Aug 1, 2014 | Christian Life & Theology
The band was performing with gusto, lights flashing, fog fuming, guitars screaming. The lead singer rotated between unintelligible hollering into the microphone and racing around the stage with his companions. But it wasn’t his voice – nor his sick guitar skills – that caught my eye. His pants were, quite literally, center stage.
Not only were they skin tight on his large man-thighs, they were awkwardly skinny at the ankle, making him look something like a Thanksgiving turkey. And he definitely didn’t pick Curvy Fit, because the waistband was in a terrible state of gappage. I could see the better half (worse half?) of his plaid boxers, and I was more than a little grossed out.
In defense of female immodesty, some say: “Why are we only talking about women? What about the men, don’t they have to be modest too?” This argument is, at its core, invalid and fallacious; an ignoratio elenchi (ignoring the actual refutation) that shifts focus from the woman’s responsibility by drawing attention to the responsibility of the man. It never deals with the issue itself. Modesty, as pertains to women, is a dual responsibility, one that requires men keep their eyes to themselves and women to show self-respect and love for God by how they choose to dress. The 5 Myths of Modesty post deals with the female side of this equation.
But do men need to be modest? That’s what I’m addressing today.
Modesty is simply humility of mind worked out in dress. As the 5 Myths post concluded, how we dress is a direct reflection of our personal choices of behavior and worship of God. It is by no means the ONLY reflection – but it is one of them. Therefore the same attitudes, actions, and responsibilities that apply to women and modesty also apply to men…
Jul 30, 2014 | Christian Life & Theology
The light was bright as the sun: gleaming, searing, so intense I could only squint down at my feet as I shuffled up the steps. Enormous doors opened slowly as I approached, their engravings deep and elaborate. Everything – the doors, the steps, the light – was brilliant white.
Jul 24, 2014 | Dating & Marriage
It was 2007 and we were all sitting around the kitchen island, the shimmery July heat shielded by half-drawn blinds. Six of us – myself and the other three older kids, all slamming the swivel chairs into the countertop, laughing hysterically. Someone had found a pair of wind-up chattering teeth and they were gnashing their way across the counter to our utter delight. Even Anders and Laney, just little at the time, were giggling from their places below the counter.
Now seven years later I’m in my mid-twenties, married… and sometimes I feel like that set of chattering teeth. More than sometimes, really. I saw this picture on Pinterest:
And it’s true. So true.
I’m an external processor. I figure out what I believe, think, and want to accomplish by talking things through. I love intellectual discussion and argumentation. I even like a good ‘fight’, if it gets me thinking.
That may be great for classroom debate, but it’s not very conducive to a peaceful marriage. My idea of ‘family time’ would be everyone talking at once, shouting out some new story or information. Silence is both boring and uncomfortable to me, unless of course I am alone… and even then I’m known for talking to myself (I’ll see a counselor right after this).
Since marriage sanctifies, there are at least five things (and probably many more) I’ve stopped saying since I got married because of the tension these statements cause. We all bring different personalities and quirks to marriage so maybe your sentences look different from mine – but perhaps your reasoning is the same. I’m no master. I still struggle. But eliminating these phrases has drastically improved our communication in the last six months!…
Jul 21, 2014 | Dating & Marriage
I rewrote that title just five times or so. I still don’t like it.
Whether you are dating long distance or have a traveling spouse like I do, for some of us, traditional ‘dating’ is crammed into the two precious days of the weekend. The problem remains… those two days also contain all my deep-cleaning, homework catch-up, meal planning and even some errand-running.
So Mr. M and I find ourselves spending the weekend playing house: laundry, cooking, taking out the garbage, vacuuming, and ending it with a movie on Saturday night. While there is nothing wrong with this, we’d like to spend the few days we have together during travel season in a more productive, fulfilling way.
Here are a few ideas we’ve found helpful as we keep the house spic-n’-span while getting quality time together.
1. Use Friday night for chores, homework, and household clean up – then plan a surprise day out all day Saturday.
Is your impulse to use Friday night as ‘date night’? Ours too. But we’ve found a little switcheroo that helps make the most of our time: one accelerated evening of household maintenance! …
Jul 18, 2014 | Christian Life & Theology, Christian Womanhood
“Turn around and do it again!” My coach yelled from the fence.
“Tighten your legs!”
“Heels down! Look at the corner!”
“Turn around and do it again! Pick his hind feet up!”
Over and over I steered my horse along the fence rail and pushed him into a canter. Over and over I adjusted my seat, pressured him in the ribs and tried to force him to change his lead. His ears flicked between my murmur and my coach’s yell.
“That’s it, boy, come on, you can do it,” I said softly. I tapped his hindquarters, pushed him forward and twitched my ring finger. I felt the slight jolt of his shoulders and his stride changed. Immediately, I stopped him and patted his neck; his chest was heaving from thirty minutes of repetition.
The relationship between a horse and rider is more of a partnership than anything else: the rider asks something of the horse, and the horse responds in turn, with the reward of pats or pasture for his efforts. He may not always like the commands he receives; he may buck and pull and resist, but it is the rider’s job to train him into submission so the horse is fulfilling his full potential.
Husbands are not horses, but sometimes we treat them like they are.
Jul 17, 2014 | Christian Womanhood
My friend Leigh and I sustain a mutual coffee addiction of obnoxious proportions.
We celebrate cold brewing at home. We talk about french presses versus percolators. We send each other pictures of coffee.
Pictures. Of coffee.
We firmly believe that coffee counts as a vegetable, because it grows on a plant. (Okay, a tree, but it’s in the vegetative family.)
The day we found the article that said coffee was the best pre-workout beverage… we almost sang the Hallelujah Chorus together.
So really, we share two life priorities: Jesus, and coffee. As I was having my devotions with pour-over Chemex-brewed cinnamon-and-orange-peel decorated beverage in hand, it dawned on me: the Creator of coffee actually has a lot in common with this beautiful drink. And it makes perfect sense, considering how positively divine coffee is…
Jul 15, 2014 | Dating & Marriage
“The scale is cute, sweet, nice, then precious.”
My sister blinked on her mascara, leaning against the sink. I was leaning against the other, powdering on my blush.
“I think ‘cute’ is the death knell of fashion, ” I replied. “We could use that word in the movie Emma – ‘when I don’t know what to say, I just call her ‘elegant’.”
“Elegant is too good a compliment in this day and age to waste it as a word for mediocrity.” Autumn returned, capping her mascara and widening her hazel eyes.
I don’t know whether we read it in a Southern Lady’s Handbook or in Stacy and Clinton’s What Not to Wear, but during our bathroom pow-wows my sisters and I decided words like ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’ were secret, womanese insults. It became a running joke betwixt sisters – and if you came downstairs and your sister said you looked cute… might as well give up on life. Maybe not life, but at least that outfit.
Our childhoods form much of what we think about life as adults. I still have a hitch about ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’, even now as a working, married woman! So when I read a book that encouraged me to be ‘sweet’ to my husband, my first thought was me, in a pink jumper and a french braid, greeting him at the door like a giddy schoolgirl. And I bristled.
Jun 25, 2014 | Dating & Marriage
Type A Girl here.
In a world of ‘love’, some Christians fear the sacrifice of holiness in the name of peace. So, to avoid riding the pendulum into realms of compromise and Kumbaya, they ride it the opposite direction into stoic, emotionless piety.
It looks strong, but this kind of faith is a reaction to fear.
Love according to the world means accepting anyone regardless of what they believe, what they’re doing, or whatever their values are. It would mean blurring lines of morality and ignoring grievous sins, claiming exclusive faith is judgmental. Love, to the world, means no absolutes.
In my early days of apologetic training I was zealous to stand against this false kind of love. Though my intentions were good and I was readily able to defend and argue my positions with Scripture and logic (never caught with my pants down theologically), I misunderstood what biblical love was.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:4-8)
Jun 16, 2014 | Sexuality
So when I failed – whether in word, thought, or action – I would go through days of spiritual turmoil attempting to figure out whether God would forgive me, if I had jeopardized my salvation, and if I was worthy to even call myself a Christian. Sometimes I wondered if I was even a Christian at all. Whatever the sin, I saw my repeated failure as mounting evidence that I very obviously did not love Jesus, and because of that, Jesus must not love me.
Jun 11, 2014 | Sexuality
Sometimes I wish there were a Christian Cosmopolitan magazine. I know – it’s an oxymoron. But bear with me.
What if there were a magazine for Christian young women that had articles not only about being your best at work, how to wake up in the morning, modesty and fashion – but also about birth control options other than the pill? About what sex looks like in marriage? Articles about the questions young women are asking that the church and family refuse to answer in a Christian context?
While plenty of books have been written, I know there are many young women who have questions they didn’t dare ask, and those questions were eventually answered by an eager world of Cosmo, Self, and Elle. The girls find their answers – but from the wrong people, and in the wrong places, with the wrong worldview.
So we find girls who started out with every tool necessary to build a future bright with hope and blessing, and watch them throw it away to prove nothing to nobody. We see little daughters grow up into young women, their innocent eyes now lined with anger because they believe the purity ring prevented them from experiencing real life. But as they go about experiencing, experimenting, and finding themselves, they lose something far more precious.
In the grocery store check out line we’re told that sexual freedom is being in control of your own body and giving it to whoever you please, whenever you please, and in as many small pieces as you choose to meter out at a time. But Cosmo only tells girls about the night before, not the morning after…
