Did you know that the clothes you wear say a lot about what you are trying to say about yourself internally?
Now, before you allow fear to come in and tell you that your wardrobe is allowing strangers to read your internal thoughts, relax. God is good, and He gives deep discernment and wisdom to those who will steward it well. He's not telling your secrets to the masses.
Back to clothing. Yeah, what you wear can become a mechanism to hide, overcompensate, etc. It's not always, but it can fall prey. Let me tell you my story.
As a dancer, I have always been in the middle of a world where you are required to take your clothes off in front of others. In 4th grade at the performing arts magnet school I attended, there were 2 girls who would pretend during dress-out time that they were strippers. They would take off all their clothes (this took place in the girls' bathroom, so not really in public :) ) and sing and dance around. I thought they were funny, but I wondered why I felt such shame around my body. I didn't dislike the way I looked, so I couldn't claim that as a reason. I wondered where that fear came from, but as a 10 year old, I just dismissed it. Deep down, though, I wished to one day be as bold as these two girls.
As I got older, I grew in confidence in who I was, but the shame around my body remained. The fear followed me from locker room to locker room. I became smart in how to change into my dance clothes without letting anyone see anything I didn't want them to see, but I so wanted to be free.
Once I was done with the magnet and dance studio world, I began unknowlingly doing the same hiding with my wardrobe. It was hard to detect, because it's not like I was wearing mu-mus and sweats. I have always loved fashion, but I used clothing to make people see what I wanted them to see rather than as an outward sign of my internal beauty. For example, I wore fairly tight clothing in high school. I was always quite thin, and I felt like if my clothing was not form fitting, I would disappear under all the layers. I also used clothes to hide. I always liked those sweater duster things that were big in the late '90s and early 2000s. They were cute and fitted, but long enough to hide in. And I never wore skirts or shorts that were very short in my post-college years. I didn't like the way guys looked at me when I wore things like that because I felt violated. I thought I was being modest, but I was really hiding. And even with the colors and prints I chose, I laid lower than the real me should have. I am a woman who, at the heart of me, loves color, sparkle, and pop! But it was almost as if putting on such things made a loud noise, and it startled me so much I wanted to shut it up before it drew unwanted attention.
But there was one Fall when our rescuing God came to show me that He had more for me. I was in a Marshall's fitting room buying new sweaters for the coming winter. I had picked up a pretty off white mohair sweater with iridescent gold stripes. I loved it! I put it on, but that noise thing happened again. It was louder than I was willing to be at the time. It called more attention to my body (tastefully, though) than I wanted. Because there's something about walking in who we are that requires that we intentionally stand in the strength in us, and that we do it unappologetically.
Anyway, God got my attention and challenged me as to why I was afraid to buy this sweater. He showed me how the strength and beauty He put in me can be spoken loudly! It can, because it is backed not by mere bravado in me, but by a courage corroborated by His own strength!
As He continued to heal my heart, He uncovered a major root cause of all this heaviness. When I was very young, my body was treated in shameful and violating ways. My hiding was the result of my agreeing with my abusers that my body should have been treated that way. It launched me into all sorts of ways of hiding.
But God broke the power of those things. He showed me that He created me with power and authority, beauty, and full say over what happens to my own body.
Because hiding isn't the only way we react to abuse.
See, sexual and physical abuse, especially when it happens in childhood, simply devalues you as a person and tells you that your body doesn't belong to you.
As a performer, and especially as a dancer, we were inundated with rhetoric about how to conduct our bodies on stage. We were told that sometimes you need to do quick changes back stage, and it doesn't matter who ogles you or sees you naked (I think in most places we call that voyeurism). In 6th grade, one of our dance teachers told us that when it comes to lifts and partner pieces, we needed to be ok with the fact that the lift may require guys to touch us in places we didn't want to be touched. This allowing of people to do what they would was dubbed "maturity." This is the same lying rhetoric you hear in modeling, acting, and lots of other spheres. There is no regard for the person or the authority that the person carries. If as performers we want to make room for quick changes and cool lifts, we need to use our creativity to figure out how to do so in a way that honors people.
The fact of the matter is that it DOES matter. Your body was created beautiful and pure and it is your very own. When you come into agreement with God to have a relationship with Him, which He invites EVERYONE to do, He says your body becomes the temple where His Spirit lives! WOW! The Spirit of God in you! That is how much He honors you! And it's even honoring that, while He longs to live in all of us, He gives YOU the authority to say yes! So who is any person to decide to treat your body any which way when the God who made you waits on your go-ahead?
Beloved, please don't devalue who you are. Don't dishonor your body by wearing clothes that tell the world they can look and partake of you sexually when they don't even know you or cherish you. And don't cover up your beauty, for that is not modesty.
When we are free from all this junk, we can stop using clothes as a means of managing our shame. We can then start to use them to show who we are on the inside! The colors, textures, and all sorts of things can come together to make quite a beautiful statement!
It all starts by asking God for His help. Know that, if you have been physically abused (touched in any forceful way that produced shame, pain, or violation), it is not your fault. Jesus said that nothing coming into your body from the outside makes you "unclean." He said the things that make a person unclean come from their heart. And if someone else violated you, that is on them. I get that it feels like the opposite, but that is a lie. Pray and ask God to heal you. Find someone trustworthy who can speak God's love to you, and tell them about what happened if you've never done so. Keeping this a secret will only leave you susceptible to lies. But speaking it out will show you that it has no power to shame you anymore.
And when you see on the inside that you have authority over your own person, the natural outpouring is greater confidence to walk out who you really are. And the way you dress will just change as a natural result! But it all has to start from the heart, not the other way around, or you'll never truly heal.
No matter where you are internally, I bless you and pray that all of the authority, beauty, and purity that God made you to wear will be the internal clothing you walk in today and forevermore! Be blessed!
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