Meg & Jo

Leanna and I

My older sister and I grew up six years apart and about as similar as Meg and Jo March. She wore sweaters and scarves; I wore the same Mossy Oak hat several days in a row so I didn’t have to brush my hair. She kept her side of the closet neat; I didn’t know where my clothes were if not on the floor.

Every February, Leanna and I shared a birthday party, where Mom let us each decorate half of the table as we liked. When we were little, we would share themes like Strawberry Shortcake, but as the age gap widened and Leanna entered that strange land of womanhood long before I did, our different halves of the table became as wildly different as we were. I still remember her Sweet Sixteen birthday when, to my dismay, she chose hot pink and black plates with sparkly balloons. Maybe it was out of rebellion, but I had a Wild West party that year, so the kitchen table looked as divided as the West itself during the Indian Wars.

For all our differences, we shared a queen bed for most of our sisterhood at home. That seems so long ago now, but I do remember that sometimes, right before we fell asleep, she would reach over and hold my hand. After all the differences of the day, it seemed like a quiet way in the dark to say, We’re alright. By “differences” I mean whether or not we turned the ceiling fan on, or kept the blinds open, or shut the bathroom door before bed so the room didn’t get steamy. These are the things that make up the trials of sisterhood, and when you look back, you realize they weren’t trials at all.

After she graduated high school, Leanna started training to become a birth doula and began to fill our little bedroom bookshelf with books on labor coaching and childbirth. This was most dismaying, as I watched my copies of Sherlock Holmes and Encyclopedia Brown get crowded out by books with titles like, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.

In many ways, Leanna was the pioneer who went before me into the promised land of marriage and babies. Alongside those birthing books on her shelf were ones on a topic I wrinkled my nose at as a fifteen-year-old—something called biblical womanhood. It would be a long time after Leanna got married and moved out that I would pick up those books, realizing I needed the truth of Scripture, not only as a Christian, but as a Christian woman. When I did, I found something beautiful Leanna had modeled all along: a quiet, excellent way tread by women long before us (Pr. 31:10-31).

It wasn’t until she moved out that I realized how alike Leanna and I really were. As soon as I found out I was pregnant last summer, I called her with all my questions about midwives, homebirths, natural supplements, and herbal teas. I asked to borrow her books (yes, those books). And when I miscarried that baby a few months later, it was Leanna who sat with me and cried for the children we both had lost. This was a true trial of sisterhood, and one we shouldered together. Like Mary and Martha, those oh-so-different sisters of old, we now shared something between us: the loss of someone we loved. We also shared the same Hope—the Christ who wept with us in our sorrow, was tender with us in our grief, and Who is Himself the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25).

What I have learned about biblical womanhood is that it does not produce one kind of woman, but many women who embody it uniquely. I’ll never be just like my sister. There will always be Mary’s and Martha’s, Sarah’s and Abigail’s, Deborah’s and Ruth’s. But I’m thankful the Lord does set forth examples in Scripture of women who did well, just as he gave me an example in my own big sister, who went down the aisle before me and looked back to assure me, It’ll be alright.