your soul to serve (1 Pet. 4:10). He is delighted when we use our passions as He intended and especially when they are poured out as an act of selfless worship unto Him (Mat. 25:14; Luke 7:38).

When I think of the woman you will become, I pray that you would “put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col. 3:12). I want you to see the overlooked, the weak and the oppressed and to be brave enough to speak up on their behalf when you have the chance (Ps. 82:3-4). I hope that you ask questions and don’t just accept the status quo. Don’t be afraid to live differently or push back on a broken system even when you don’t see a way to fix it just yet (Esther 4:14).

I hope you have the opportunity to know and love people who are poorer, richer, lighter, darker, crazier, duller and braver than you are. Each person will enrich your life and broaden your perception of God’s kingdom and the scope of His creativity (Ps. 22:27).

The world right now is scary at times and I don’t see that changing before you are grown, so I pray that you don’t live in fear, but with hope and the knowledge that you are never alone (Is. 41:10). This world is not your home (Heb. 13:14; Jn. 18:36). You’re a visitor here for a time to play, learn, love, grow, change, rest, build and wrestle with the world–and with yourself in it. But mainly God has granted you this precious life to develop a relationship with Him through the sacrifice He made for you (2 Cor. 5:15).

Never forget that you are not alone (Deut. 31:6). Never forget that you are extravagantly loved (Jn. 3:16). Never forget that Someone stands over you smiling and belting out happy songs about you (Zeph. 3:17). Never forget that you have worth and value not because of what you look like or even because of what you do with your life (because that will constantly change), but because you are God’s daughter, His precious one (Ps. 139). He knew your name before your daddy and I did and He loves you more than we ever could (Jer. 1:5; 1 Jn. 3:1).

I thank God daily that I get to be your mommy and walk this messy magical life with you. I have so many hopes for you, baby girl, but I know that you are in hands that are stronger and more loving than mine (Job 12:10). I pray that one day you will decide to give your life to your Greatest Admirer and accept His gift of Life through Jesus, because He is the place where your heart and soul will find their true home (Rom. 5:8).

I love you, my little miss.

Your mommy

~~~

Subscribe to Scraping Raisins by email and/or follow me on Twitter and Facebook. I’d love to get to know you better!

Linking up with Mama Shares Monday

~~~

Previous Post: Monthly Mentionables {April}
Next Post: The Minivan Identity Crisis

Linking up with Grace & Truth