I was raised by two wonderful caring parents in a Christian home. We went to church each Sunday and we prayed daily. We were creating a relationship with Jesus that our parents prayed for us to carry into adulthood. I think that all of my siblings would say that they still carry this core belief with them. I am proud of my faith and my relationship with Jesus. But nothing that human beings touch can remain unsullied. Religion more so than most other things.
Looking back on my adolescence I noticed a trend in the church. From as young as 12 years old I was told I needed to cover up, show less skin, stop being a stumbling block for the men in my life. I was a rule follower, a goody two shoes, and I genuinely didn’t want to do anything that would “cause someone else to sin.” I carried guilt around with me for every pair of shorts or tank top I wore.
One particular instance stands out in my mind. We had visitors to our youth group. I was 13 at the time. It was a Miss (insert state here) title holder and her husband. They came to speak to us about modesty. I sat and listened as this beautiful woman spoke to us about how it was our job to guard the hearts of our brothers in Christ. At one point she looked around the room at all of us in the 90 degree heat and said
“and no man is immune. Honey, what’s the first thing you think when you see a girl walking around in a spaghetti strap tank top?”
He responded
“Where are the scissors”
This adult man, in a room full of teenaged girls, who blatantly and without pause reinforced the harmful message I had been hearing. Men can’t help themselves and it's our fault if we’re lusted after. No mention of how backward it was that seeing young girls in tank tops in the middle of summer was fodder enough for him to want to disrobe them in public.
And it went on this way through high school.
My skirts were too short, “I’ve never seen you looking so slutty” (A boy in my youth group about my kaki skort)
My bathing suits showed too much, “Maybe you should put a tee-shirt on over that” (about my one piece swim suit at the pool),
My shirt was cut too low. “Would you have passed your license test if you didn’t flash that cleavage?” (A man in leadership at church at the time, side note: I still don’t have even have cleavage now and I certainly didn’t at 15.)
I don’t tell these stories to point fingers. I tell them to shine light on a problem that has existed for decades. If I could show you a picture of what I looked like in these years you would see that I was nothing more than a child by all appearances. But already I was being treated as a stumbling block.
Mind you, these messages did not come from my parents, but from well meaning adults in the church. And they were well meaning, after all they were raised hearing it too.
After awhile I got so nervous about what I should and shouldn’t be wearing I stuck to the basics. I was so tired of having adult women suggest that I was an issue for their husbands, or adult men suggesting that I was a distraction for the boys; that I went with tee-shirts from my gymnastics meets and missions trips and jeans or capri pants.
As I got older I started to resent this mentality. Did God design me or didn’t he? Was I also “fearfully and wonderfully made” or was that just the men. Did God look and me and see something beautiful? Or was he ashamed of me too.
I went off to college and with it came new friends and new experiences. I joined the Christian fellowship there and was again faced with another set of rules and regulations. Men and women shouldn’t hug from the front, women shouldn’t be in the primary leadership position, etc. I had started branching out my wardrobe again with my new found freedom but I was met with the same concerns, this time from the “men” in my bible studies.
I studied and I read and it all started to feel even more backward. Jesus didn’t do this. Jesus didn’t walk around accusing people of causing others to sin. Jesus held people accountable for their own actions. The primary source of Jesus’s anger were the pharisees in the church who thought they could tell everyone else how to live.
It all came to a head for me when my sister (who’s permission I have to share this) was leading worship. I was home from college and I teared up watching her sing praises. I was so proud. Shortly afterward she was approached by a woman who told her she should not be leading worship. She was a distraction to the men up there “Bouncing her chest around”
“If I was distracted I know they were”
My sister was in a cardigan and a tee-shirt. I remember her tears. And when the questions about her beauty and worth started to pour out I felt the first true righteous indignation well up inside me.
Just like that a switch flipped in my head. It was no longer acceptable for me or the women in my life to be blamed for the thoughts and actions of the men around us. I was furious in a way I had never been before. How dare this woman take away my sisters right to stand at the front of the church and worship. How dare she make her an object of lust instead of an impetus for praise. No. I was not going to stand silently by and accept this broken mentality any longer.
Even though I knew something had to change it was so hard to quiet that voice in my head that for so long had told me to do nothing more then blend in." Anything else is immodest. Anything else is vanity." I talked with God and journaled and prayed. I read about Jesus interaction with the women he encountered. I studied the lineages and realized how often God used women even though at the time they were essentially property. I read the creation story and thought about the beauty in the world and the painstaking design with which our forms were sculpted. I started to realize how much it must hurt God to see us treat one of his favorite designs, the one he finished off creation with, treated this way.
It took having daughters of my own to start putting a public voice to these thoughts. I knew that I never wanted my girls to feel the way I felt. I never wanted them to stand in the shadows because their literal existence might be too much for someone else to handle. I never wanted them to hold the blame for someone else’s bad behavior. I began having conversations with other women raised in the church and the stories they told were the same. Some much more painful then mine. Beautiful woman after beautiful woman ashamed, embarrassed, and now angry at this burden we’ve been carrying for so long that is not ours to bear.
And back to the question, did God design us or didn’t he? Did he give us curves and soft skin or is the fact that we turned out this way a mystery to him? Either he did and we need to stop acting like he made a mistake, or he didn’t and then the basis for everything else in our faith crumbles. You can't really have it both ways.
I believe he designed each and every one of us the way he intended and the idea that so many of us spend our lives hiding probably breaks his heart. I’m hoping we don’t have to wait to get to heaven to realize “Oh...we were doing it wrong.” The focus of the gospel has never been “change and then enter” it is “Come as you are” and somewhere along the way we added a whole bunch of additional rules that just aren’t part of it. Rules that isolate and divide and accuse. I have been so blessed to make a career in music and it has caused me to cross paths with every variety of beautiful person imaginable. I am so grateful to those who understood this before I did and gave me courage to tell my story. We are ALL fearfully and WONDERFULLY made and I won't be hiding any more.
