International Women’s Day Reflection As I sat in church

As I sat in church today and sat with Jesus, my mind drifted toward women.

Not in some vague, polished, sentimental way. Not in the shallow language people often use when they want to sound honouring without actually seeing anything. I mean really seeing them. Thinking about the women in my life, and the women all around the world, especially on International Women’s Day, I felt something rise up in me that was deeper than simple appreciation.

It was grief.

It was gratitude.

It was reverence.

It was the painful awareness that so many women carry entire worlds inside them while still somehow managing to keep showing up.

As I sat there, I found myself thinking about the silent battles women fight that most of us never see. The wounds they carry that they never fully talk about. The disappointments they bury. The violations they survive. The betrayals they absorb. The fear they learn to live around. The way they are expected to keep functioning, keep nurturing, keep loving, keep serving, keep smiling, even when something inside them is bleeding.

There is something deeply sobering about that.

I think for much of my life, if I am honest, I have seen women partially. I have seen the role they play. I have seen the warmth they bring. I have seen their beauty, their kindness, their support, their strength. But I do not know if I have always stopped long enough to consider the sheer weight many of them are carrying internally.

And when that realization starts to hit you, it hits hard.

Because suddenly you begin to understand that behind so many gentle smiles there may be years of pain. Behind patience there may be exhaustion. Behind kindness there may be scars. Behind someone simply “holding it together” there may be a history of being wounded, dismissed, used, overlooked, violated, spoken over, underestimated, or made to feel unsafe.

And still they carry on.

Still they mother.

Still they serve.

Still they work.

Still they love.

Still they pray.

Still they endure.

There is something holy in that endurance, but there is also something tragic about the fact that so much of it has been required of them in the first place.

As I sat with Jesus today, I kept thinking about the women in my own life. The ones who have loved me, carried me, prayed for me, believed in me, and stood beside me. The women who have had to survive things they should never have had to survive. The women who know what it is to cry privately and still show up publicly. The women who have had to be strong in seasons where strength was not a noble idea but a necessity.

That kind of strength is not cute. It is not aesthetic. It is not something to put on a coffee mug with a pretty font and call inspiration.

It is costly.

It is forged in places most people never see.

And the older I get, the more I realise how much of the world is quietly held together by women who are carrying pain they never asked for.

That should make us stop.

That should humble us.

That should kill forever the lazy, shallow, dismissive ways men sometimes speak about women, reduce women, or fail to truly hear them.

Because if you actually pay attention, if you actually listen, if you actually look into the story behind the face, you begin to realise that many women have survived more than people know.

Not just physically.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

Spiritually.

Relationally.

They have had to live with words that cut deep. Expectations that suffocate. Traumas that linger. Memories that revisit them when the room gets quiet. Insecurities that were planted by other people’s cruelty. Wounds left by fathers, partners, strangers, systems, culture, churches, and a world that often takes from women while pretending to celebrate them.

And yes, today is a day of honour, but honour means more than saying nice things.

Honour means seeing clearly.

Honour means refusing to sentimentalise suffering.

Honour means acknowledging that a lot of women are walking around with extraordinary resilience because they had no other choice.

That thought wrecked me today.

Because I realised how easy it is to celebrate women in broad language while never really reckoning with what they have endured.

It is easy to say women are strong.

It is harder to ask why they have had to be.

It is easy to call women nurturing.

It is harder to ask how many times they have nurtured other people while neglecting their own broken hearts because no one made room for their pain.

It is easy to admire their endurance.

It is harder to acknowledge the loneliness that often comes with it.

And that is where my thoughts began to turn toward Christ.

Because one of the most powerful things about Jesus is the way He sees people without reducing them. He does not flatter pain. He does not exploit vulnerability. He does not ignore wounds. He sees straight through the surface and into the truth of a person.

And when I think about women through that lens, I do not just think of strength. I think of sacred dignity. I think of image-bearers. I think of souls with depth, with stories, with grief, with glory, with tenderness, with intelligence, with trauma, with endurance, with longing, with wisdom, with fire.

I think of women Jesus never treated as background characters.

That matters to me deeply.

Because too much of the world still does.

Too much of the world still speaks about women as if they exist to support, decorate, perform, please, or absorb. Too much of the world still consumes them, markets them, talks over them, controls them, or fears them. Too much of the world still fails to reckon with the cost women have paid simply for existing in it.

And yet Christ does not meet women with exploitation.

He meets them with truth.

He meets them with dignity.

He meets them with compassion.

He meets them with presence.

He meets them as people fully seen by heaven.

As I sat there today, I felt grateful not only for women in some broad universal sense, but for specific women. For the women who have been shelter when life was harsh. For the women who have prayed when words ran out. For the women who have shown mercy, tenderness, strength, honesty, and fierce love. For the women whose tears no one saw. For the women who have had to survive and keep going.

And I also felt convicted.

Convicted that appreciation must become more than emotion.

It must shape how I listen.

How I speak.

How I honour.

How I protect.

How I refuse to participate in the kind of careless language and shallow thinking that strips women of their depth.

Because if I say I honour women but do not actually learn to listen to them, that honour is cheap.

If I say I respect women but fail to consider the unseen burdens they are carrying, that respect is thin.

If I celebrate women publicly but remain blind to their pain privately, then I have not gone deep enough.

What rose up in me today was the sense that women deserve to be seen with more gravity than they often are.

Not pedestalised.

Not romanticised.

Seen.

Seen in their humanity.

Seen in their pain.

Seen in their resilience.

Seen in their complexity.

Seen in the wounds they carry and the beauty they still bring into the world despite those wounds.

That is what moved me.

That is what stayed with me.

And on a day like today, I think the most honest thing I can say is this: I am grateful for women, but my gratitude is not light. It is weighty. Because the more I think about what so many women carry, the less I want to offer them shallow praise and the more I want to offer real honour.

Honour that listens.

Honour that does not interrupt.

Honour that does not reduce.

Honour that does not use women’s strength as an excuse to ignore their suffering.

Honour that understands that behind many women’s strength is a story that would bring some people to their knees.

As I sat with Jesus today, that awareness felt holy.

Not because it was dramatic.

But because it was honest.

And maybe honesty is where real honour begins.

Not with slogans.

Not with sentiment.

But with the willingness to admit that many women are carrying silent battles the world does not see, and wounds they may never fully speak of, and yet they continue to move through life with a courage that deserves more than applause.

It deserves reverence.

It deserves tenderness.

It deserves truth.

And it deserves to be seen in the light of Christ, who wastes nothing, sees everything, and knows the full weight of every wound carried in silence.

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About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.2M views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the "light in the mundane."

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