How I Found Modesty, or How Modesty Found Me ~ Part One

I was not raised with modesty. I wore halter tops and matching sunburns in the summer and pants that chafed all year round. I was on the swim team and have an Olan Mills photograph of myself and my brother in our racing suits. By college, I was wearing mini-skirts. The prevailing attitude was if you got it, flaunt it. It didn’t take long for me to learn that flaunting it got me into trouble.

My husband and I were married in 1992, and I remember two specific garments I took on our honeymoon. One was a strapless dress which I wore to a fancy restaurant on Maui. The other was a bikini I wore to the beach. My conscience must have still been in working order because I refused to have my picture taken in my bikini. J

After we were married, our faith grew steadily due to many different circumstances and events, and we changed churches a couple of times to attend churches that were more focused on the Bible. Both my husband and I were adults before we ever heard anything about knowing and obeying the will of God. Throughout this growth period, a couple of mind-openers occurred that continued to nag at me.

First, I began to notice the teenagers around me. Now that I was no longer one, I observed with a more detached view, and I was surprised at the shortness, lowness, and tightness of what they wore. This made me begin to notice what I was wearing. I also wondered why the church would have pool parties for the teenagers. They required everyone to wear a one-piece suit (no bikinis allowed), but that didn’t make sense to me. How did that prevent the teens from seeing too much of each other?

Second, I had children. Two daughters in a row. And as I held my tiny future teen girls and looked at the teen girls around me and remembered my escapades, I got scared.

During the summer when my oldest daughter was two-and-a-half and my second daughter was nine months old, my husband and I went to assist his mother in holding a rummage sale. A couple of my husband’s great aunts stopped by, and one aunt talked about her work in the office at Wal-Mart. She commented that a co-worker of hers wore skirts all the time and had long hair. Both the aunt and her co-worker were Pentecostal, but the aunt didn’t understand why her co-worker’s church women wore skirts all the time and her church didn’t. None of us had any answer for her.

{I’m not discussing the different denominations here. I’m not Pentecostal, and I don’t even know exactly what they believe.}

That off-hand remark embedded itself in my mind, and I mulled it over and over and over. When we got home, I searched my Bible for several days looking for the foundation for the idea that women should wear skirts. It appealed to me, but I needed to know if it was from the Lord. Since this was before Google and blogs, I spent quite a bit of time searching and praying.

Eventually, my husband said that there was a woman at his work who wore skirts all the time. God bless his heart, he asked her about her skirts! She graciously agreed to exchange emails with me and be available to answer questions as I continued to search.

So, we began a three-month exchange of emails that went way beyond skirt-wearing to church doctrine and youth groups and even recipes. She didn’t teach me; all she really did was answer questions that confirmed the way that the Lord had been leading us.

These are the verses that spoke to me ~

1 Timothy 2:9-10 ~ “…In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but, which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works.”

1 Peter 3:3-4 ~ “Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”

In this crisis time, I quickly decided that if I was going to believe the Bible, I would need to believe every single word. I was astounded to see that God spoke of modesty more than once! I also saw that my beauty was not to come from a fancy hairstyle or jewelry or expensive clothing but from who I was on the inside.

Deuteronomy 22:5 ~ “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment….”

Perhaps this verse doesn't speak directly to modesty, but it definitely spoke to me about masculinity versus femininity. I read in this verse that God wants men and women to look different. In our current time (and for the past several hundred years), this difference has taken the form of pants for men and skirts for women. How men and women were dressing the same at the time of the book of Deuteronomy and how the Lord expected them to dress differently, I haven’t a clue.

Genesis 3:21 ~ “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.”

Genesis 3:7 tells us that Adam and Eve, when they realized they were naked, sewed fig leaves together as coverings. This is like an apron or, as some artists like to interpret it, a loin cloth. However, according to Genesis 3:21, this was not enough to satisfy God. He made for them tunics of skin from the first animal sacrifice. The original word for what He made is similar to coat.

2 Timothy 3:16 ~ “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

All Scripture includes the Old Testament. What an eye-opener this was for me!

I love it that I can say that this all really came from the Lord. There was no one particular friend, no blog, no church leader who sat me down and said that I should wear skirts all the time and then outlined all the reasons for me. It was the Lord, and even in the process I knew He was guiding me. It was an incredible time of feeling his touch upon me, a feeling that I often re-visit when life gets difficult.

See you in Part Two!

Isn't this image hilarious? J

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