Redefining What a Princess Is

I went to see the newest version the timeless fairy tale of Cinderella yesterday and I have to say that I really enjoyed the movie. Of course, I have always enjoyed fairy tales and princess movies, so my review of the Cinderella would be slightly bias and thus I will avoid writing anything about the movie and encourage you to go and see it yourself. Howbiet, I am interested in discussing society's definition of what makes a princess a princess.

Disney has done a wonderful job of using its princesses to encourage girl empowerment (and consumerism). Children are taught that a princess is kind-hearted like Cinderella, brave like Mulan, compassionate like Belle, gracious like Aurora and the list goes on and on. There have been many arguments made both for and against the Disney princesses' role as a paragon for girls, and though I agree with several aspects of both sides of the dispute, I have often wondered why the question of why a princess has certain characteristics is hardly ever brought up. Why is a princess kind, gentle, courteous, courageous and brave? Is it because that is the only way she can get what she wants? Or is it because she has to hold herself to the same standards she holds Prince Charming to, lest he pass her by? Or does a princess have these traits simply because she is a princess?

I think that with all this discussion-dispute over the list of accomplishments a princess is require to have (okay, if we're honest -its a ton of pressure we heap on young girls), we have completely forgotten something thing that is part of the very core of what makes a princess a princess; the king. It is because the princess is the representative of the king that she nurtures all of these beautiful character traits within herself. It is because she knows the king so well and intimately that she understands what morals and values are important to him and need to be shared.

This type of motivation extends beyond the Disney princesses - but explains why the daughters (and sons) of the King of Kings must work hard to develop uncommon traits. Not only are we royal heirs (Rom 8:17, Galatians 4:7), but we were CHOSEN to represent the King (Eph 1:4-5, 1John 3:1). Talk about pressure! But don't worry, it is impossible to be a princess without a king, and the King has promised to help us become perfect princesses!

So whether a princess wears glass slippers and goes to lavish balls or not, she must have courage and be kind because she is the child of a courageous and kind King; don't you agree?

*Special Thanks to my wonderful sister M. who graciously donned my big poofy princess dress on a very windy day, while some of her classmates gawked.*

Why I Said Goodbye to Mr. Darcy and Stopped Looking for 'The One'.

I had a milestone birthday this year. No I didn't turn 21, or even 25, I'm at that awkward in between age of 22 years of age. The reason why it was a milestone birthday for me is because the Jane Austen fan in me really wanted to have met my future husband and be able to say that 'I'm not one and twenty' or at least say that I was 'one and twenty' . And here I am, two and twenty (it just doesn't sound as nice) and I still don't have a Mr. Darcy; in fact I’ve never even dated anyone. Ever.  Perhaps it's because I'm too picky, my standards are too high.  

I’ll confess that for a really long time I had a ‘The One’ list; he needed to be taller than me, strong and athletic, preferably no facial hair and so on. I stuck with this list pretty diligently until my foolish teenage fears came to realized that most of the points on the list were physical traits and to test me, God may give me the exact opposite! Obviously that list needed to go! So I composed a new one with points such as have well grounded faith, a good work ethic, enjoys things that I enjoy. With this new list tucked into the back of my mind, I thought I was good to go, if my Mr. Darcy walked by I would be able to recognize him and turn down all other unsuitable suitors. I happily held tight to this list, mentally measuring guys until the horrible moment when I was compared to someone else’s list. It is slightly crazy how well I remember that moment and how much it hurt. I had gone out of my way to spend time with a friend before I moved to a different part of the country and while we were driving he asked me what my favorite type of music was, to which I replied that I did not have a favorite type as music was not that important to me and in most situations I rather do without it. He then said that my view of music caused me to miss the mark and lose points with him. I was shocked and hurt, because even if it was just for that moment, he did not see me as a friend who was doing my best to spend time with him and make him happy but he saw me with a checklist that I had failed.  However, what hurt more was the realization that I had been treating others the someway; looking at wonderful men that God had created as though they did not have feelings or potential outside of my list.  

Last Valentine’s Day there were several blogs giving advice to girls on the type of guy they should date, and most of them were written by guys. My friends shared quite a few of these posts and I took the time to read some of them and I just wanted to yell at the authors “STOP!”  We judge you harshly enough on our own, we do not need encouragement to follow a system where a guy’s value is contained to a checklist and a girl’s heart is thought to be only that list. We have made it entirely too easy for jerks like Willoughby and Wickham to thrive. Lists of soulmate traits teach that affections can be given and won by following lists or steps that have no need for diligent development and room for growth in the future. They creates a sad reality where we move through relationships placing value on the partner instead of the partnership.

We nurture the idea of finding our per-determind, pre-developed  soulmate; our 'One' who lines up with our checklists. Yet all of our lists may only help us find a perfect match and not a relationship. A relationship is a choice that two people make and grow and develop together, and whether or not that they started out perfect, they strive for Christ's perfection together. I have decided to abandon these lists of perfect character traits and behaviors (after all, no one is perfect) and base my standards for who I start a relationship with on a person's ability and willingness to fit a title - the title of A Heart Sharer.

A Heart Sharer is exactly what the title describers, a person who shares my heart.

He must share my heart with God.
Sharing my heart with God means much more than just accepting that God comes first in my life, but also helping me lift my heart up to the Lord in prayer (even on days that I do not want to do it myself). I need a man that will help nurture my love for God; to help me gather and explore knowledge and truth about God and store it safely in my heart.

He must share my heart's dreams and goals.
I'm not looking for someone who shares my exact dreams of becoming a missionary, doctor, writer and speaker, after all a relationship with someone with the exact same strengths and talents won't push either of us to grow. Rather, I need someone whose heart holds similar passions, so that we can make decisions that not only make us both happy but allow us to work towards God's Glory. I would never want to pull someone away from pursuing their passion and and strengthening their God given talents, and though I know that there may be a need for redefining a dream, I require the same of the man I chose to share my heart with.

He must share my heart's brokenness and burdens.
For a long time I chastised and trodded upon my own heart, thinking that I could never hope for anyone to love me if my heart was broken and imperfect; that I must fix all of my weaknesses and face all of the burdens on my heart before I could possibly share it with someone else. I laugh to think of this ideology now, because not even Christ requires His Beloved to present Him with an unbroken heart (Romans 5:8)! If I'm giving up lists to find the 'perfect' someone, I must also give up the idea that I have to be perfect too, instead I need to be willing and gracious in sharing my brokenness and allow him to help in my heart's healing [see bullet one above].

And with that I say goodbye to my Mr. Darcy and move on with my adventure! Though, I can't say that I'll stop watching Jane Austen movies.

So what do you think? Do you agree with me that 'The One' checklist may be misleading and judgmental? Let me know in the comments below!

Beauty: A photoshoot linkup with an old friend!

I happily stumbled onto Katie Cook's Blog, Hope Engaged, last month and have been excitedly reading about her adventures as a missionary in Nepal. I know Katie from back when I lived in California and my father and I had the privilege of serving in Mexico with the Ryström family.  I know that it is an extreme rarity for me to publish post so close together, but consider it your lucky week! Katie shared her thoughts on beauty and then asked for her readers to join her in a photo-shoot-linkup as a way of reminding each other that our beauty is God's beauty, so I thought I'd join in the fun!

I normally I try to avoid posting pictures of myself on this blog for several reasons (safety and pride being on the top of the list), but I completely agree with Katie in the need to see beauty as God's light shining through us, and not as the meager human definition that it is so commonly refered to.

I currently have the privilege to study the process of human communication and have learned that a good portion of our communication is nonverbal. How one looks, even the things that the person has no control over, has a huge influence. We prefer symmetrical things, especially when it comes to one's face, so human beauty is defined as perfectly spaced, even sized facial features.

 Now, here is where things get tricky. My eyes are different sizes, my ears aren't aligned and I have a dimple but only on one side; my quirks continue down my body as my shoulders are different sizes and so are my feet. So by human definition, I am really quite ugly; however, the only person who has ever called me ugly has been me. It does not make any sense, I hardly make any of the qualifications of what society deems to be beautiful, and yet that is exactly what I have been told and what I am.

It is crazy how society has us running around doing our best to chase after a value that they've assigned to beauty, but to which only God has the true power to define. (1Peter 3:3-4). Remember we are made in the very image of God! The beauty that each of us bears is a hard to understand and even harder to explain to others. One of my friends worded this phenomenon perfectly by saying that 'God made us to be so much more than what society could ever define or comprehend'. 

Bearing the image of heaven should not be narrowed down to what society can see and measure as perfect, thanks Katie for the fun reminder!

Check out Katie's blog and enjoy the other photo-shoots!

Redefinding Modesty: A Girl's Side to the Struggle With Being Modest (Part 2)

I feel that I should apologize, because I'm presenting a problem and not offering a solution. While I strongly believe that thought process behind modesty needs to be addressed, I don't have the resources to create a new way of teaching what modesty is to those under our care. So if you are someone who has the resources to address this problem, please feel free to take my ideas and run with it, they're yours.

In my last post, I told you about my personal struggle with and definition of modesty. It was intended to be a short post in response to the current conversations and arguments over modesty that were quickly circling around the internet and social media. However, in writing that post as well in reading others responses to it, I realized that I need to go a little deeper into my history and how that reasoning was formed.

I don't dress modestly because it is my job to stand between someone else and their weakness, nor do I dress modestly to protect my identity because I have given that job to God, and it is fully protected by Him. See, I dress modestly because I know what distracts me from worshiping God, I know what turns my attention away from Him, and I do my best to dress in a way that helps me better worship Him and hopefully those around me can better worship Him. 

I didn't always think this way however, and it was a rather long journey for me before I reached it. In my house, there were rules about what we could and couldn't wear. My sisters and I were never really rebellious children, but I can't say that none of these guidelines were ever challenged. I particularly remember one rule that my father had against pants with writing or some kind of pattern printed on the butt. This may seem like an easy rule to follow, but this was the biggest battle that I chose to fight. See back in the early 2000s, it was the popular thing in the world of competitive swimming to have shorts or pants with either the word 'swim' or the title of the swim meet printed on the back. I'm embarrassed to say that I won that battle and now those shorts hide in the corner of my closet, never to see the light of day again.

I do not blame my parents for my disappointment in modesty. I don't think that they were wrong to give me 'dress code guidelines' because modesty is a really hard thing to teach. How do you teach someone how to understand their personal relationship with Christ well enough to know what takes away from their ability to serve and worship Him? The guidelines my parents set in place for me, created accountability for me but allowed me to learn and discover what modesty means to me and how I can apply it where I have been placed to represent Christ. Take away these early guidelines, and you probably would have a really lost and confused version of Glorydawn.

I think that it is somewhat ironic that I am writing on modesty, as by the current way of thinking, I am among the least qualified to be presenting new guidelines. As a competitive swimmer, I have worn some of the tightest and thinnest racing suits made - in public no less! This points out one of the biggest flaws in the current way of thinking about modesty, because as we put limitations on what is modest it becomes really easy to judge others. When someone's definition of modesty or relationship with Christ is not the same as yours, you are obviously not going to dress in the same way. For instance, my sisters hate going shopping with me, because we've been placed in different fields of ministry. My youngest sister, M. has amazing talent in performing arts (something I greatly lack). She participates in colorguard, show choir and theater and she dresses like someone who does those things. For awhile I struggled as her older sister and always pointing out that that form of dressing didn't match my standards, but now I realized that those are the people she is a witness to and if she can dress that way and still maintain a healthy relationship with the Lord and not feel as distracted as I would be in those clothes, then she is being perfectly modest (and that I need to learn how to be a better shopping partner).

Clear as mud, right?

What I can narrow it down to is this, God has placed a passion in my heart to be a missionary, and it is one of the best ways I worship and serve Him; how a grow closer to Him and deeper in love with Him. If that means not wearing sleeveless shirts or bandanas (Mexico), wearing tight competition swim suits (the swimming world) or wearing long skirts with tennis shoes (Panama),  even if it means spending 20 minutes to put on skinny jeans or wearing the dreaded mullet dress (if the Lord ever calls me to serve those who are comfortable in those things); if my heart and mind are on the Lord and loving those around me, I am modest, but if I am concentrating too much on the looks I receive or the way others think about my form of dress that is when I need to reevaluate both my heart and my clothing.

Redefinding Modesty: A Girl's Side to the Struggle With Being Modest

Well, I didn't plan on writing this post (in fact I have another post that is nearly finished, waiting to be published) but I've been thinking about modesty lately, and with the controversial blog post making it's way around the social media, I figured now is a good time to share what's on my mind about the topic.

If you're part of the Y (or before) generation like me, chances are that you grew up hearing what has been the basic reason behind the need for women to be modest for a long time - to protect the hearts of men. For a long time I followed the guidelines of dressing modestly as if it were a reward-punishment system, because if I took the time and effort to dress appropriately, I was keeping my brothers in Christ from stumbling, and if I didn't, well, the punishment in my mind was quite scary. As a young teenager I was particularly haunted by Matthew 5:28 "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."  Gross! I wanted no part of that!

Dressing to meet the 'modest code' has never been a huge issue for me (though I do get very exasperated when going shopping as clothes that are short, see-through and an assortment of other descriptions become more and more abundant), however I have constantly struggled with the issue of modesty. I had no desire to dress like my peers, so why was I having so much trouble? After a long time of sorting through this confusing problem of mine, I discovered that I needed to redefine my definition of modesty.

Believing that modesty is dressing in a way that honors the struggles of men is wrong.

It gives the girl too much power. A young girl is taught to see her body as a power tool she can hold over or hide from the males she encounters. This reasoning turns her body, a beautiful gift from God, into an object that has the potential to be used to fulfill human desires - being used in both directions. Young men are being taught that women are not objects, girls need to be told this too.

I believe that the reasoning that is now being taught - dressing modestly to respect your own body- is also incorrect, because it is the exact opposite of what being modest is.

If modesty is the state of being modest, then what is the definition of modest? I pulled my dictionary off the shelve to answer this question and found that modest is being "unassuming or moderate in estimation of one's abilities or achievements". The new movement of 'modest is hottest' or telling a girl to dress and behave modestly simply because she amazing is a huge contradiction to what it is to actually be modest, because to be modest is to behave in such a way that does not point to yourself and just how awesome you are. This was the root of my own personal struggle with modesty. My belief of modesty took away from my ability to worship God as I was constantly looking downward and inward, instead of upward.

We have all heard how girls can distract and/or help guys, but through all of my research on the subject, not much has been taught on how guys redirect the attention of young ladies. Word of advice guys, women struggle with modesty too. Yes, sometimes ladies struggle with the physical presentation of males, but it goes deeper than that. On some days it is a battle to look past the very tips of our noses as our brains are full of bright neon signs screaming at us, calling our attention to what we have fallen short of and have failed to achieve on our own. On top these internal signals, crying for us to devote our focus on ourselves, we must fight the messages that the world shouts at us telling us what an awesome individual we are or could be. This is where I struggle the most, because every time a guy looks me over or is too blunt in his attraction for me, my focus quickly turns inward and away from my Creator.

So what is my new definition of modesty?

Modesty is behaving in a way that does not draw any attention to yourself, and points all attention to God.

This includes not only the attention of those around us, but also our own attention, our mind and heart. No distractions, just us praising our wonderful Savior.

There are no rewards in being modest, no mini self-esteem boost, no protection for just how awesome you are; it is simply a way to worship God.