Old Testament

Honestly I've thought for a long part of my life I have wanted to be a girl. Let me explain. Walk in to downtown Seattle's H&M store and look at the store map. There you will see 4 floors full of clothing options women could choose. On that map you will also see one floor that lists men's clothing, which is also shared with little boys clothes. Men get about 5/8th of a floor to shop through. Women get 4 floors. I've been quite jealous of that my whole life, leading to my desire to be a girl. Besides that, they also get to watch 'chick flicks' whenever they want, drink nonfat lattes without being looked at oddly by the barista and are free to spend a day in a craft store without being made fun of.
As you might have noticed however, those are all material activities that don't penetrate the heart life any better than a dollar store steak knife. Learning how women were oppressed throughout history was an interesting as well as depressing experience. I use the word interesting to point out that the time in human history was when God (as from what I can tell reading in Scripture) was so close to humanity that He at times would literally talk to them (I could have my understanding of Scripture wrong, but I'm referring to times when God would meet the Founding Fathers and Scripture says they had conversations). But during that time, women were oppressed. God's creation wasn't fully loving one another. How that must of broke God's heart, yet God didn't punish the men, why I don't know.
Perhaps because it stems back to the Fall and the lengthy process of redemption that humanity had to go through. Whatever God's reasoning, there were still sights of love throughout the Old Testament, which was encouraging to learn. I'm still left pondering why certain women were treated with a bit more respect than others (why for instance does Esther elevate to a respected Queen status in Scripture, but little mention of other Queens?). Reading through Luke I noticed so many times when Jesus referred to loving women and respecting them as people, as equals.
I can't wait until we can start applying what we have learned throughout the Old Testament and Scripture into our modern day life. There are so many questions that I am curious about what Jesus would say about our culture now and what each of us would say.