I woke up to warm hugs and a pleasant present this morning from my husband celebrating International Women’s day. When he left for work, I lay back in bed asking myself what I love most about being a woman, and for the life of me, I didn’t have an answer.

I thought of a few things, but I realised that even the men could do those things, so it wasn’t exclusive to the woman. The only thing that was exclusive is bringing forth life, and while I think this is amazing and plain superhero stuff, it wasn’t reason enough to love being a woman personally, cause that’ll mean the woman who isn’t able to have children for whatsoever reason wouldn’t have reason to love being woman, so there had to be more.

I spent quite a while in this meditation before I snapped out of it and got to my devotion.

In that atmosphere I poured my heart out to God and thanked Him for making us male and female, I thanked Him that I couldn’t have known to choose to be woman, but I’m grateful He thought it best that I be. And frankly, if He did let us choose, I’d still choose to be woman, why? I wasn’t sure.

I then started to probe as to what differentiates us from men asides the obvious physical differences, I wanted to know what God loves about the woman and why He thought it necessary to make woman after the man, before He declared that “it was good”.

I also realised that when we stand before God, our gender will not matter, whether we were male or female will not be a criteria to deciding anything, the focus will be on if we accepted the Zoe life freely given, how we lived the Zoe life we got and how we were instrumental in the display and sharing of this Zoe life.

So I wondered, does it really matter to God that I’m a woman?

God reminded me of a sermon I heard a few years ago, where the preacher explained how both genders carry a dimension of God, and while none of the genders are lacking from Gods perspectives, there are peculiar differences in our build and function which translates to some of the physical differences we reference today.

God designed it that the woman be the gate to the birthing of new life, He also made it that she be the nurturing, comforting and tender one, not because the man can’t be these things, but because they also get to experience and benefit from these traits in us.

God made it that the woman be intuitive, supporting and guiding, again not because the man can’t be these things, but because they enjoy the benefits of this with us.

I discovered that God loves the woman because she is a reflection of a dimension of Him in ways no other creation could be. The dynamic nature of God is such that He put Himself in both the man and woman, brought them together and declared that it is good. God saw beauty in making us dependent on each other based on the making of both genders.

Maybe this is why marriage is the mystery God uses to demystify the relationship between Christ and His church. In both we see two individuals, having different makes and different functions, but submitting to each other in such a way that both are left fulfilled and satisfied.

It’s why there must be balance even in our quest to develop and build the female gender, it must not be done at the detriment of the male gender because the beauty is in the togetherness and flourishing of both.

So this year’s International Women’s day comes with fresh understanding of what God loves about the woman, but most especially, what I personally love about being a woman, and it’s that I host Abba in His fullness, and get to reflect and demonstrate dimensions of Him to the world I live in.