Lessons from a Lipsticked Lady

There’s a secret society that meets in ladies rooms, whether those ill-lit chamber walls are decorated with delicately floral wallpaper or scrawled with graffiti. The membership is fluid, consisting of whoever happens to be in the powder room when you arrive. The password? A simple compliment, complaint, sigh, tears or frantic cry for help like “does anyone have a safety pin??”

Any of these openings uncorks a wellspring of advice, counsel, and encouragement from women who recognize a sister in distress. Despite the popular (and erroneous) understanding that women are catty and competitive, some of the best wisdom I’ve ever received has been from the highly glossed lips of a complete stranger who took pity on my current plight.

It was at the height of the swing dance craze. I had wedged into the shockingly small, single-stall restroom at a popular live music venue (I almost said “dive," the more accurate, if less kind, description). I was drenched in sweat from a hilariously awful dance lesson and needed to splash water on my face and generally take a breather. I was slathering on a disappointing lip balm when a perky, bossy young lady sporting full-on 1950's rockabilly style regarded me in the tiny mirror we chummily shared.

In the frank and friendly way women have with each other behind the closed doors of the ladies room, she said, “Hey, honey, you need some red lipstick!”

I nodded, enviously glancing at her cherry-red bombshell smile. “I know,” I said, “I forgot to bring mine.”

“Here,” she said and without any hesitation, liberally and excitedly applied her well-loved lipstick to my lips. We turned to the mirror and laughed together at my newly illuminated grin (which did look GREAT; Revlon “Fire and Ice” if you really must know), then went forth to conquer the dance floor. Which we did. The powder room had become a power room.

Women get each other. As my mom used to say “It takes one to know one.” We know what it takes to get things done and, if given even the squeakiest opportunity, will do it. I’ve never forgotten that brassy young lady, nor the one who informed me if I wanted to dance with the lanky drummer I’d been eyeing all night, I had to just ask him (this sage advice was roundly seconded by all the other chicks in the crowded ladies lounge. I did and they were right. Worked like a charm.)

The Bible (you were wondering when I was going to get to this, weren’t you?) is chockful of amazing women who “got ‘er done” under the most unlikely of circumstances and their pivotal moments, painful discoveries, and glorious triumphs have been recorded for us by a God who “gets” us because He made us.

Consider this blog a sort of virtual powder room, where these wiser, more experienced women will gather to share their beat-the-system secrets of success. All of the women I’ll be introducing in this space have hard-won, reality-based counsel to share with us. They've already fought the good fight with tactics that acknowledged the regrettably still-existing power structures that momentarily stymied them. Momentarily, I say, because, eventually, they won the day.

They fought like a girl…with inspired strategies unique to women, ones they learned in some painful, all-too-familiar ways.

You’ll recognize these mothers of the faith as we view them together in the mirror of God’s word.

There they are. Looking over your shoulder, offering you a tissue, a whispered word, instant understanding and sympathy. These spiritual sisters from eons ago have got your back. They’ve been where you’re going.

“Listen,” they’re saying, “Take my advice. Learn from me and get back out there to win the day. But first, here, put on some of my red lipstick—you’re gonna want to look like the champ you are.”




Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: “O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.

“Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth…” (Proverbs 8: 1-2, 5-7)