"I Don't Deserve to Be Beautiful"

One of my friends wore a beautiful magenta dress. The color highlighted her skin and the style of the dress accented curves that she normally hid under sheath dresses. "You look beautiful," I told her. "You should wear more dresses like this one."

"My husband bought it for me," she said. "If you ever see me wearing a beautiful dress, he bought it for me. I don't feel feminine enough to wear something like this."

I have a lot of friends like her, and I know a lot of other Christian (and non-Christian) women like her. I too avoided femininity for years. I hid myself under baggy shirts and jeans 2 sizes too big. I pretended it was the style, but I did it because I was afraid of how I looked.

I don't remember any male in my family ever telling me I was beautiful. Perhaps my father did say it, but I don't remember. My husband encouraged me to buy beautiful and shapely clothes after we were married. He helps me to buy clothes that make me look good, and when we go to parties with friends, he says, "Why don't you wear that blue dress. I want to show you off."

Do you know how good that feels? The intense love I feel for my husband at that moment is incomparable. I stand taller; I put on a little extra makeup; I make sure I'm wearing tasteful jewelry. My husband changed me into the feminine woman I longed to be with words that showed that he knew he'd won a beauty and he wanted to show her off to the world.

He's doing the same thing for our girls. He tells them how beautiful they are. When they get dressed for church, I make sure to tell them, "Go ask your father how you look."

They go to their father and say, "How do I look, Daddy?"

"You look beautiful."

The girls beam with pride and happiness and dance on tiptoes out to the livingroom to practice their twirls.

Do you know a woman who lacks the outward signs of femininity? Perhaps she wears her hair in a convenient, but unattractive style. Does she wear dresses that look like sacks or clothes that hide her? It shows a lack of inner self-confidence. She needs encouragement.

God created women to be beautiful. Men have strength; we have beauty. We aren't meant to hide our beauty. We are commanded not to use it to manipulate men. As Alice Von Hildebrand says in The Privilege of Being a Woman, when a man calls a woman his mistress, it shows who is in control - the mistress. That's an abuse of power. Women (and men) should never abuse the power God gives them, but we are told that God gives only good gifts.

Encourage the broken woman, encourage her father, and encourage her spouse to tell her how beautiful she is. It will take time to heal the timidity, but gradually she'll blossom into the gorgeous woman she was created to be.

Sub-mission

What do you think of when you hear the word "submission"? If you're like me, your hackles go up, your muscles tense, and your brain speeds up into fighting mode. I do NOT want to be submissive. Leave that doormat position for someone else. I don't fly a flag that says "Tread on Me".

I truly believe that God doesn't want women to be treated like slaves, obedient to their husband's every whim. So why is that the first thing that comes to my mind when someone says the word "submission"?

I picture uneducated women in long flowery dresses with big white doily collars, doilies on their heads, and 8 kids (all the girls in long prairie braids). (No offense to readers who dress like this or have large numbers of kids.) Why does a stereotype appear in my head at the first sound of the word "submission"?

The first time I realized that I COULD be submissive was when Christopher West changed the definition of submission in the CDs that radically deepened my walk with the Lord.

Submission, he says, is SUB - MISSION. Women have a sub mission. Our main role is to be a helper (Genesis 2:18) not a slave. In the order of Creation, we help our husbands to fulfill their mission. Do we have a different mission? Well, my husband couldn't be writing a blog to women from a woman's perspective, but part of his role as a Christian man is to tell the world about the good news of Jesus Christ. This blog is a part of that mission.

If my husband disapproved of the blog and wanted me to spend my time on a more profitable pursuit, my job as a wife would be to listen, pray, and do as he asked. Since my husband is a Christian man, I know he hears from the Lord.

More often than not, when we have a disagreement (whether or not I win), I realize later that he was right.

How do we help our husbands to fulfill their mission? (This question is best asked within a Christian family where the men have their priorities straight - God, wife, family, world.)

I have a terrible problem being on time. If you want me to be somewhere, tell me to be there 15 minutes earlier than you really want me. I used to make my husband late for church ALL the time. Now, we go to church 30 minutes early, and I'm only 5 minutes later than he wants me to be - and that's with getting 4 children ready too. I realized that I needed to listen to my husband when he told me that if I cared about God that I'd get to church on time. To support my husband's desire to be a Godly man, I needed to work harder to do my part.

More recently, I had to type 70 pages of term papers for my husband's seminary classes and create 2 bibliographies. (He doesn't use a computer.) It took hours and hours. He handed it to me three days before seminary, and I typed and typed. I had to do it after the kids were in bed, because I couldn't chase kids and type. I went to bed at 2 am several nights in a row to get the papers done. No complaining, though. My husband's mission was to complete the courses necessary for him to minister the gospel to others. My sub-mission was to type the papers that proved he'd learned the material so he could pass the courses.

I don't always think of my life in terms of sub-mission, but from now on, I know that I'm trying to live in sub-mission.

In my in my world, sub-mission has a hyphen.