Historically and to this very day we have not treated girls well. We are not in the habit yet of treating girls well. It is something that we have to
Historically and to this very day we have not treated girls well. We are not in the habit yet of treating girls well. It is something that we have to be very intentional about.
It is Independence Day in America and everyone is not free. Among them girls. Right here in the U.S. girls are silenced even in their OWN spaces, homes, churches, schools, campuses, neighborhoods, sports, and legislation. Stunningly, over and over again we are seeing our political and institutional leaders get angry in ways that we have never seen them perform before. The reason? Someone stood up for girls, heard her appeal, agreed that she was not being unreasonable at all and she was heard. 
You know, it is time to take a step back. It is possible to be a person with good intentions, high intellect, and make terrible mistakes. We are human beings. We err all the time. Present company included.
When we err, those who are the most vulnerable are often the most impacted. The thing about being a woman is this, though I do have some limitations, in so many ways when I do not like something I can change it. Girls can’t do that. They must go to the school in their district. They must quit the team if the rules will not see them as being worthy of upholding their rights. They must hold their bathroom needs until they get home if they don’t want to share with other students. They don’t have the same choices others do.
Meanwhile, people with wealth, privilege, and mobility lecture them about “kindness” when they really mean “submission” and “compliance” to conditions and rules that are not fair to them. And, they have the nerve to be mean about it. To girls.
The recent Supreme Court ruling was mostly around the states that we consider “red.” But no matter which color state a girl resides in or where she is in the world, she deserves to have her voice heard. She deserves to be able to change clothes alone or with other girls. That ought to be her choice. Girls deserve dignity and respect. Sometimes I wonder if we need to start saying this like a daily mantra or something just so that people will understand it.
As Jennifer Sey, noted online, few had anything to say about the girls at all. Therefore videos like these are necessary. Gratitude and appreciation to you all.
I was personally stunned and outraged about this. How dare you who call yourself leaders continue to ignore our girls because they dared to ask for safety and opportunity protections. For protections of their 50 year old civil rights that were actually past due back then.
Let us pray.
God of yesterday’s rivers and tomorrow’s open roads,
God who met us in the hush of cotton fields and the shout of freedom songs,
we come into this Independence Day carrying both gratitude and truth in the same breath.
We thank You for breath itself.
For a land that speaks of liberty even while we are still learning how to live it fully.
We thank You for every ancestor who held on when freedom was only a rumor and hope had to be borrowed from above.
But Lord, we tell you no lie today.
We are not yet a people who consistently do right by our girls.
We have celebrated freedom while overlooking the smallest among us.
We have built systems that speak of justice but sometimes forget tenderness.
We have praised independence while girls have had to learn early how to protect themselves from the world instead of being protected by it.
So today we ask You to help us stand where we have faltered and been careless.
Teach us to be intentional with what we call freedom.
Not freedom that is loud and good looking but still hollow.
But freedom that makes room for girls to grow without fear, without silence, without having to shrink themselves to survive.
Lord, let this nation remember that liberty is not complete if a child is unsafe.
Let every leader, every parent, every teacher, every neighbor feel the weight of that truth in their bones.
Do not let us be distracted by ceremony while neglecting the covenant of care.
We pray for girls everywhere today.
For the ones walking into bright futures and the ones still learning whether their voice will be believed.
For the ones who are safe and the ones still waiting for safety to become real and not just spoken.
Cover them, Lord.
Give them strong discernment.
Surround them with people who see them, not just use them, not just speak over them, but truly see them.
And where we as a people have failed them, give us courage to repair.
No more excuses. No further delay. Just repair.
Let Independence Day become more than memory.
Let it become responsibility.
Teach us a freedom that is accountable.
A freedom that protects.
A freedom that reaches down low and lifts the most vulnerable first, until none are left behind in the dust of celebration.
We ask all of this with humble hearts,
standing in a country still struggling to become what it says it is,
trusting that You are still shaping us toward something truer.
Amen.