"Yes I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain. Yes I've paid the price, but look how much I've gained." On a plane from Washington D.C. to Kansas City, April 2001, I woke to these words singing themselves in my head, over and over. After several minutes I was awake enough to force myself to figure out the rest of the verse, the name of the song. "If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong, I'm invincible, I am woman."

Helen Reddy during the heyday of the women's movement. "Okay Heavenly Father, I get it. I get it." But I didn't really. I had just left a conference in which I saw a little too much machismo. It had never bothered me before, but during this conference it frustrated me. I prayed, "God, I want your viewpoint on this. I don't want a fallen viewpoint. Does this bother you? Should it bother me? Am I supposed to be feeling this way for some reason?" The answer to my prayer was God awakening me with Helen Reddy. Yes, I guess it was supposed to bother me.

Thus began my odyssey. Did I suddenly become a feminist? Not at all. But I suddenly began meeting women, good women, women with potential and desire, women trying to break into ministry, or in some way fulfill their God-given potential and command. I always did my best to support and encourage them. There were surprisingly so many obstacles. I believed that Mother went the course, Mother got victory, Mother liberated us. Why couldn't we stand on her victorious foundation and reach the stars?

Somehow, soon after this, my life took an interesting turn. Suddenly, I was disliked. I was challenged. I was wrongly accused. And mind you, this was not from outside. I have to say it was the Christian ministers and their churches that kept me alive, sane and believing in God for quite a long time.

Jump to December 2002. Chung Pyung Heaven and Earth Training Center, and the 50-day Leaders' Workshop. (By the way, never overlook the word 'Training' in that title.) This was a great and incredible time in my life, but ten days or so into the workshop I began to wonder. In the span of three days, I had four really horrible experiences. I finally left the God's Day Yute game in complete distress. I had to go to the top of the mountain and pray. I had to ask God about all these things. Why was this happening? The interesting thing about these terrible experiences is that they all happened with Korean sisters. Some old enough to be my mother, some my age, some young enough to be my daughters. Why was I experiencing this? I knew it had to be God's hand. I had known and worked closely with Koreans for over twenty years and I knew many of them to be incredibly deep and wonderful people. People I would trust my life to. And yet somehow God was challenging me with Korean women. Why?

As I cried and prayed my way up the mountain, it came to me. God said, "Now you can understand Mother." We've heard many times from Father how he gave Mother such a difficult training course; what terrible things she had to endure to earn the title of True Mother. Then I realized, it wasn't just Father being difficult on her. It was the women of the early church. Historically, Mother had to restore much more than we'll ever understand. The key point that God helped me understand was that Mother didn't just have to endure. Endurance in itself is not victory. Mother had to love those who tormented her. THAT was Mother's victory. Beyond endurance, she loved them. I was so grateful to finally understand Mother a little more. Mother, who'd always been an enigma to me.

Did my life suddenly become easy after I gained that understanding? I wish, but no. I had to learn to love, no matter what a person did. No matter the level of betrayal. When I gained victory on one level, God upped the ante. Next level; deeper betrayal, deeper pain. And through everything I experienced I knew I had to be able to stand before God without shame. I had to try to resemble Mother.

I was on the World Peace Task Force in Israel in December 2003. Soon after arriving I went to the Wailing Wall with a Minister and a Japanese Sister. I stood touching the Wall and praying, where generations of Hebrew women before me stood and prayed. And suddenly they came to me; all the historical feminine figures. Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, and Elizabeth. I cannot adequately describe my experience in this prayer. I felt them. I felt the pain in their hearts. I heard their confessions. The painful confessions of the historical mistakes they made. The agony they felt. And I repented on their behalf. I repented on behalf of all women in history. What a burden I felt, knowing that all major mistakes in history were the result of a woman's wrong step. We know about Eve. Sarah's exiling Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness. Rebekah should have helped Jacob to reconcile with his father and brother, without having to go the course in Haran. Because Rachel and Leah couldn't unite, the twelve tribes descended from their children, Jacob's children, were divided and scattered. And Elizabeth. Poor Elizabeth. I understood at that moment that it wasn't John the Baptist who failed, but his mother. The pregnant Mary should not have been sent away. The family of Zachariah was to have protected and nurtured Jesus. If John's mother had fulfilled her mission, John would have automatically fulfilled his. I walked away from the Wall that night truly humbled.

Just a few days later I had the opportunity to visit the tomb of Mary, Jesus' mother. I knelt beside her crypt and the tears just came. I felt all her anguish. I cried all the tears she had to cry. Most of all, I understood that Mary did everything she could. After all, she was a child who was asked to conceive the Son of God in a society which stoned to death an adulteress. She knew that she did not succeed as Jesus' mother. And what pain she carried because of that! But she felt the anguish of us not knowing that she really did the best she knew how.

So all these women in history essentially blew it. Did any of them have an easy course? Absolutely not. Could I have brought victory in their shoes? I don't know. But now we are new women on the threshold of a new history, a new age. We must be true women. As Father said in The Way of Unification in God's Providence (page 25) "If Eve had been perfected she would have become the substantial mother. But because of the fall, the essence of Eve was taken back by God. This essence was to return as a substantial image when Jesus took a bride."

True Mother is the substantial essence of God's femininity. But we cannot just ride on her coattails. We can stand on her foundation, but we must have our own victory. Our victory of overcoming. Our victory of grasping what it means to be a true woman. That means we cannot be fallen. We cannot carry into the kingdom remnants of false womanhood.

What are remnants of the false? We Unification women have broken away from the shackles of many obviously corrupt traits; but there are those we cling to unknowingly. We need to look inside ourselves for these insidious traits which are clinging desperately to our movement through us. When we discover and rid ourselves of these, how much closer to True Womanhood we'll be!

I could here write pages more detailing our fallen nature, but instead, I want to just list some things I've observed numerous times. It's up to each of us to pray and discover what it is that separates us from Mother, from the True Feminine Essence of God.

Arrogance. Yes, we are. A mother who can love the world, as we're called to do, must be able to take the most humble position.

The 'need' to have a 'titled' husband. How many times I've seen couples who've left, or brothers who are struggling because of this point. Because of the wife's resentment about, and/or lack of support to, a husband not being 'properly titled' or recognized in our movement. It is common, sisters.

Gossip. It is essential to remember that gossip is horizontal, whereas counseling or advising is vertical. Too many to name have been deeply hurt through being the subject of gossip. Dae Mo Nim said that when she looks at many sisters, what she sees are huge lips! So big they're hiding the rest of the body. That's not beautiful.

My final thought: A number of brothers have asked me why our church leadership is all male. God said it to me very clearly. Our sisters have not yet discovered true femininity. If God wants another masculine entity in leadership, he'll select someone born male. When true femininity is mastered we'll see more women in leadership roles.

March 24, 2004 at hoon dok hae, Father spoke to the sisters, working to empower us. He said we may now walk as Mothers and as Queens. But we don't want to stand in this position as robbers; people unworthy of carrying the title. We must embody the spirit of true femininity, the essence of the substantial image of God which was taken from this Earth at the Fall. God is desperate to see such beauty on this Earth. Let's not let True Mother be the only True Holy Spirit. Let's join her, we can do it!

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