Okay, I admit it. I’m a royalist, with a soft spot for Will and Kate. (If you are already asking, “Will and Kate who?” this is probably not the column for you.) 

Like a few thousand others, my invitation to their wedding was lost in the mail, but I bore it well. However, I do have a Will and Kate tea towel, and I click onto a Will and Kate website now and then to catch the latest photos.

I even bought a collector set of Will and Kate Barbie dolls online (in their wedding outfits) to send to my eight-year-old granddaughter for her next birthday. Truth be told, I’d really like to have kept them for myself, but trying to justify this extravagance to my husband and others would have taken too much energy. I just hope little Emmy enjoys them on my behalf.

I know I’m not alone in my fascination with Kate. One photo of her can sell a million magazines. Why do we find ourselves so interested in someone who is impossibly beautiful, impossibly rich, impossibly privileged, impossibly thin and with impossible teeth? Perhaps the answer is right there. Most of the things Kate is we are not and never will be. We’re just normal.

Fact is, 99% of us women are just normal. Unique, yes, but normal. This normality could get one down at times, but there it is. The encouraging thing, though, is that God can do and has done amazing things through normal women. Think about some of the women who have achieved great things for God – Esther, Deborah, Priscilla, Corrie ten Boom, Joyce Meyer, Kathryn Kuhlmann, Gladys Aylward, Catherine Booth, Anne Graham Lotz, Beth Moore … you could probably name a few from your own church. 

All of them started out as normal little girls and grew into normal women, but in God’s purpose and under his leadership they made a difference to their world. (And apart from Esther, not one of them was a beauty queen.)

Are you feeling depressingly normal this week? Read about some of these servants of God and become re-inspired.

And Aucklanders, remember the city-wide gathering of Baptist women on Saturday, May 19 at Northcote Baptist Church, 3-9pm. Come and be inspired by normal Kiwi women whom God is using in amazing ways. The cost (including dinner) is $25. You can register with Lee Bell  at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (09) 278 1716.

• Julie Belding, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,'; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text91986 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it is president of the Baptist Women’s Union of the South West Pacific