I have been praying, wrestling with how to share with my daughter the honor it is to be a woman, and the grace with which we must carry the beauty that has been given us. The following is the answer my Love gave me.
-------
I had a dream.
In it, I saw the Mona Lisa wrentched from her wall in the Louvre, carried with rough and dirty hands and tossed into an old, beaten up cart, pulled by a filthy, half-starved horse. The cart was filled with dirty hay and flies were swarming around. Bits of manure clung to the hay and the wagon. Into this, the painting was carelessly flung, propped up with some straw behind it.
The driver of the cart whipped the horse, and it lurched forward. He traveled aimlessly up and down the streets of Paris
As the cart passed through the streets, I could hear clueless people with untrained eyes commenting on the painting.
“What an ugly picture!”
“Look how long her nose is!”
“Ha! Her forehead is too large!”
“Ha! Her forehead is too large!”
One group of teenagers threw their sodas at the painting as it passed, soaking it with sticky liquid. The flies that had been buzzing around the straw and manure now landed on the painting and began to feast.
My heart began to squeeze tightly in my chest, and my throat was so constricted as I watched this that I could hardly breathe. Don’t these people realize what this is? What are they doing? This painting is irreplaceable! It’s priceless! Even if Leonardo da Vinci were still alive, he could never duplicate this work! This is not how you treat a great work of art! I groaned as I hung my head in despair.
Back before time, when my Love was creating, He planned to create two separate beings that would present a complete picture of Himself to the world. He created Adam first and then pronounced him “alone.” In Himself, my Love is never alone, but Adam was incomplete without Eve. Woman, when she was created, was not an addendum to creation, but a completion of it. Man was to be a picture of my Love’s strength, His might, His provision, His protection. Woman was to be a picture of His grace, His beauty, His tenderness, His care. My Love is neither male nor female, but he used both genders to create a complete picture of Who He is.
As the carriers of His beauty, we, as woman, have been demonized and victimized. Our beauty has been abused and misused. It has been undervalued and taken out of context. And what has been the church’s response? It has been to tell us to “dress modestly” and cover ourselves so that we don’t make men stumble into lust.
There are two problems I see with this party line that we have been fed by well-intending church members. The first problem is that this solution says that men are sexual beings with no control over their thoughts or actions. This paints men in a bad light, and it does not give them any credit for their ability to make wise and godly choices. The second problem that I see with this solution is that it paints women’s bodies to be temples of temptation and seduction. Again, this paints women in a bad light. Is that truly what our bodies are – temples of temptation and seduction?
Here’s how my Love reframed this for me --
When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai
In a similar way, our beauty – the beauty of the female form – is a revelation of God and His beauty to the world. While the male form is strong and powerful, it lacks the graceful curves of the female form that give it the right to be called “beautiful.” Every woman, no matter the size of her breasts or her hips, bears the graceful beauty of God in her form.
It is exactly this beauty that must be veiled. It is not intended for mass display. A work of art is housed and protected so that only the appreciative and loving eye can behold it. Our bodies are works of art – from the hands of a Master Sculptor. Each design is unique and beautiful, and each can never be replaced or duplicated.
But in so many ways we have allowed our bodies to become degraded and undervalued. Failing to see their worth, ourselves, we have put them on display and paraded them about. They have been critiqued by the masses, and we have accepted the critiques. They have been figuratively spat upon and dirtied, and we have accepted that, for we don’t understand their value and worth. We have been the driver of the cart, parading our priceless treasure around in filth for all to see and comment upon.
Oh, this is not how it should be! The beauty of our form has great value and worth! It is unique and priceless, and as such it should be veiled – out of honor and respect for the treasure that it is. The beauty of our form is to be reserved for one man – the one that God has deemed worthy to see and appreciate it, the one that has committed to us for life. Only he has the eye that can appreciate the artwork before him.
Our bodies are not commodities to be used and traded. They are not our possessions to do with as we like. They are unique expressions of God’s beauty to this world, and as such they are worthy of great honor and respect.
My prayer has become that He would redeem the glory of my form, and eventually my daughter's form, from the back of the filthy wagon. May I allow Him to continue to restore my body to its original condition and place. May I allow Him to bring worth back to it . . . and may I then veil it beautifully so that it may retain its worth.
My prayer has become that He would redeem the glory of my form, and eventually my daughter's form, from the back of the filthy wagon. May I allow Him to continue to restore my body to its original condition and place. May I allow Him to bring worth back to it . . . and may I then veil it beautifully so that it may retain its worth.
