Octavia Albert 'Bleeds Bible'

I’m the mother of two pink loving girls–gifts I wouldn’t trade for the world. Raising daughters is a high calling, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to shape and shepherd the hearts of my two little women.

As we recognize the achievements of women this Women’s History Month, my prayer is my labor as a mother might produce future women whose lives contribute worthily to others in the world, and in the church. More specifically, I’m praying for Christian daughters with deeply rooted faith and worldviews defined by Scripture. Whatever the Lord might call my babies to be, my hope is for their work and thinking to be governed by God’s Word. I want my children to be women who bleed bibline, women like Octavia Albert.

Albert was a former slave, pastor’s wife, mother, teacher, writer and archivist of slave history. She’s said to have “chronicled two-hundred-fifty years of African American history.” Albert served as a mouthpiece for numerous ex-slaves in the era of Reconstruction. Her book, The House of Bondage, tells their stories as a challenge to the narrative of “paternalistic Christian slave owners [who] cared for, fed, and employed uneducated, untrained blacks.” In addition, Albert writes in praise of the God who triumphed gloriously over the evils of chattel slavery.

Octavia Albert was a gospel thinker, and a woman with “harvest dirt” beneath her feet.

Continue reading at the Reform African American Network