Dear Girl, the Only One You’re Failing is Yourself

Dear Girl, the Only One You’re Failing is Yourself

I have this routine for putting on pants.

To be honest, I don’t like pants that much. I don’t like jeans that much, actually. Six out of the seven days of the week find me in a skirt or dress, and I never put on jeans of my own volition after work.

This is partially due to my hatred for the whole pants-putting-on process.

Jeans straight out of the dryer are a force to be reckoned with – can I get an ‘amen’? I spend a good two hours doing squats, donkey kicks and high knees to loosen them up to a form worthy of the public eye. Trolls would love to see me transgress my own posts about modesty, so fear not: I’m not wearing jeggings. It’s just really hard to get slim leg jeans on drumsticks.

I’m quick to put a shirt on during the pants-dance routine, because the whole cupcake-look doesn’t appeal to me. I’m also quick to put on makeup, style my hair, and wear my signature pink lipstick. I’m quick because it is urgent: this covering-over, making-up, be-presentable womanhood I’ve embraced. I have scars to cover. I have curls to tame. And I have no upper lip, so I have to draw that on.

We pinch, poke, and prod; diffuse, scrub, exfoliate, and pluck; run, lift, and crunch. Even then, we thousands of women peer into mirrors, hoping to hear we are the fairest – not to them all, but at least to ourselves.

We aren’t all discontent with our bodies, lives and homes. But I do think, like me, many women have trained themselves to meet expectations. When we fail, we feel we have no excuse for that failure.

Go Now, and Sin No More

Go Now, and Sin No More

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.

Is There Forgiveness for Repeated Failure?

Is There Forgiveness for Repeated Failure?

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.

Lust and the Christian Woman

Lust and the Christian Woman

The tears spilling onto her keyboard – I could almost see them.

I could hear the anguish in the words she typed, backspaced, and re-typed.

I could feel her heart, aching and burdened, reaching out to me – the faceless Internet name – just to have someone to talk to. Someone who might understand.

“I feel like I’m sinking deeper in sin and further and further from God. So many women disguise their sexual sins because it is so taboo and “unacceptable” for Christian women to be sexual beings. So many women have secret sins because of these expectations… So please. Do you have any advice? Thank you so much for your time.”

I received that email a long time ago now, but she – the writer – has been housed in the back of my mind since that day. I know she isn’t the only one who feels this way. I know there are many more girls out there – good, Christian, by-the-book young women – who have the same questions she was asking. But they don’t dare ask.

There is a stigma when it comes to lust, as applies to the life of a Christian woman…

Josh: God Never Fails Us

A month ago I featured devotion notes Mr. M sent me (God Will Fight For Us) since they encouraged me so much.  Today features his commentary on a chapter of 2 Chronicles, sent to me via email after his devotions. 2 Chronicles 20 “After this, the Moabites and...
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