I wrote this post as part of the #WomensLives campaign (you can read more about it in my first post here). Be sure to go to the Blogher page and check out all the other amazing writers contributing. It’s an honor to be among their company!

A few months ago I was watching the PBS series The Makers with my family.

They were highlighting the women of NASA and it was a wonderful production. Well done, great interviews. Great television and I highly recommend watching it.

They showed footage from the first NASA class including women in 1978. The women were talking about how the press was going wild and how well received they were.

And I burst into tears.

Not just a tear down my cheek like Chris Pine watching the Glory number on the Oscars (although that was a great moment) but a full on ugly cry, including heaving and snot.

My sweet husband looked at me and said, “um, yeah, I’ll grant you, great moment in history. Truly awesome. But, um, is there maybe something else going on?”

Yes. Yes there was.

You see, in 1978 I was 8 years old. And I don’t remember hearing about the female astronauts even one time. I don’t remember being told “yes, Honey, that could be you one day.”

Not because my parents didn’t want the best for me. They absolutely did. But, at that time anyway, a good Christian girl didn’t aspire to be an astronaut. Later, my mom would be far more forward thinking but not then. Women who did things like that then were considered liberal. And not out for “God’s best” for their lives.

My parents loved me deeply and my mom even bought me Marlo Thomas’s “Free To Be You and Me” album (which I played over and over) so I know in their hearts they wanted me to believe I could be anything I wanted.

But to me it was clearly communicated at home and at church that if I truly loved Jesus, all I would really aspire to do is be a wife and a mom. With no “and” attached. Not a wife and a mom and an architect. Not a wife and a mom and a police officer. Not a wife and a mom and a doctor.

Being born in 1970 I feel like I was right on the cusp. After all, Title 9 didn’t even happen until 1972 and we were still living in stereotypes like girls are either ballerinas or soccer players. They’re not both. And they really aren’t scientists or mathematicians. 

I married at 19, never finished college, and have a wonderful family that I’m very proud of. I don’t regret those choices at all because my family is a huge blessing and I certainly would’t give up that husband of 25 years for all the college degrees in the world.

But sometimes I wonder what if . . . .

My mom was just here visiting and she sat by our backyard fire pit and said she wonders what if, too. She had far fewer choices than I did. She worked for a few years as a flight attendant before she got married and yes, she was weighed every day on the job and her hair couldn’t touch her collar. And when she got married it was just assumed that she would quit. And that she wouldn’t work again.

My spectacular parents. I believe it was taken in 1962.

And as her ideas have evolved, her encouragement of me, as a pastor, and as a working mom, has meant the world to me. She was meant to lead, too. When she did a spiritual gifts assessment at our church in her 40’s it came out “pastor/teacher” and our senior pastor told her that couldn’t be right because she was a woman. And that was in the 1980’s. Yes, Folks, the church is way behind on this issue. But that’s a post for another day. And having her at my ordination felt like a victory not just for me, but for her, too.

So yes, we have come along way, Baby. But we’re not there yet. We must keep pushing and encouraging and telling young women that they need to be as educated as possible and get out there and ask for the promotions and the high power positions and yes, the equal pay. They need to speak up in their churches, in their communities, on social media and anywhere they have influence when they see things that aren’t right.

Because I don’t want my tears to have been for nothing. And I want us to do better.