fight like a girl

Women's History Month is drawing to a close. Each year I think about posting about it, but March always seems to be such a busy time that I never get one written. If you've followed my writing, you know that I care a great deal about the messages the church sends to our daughters, so I didn't want this month to pass without taking the opportunity to help my readers think along those lines. Since I haven't had time to write, I thought I'd point you toward a teaching I gave recently in which we spent some time looking at women's history as recorded in the book of Exodus.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to address a group of college women on the topic of how they should view their importance to the church. My main point was this: 

Women, you are not an afterthought. What you contribute to the mission of the church is not of secondary importance.

I talked about the female empowerment message of the "Like a Girl" ad that ran during the Super Bowl, noting that female empowerment messages transcend Super Bowl ad campaigns. The Bible, in fact, paints a compelling picture of what it means to fight like a girl.

This is a message given by a female to a female audience, so it covers some ground you might never hear preached from a pulpit. But that's exactly why women teaching women is such a needed layer of discipleship. If you're a guy, don't let that scare you from listening along. If the church is to embrace a strong vision of womanhood, both men and women will need to value it.

You can watch or listen to the 35-minute message here:

{ Fight Like a Girl }

on daughters and dating: how to intimidate suitors

I have two teen-aged daughters, so it was with some interest that I read a recent post entitled “Application to Date My Daughter”. It was pretty funny, playing on the idea of the stereotypical shotgun-toting father and the mortified daughter as they negotiate the tricky terrain of a first date.  Then Christian bloggers grabbed the concept, and for the most part, these versions were funny, too. There were some common themes: slouchy-panted unemployed suitors, dads breathing out Chuck Norris-inspired threats. I didn’t lose my well-developed sense of humor until I made the tactical error of glancing at some of the comments. And then I was just flat-out sad.

Here is the comment that made me the saddest, posted by a well-meaning young Christian father:

“Bro, this is awesome. My daughter’s only 2, but I am printing this for my fridge. Thanks for your godly example.”

Oh dear.

Okay, joke’s over. Bro. Let’s talk strategy for a second. Is that all you’ve got? You need a better plan than these low-level intimidation techniques. After all, she’s your DAUGHTER, for Pete’s sake. So let’s talk frankly about what you need to do to guard her interests when it comes to dating. Instead of brandishing a shotgun or breaking out an application, you need to build a wall.

That’s right, you heard me – build a wall. Go all “Rapunzel”. Build it so high that only the strongest of suitors can scale it. But don’t wait until your baby girl is a teenager, Bro  – start now. Start yesterday. There’s no time to waste.

build a wall

In Song of Solomon 8:8-9 we hear a family’s hope that their young sister will grow into a woman of strength and dignity. Can you guess what metaphor they use to describe that kind of woman? A wall. Their sister assures them in verse 10 that she is indeed a wall, complete with towers. Her statement indicates an assurance that she is not only strong, but able to defend herself against any unworthy suitors. That’s what you want, Bro – you want a wall.

Here’s the problem with shotgun jokes and applications posted on the fridge: to anyone paying attention, they announce that you fully expect your daughter to have poor judgment. Be assured that your daughter is paying attention.  And don’t be shocked if she meets your expectation. You might want to worry less about terrorizing or retro-fitting prospective suitors and worry more about preparing your daughter to choose wisely. And that means building a wall.

Instead of intimidating all your daughter’s potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. Because, you know what’s intimidating? Strength and dignity. Deep faith. Self-assuredness. Wisdom. Kindness. Humility. Industriousness. Those are the bricks that build the wall that withstands the advances of old Slouchy-Pants, whether you ever show up with your Winchester locked and loaded or not. The unsuitable suitor finds nothing more terrifying than a woman who knows her worth to God and to her family.

too strong?

But here’s a hard reality: if you raise that daughter, she’ll likely intimidate her fair share of “nice Christian boys” as well. Because a decent number of those guys have some nutty ideas about what it means to be in charge. I’m amazed and saddened at how often I hear young single guys say of bright, gifted single women, “Wow, she’s so strong I don’t think I could lead her.” At which point, too many bright, gifted single women begin to consider ways to “tone themselves down” or “soften themselves a bit”.

Raise a strong daughter, even if – no, especially if it means potential suitors question whether they can “lead her”, whatever that means to them. You’ve just identified those suitors as ineligible, without so much as an application process. Leadership is not about the strong looking for weaker people to lead. It’s about the humble looking for those whose strengths offset their weaknesses and complement their strengths. Strong leaders surround themselves with strong people, not with weak ones. Rather than finding the strengths of others threatening, they celebrate them and leverage them. This is Management 101, but I fear young Christian men and well-intentioned Christian parents of daughters have gotten a little fuzzy on the concept.

put down your shotgun

I often think that if we scrutinized our parenting with the same intensity we plan to turn on our daughters’ prospective suitors, we’d stop speculating about shotguns and applications and start building that wall. So, my well-meaning father of a two-year-old, please don’t hit “print” on that application just yet. Instead of cross-examining the man your daughter brings home, cross-examine the man who brought your daughter home from the hospital. She does not need the belated braggadocio of your intentions to protect her from slouchy-pants fools when she’s a teen. She needs you to hitch up your own and invest in her character - now.

So put down your shotgun. Pick up your Indian Princess guide book, or your coach’s clipboard. Take a seat at a tea party. Teach how to change a flat and start the mower. Discuss politics and economics and theology. Compliment a new outfit or an A in math. Tell her you think she is absolutely beautiful. Kneel at a pink chenille bedside and pray your guts out. Raise a daughter with a fully loaded heart and mind so that a fully loaded shotgun isn’t necessary. She shouldn’t need you to scare off weak suitors. Let her strength and dignity do the job.  Resolve to settle for nothing less than the best protection for your daughter. Resolve to be the kind of man you want her to bring home. Resolve to build a wall.

“What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver…” Song of Solomon 8:8-9

to your daughter, speak the truth

“Happy girls are the prettiest” – Audrey Hepburn

I grew up with a dad who told me I was beautiful - a lot - thereby defying the conventional wisdom that daughters who are told this will define their worth by their appearance. I don’t. That’s probably because he also told me I was smart and capable and fun to be around. I somehow believed him about those things, but not about the beautiful part. Not even a little bit.

I would roll my eyes as he’d say it, reaching out to hug me, thinking to myself, “He just thinks that because he’s my dad.” My subscription to Seventeen Magazine reminded me faithfully every month that I was not, in fact, beautiful at all. My hair was stick-straight (a debilitating handicap for 80’s hair). I had a bad complexion. I had the shoulder span of a linebacker in an era when giant shoulder pads were routinely added to women’s shirts, seemingly for the sole purpose of enhancing my freakishness. I was no curvier than the thirteen year old boys I desperately hoped would ask me to dance, even as I loomed over them with my gargantuan height. Clearly, my dad was delusional.

But he was the best kind of delusional. He was the kind of delusional every daughter needs. He saw something in me that the mirror didn’t, and he routinely and faithfully pronounced me beautiful regardless of all objective external measures.

Without a doubt, we should tell our daughters that they are strong and capable, that their minds are gifts to be utilized, that their imaginations are tools to be implemented, that their bodies are vehicles for accomplishing good. But I also contend that we should tell them they are beautiful. All the time.  Whether they buy it or not. Trust me on this:

When she tells you she’s fat, tell her she’s beautiful.

When she tells you she’s plain, tell her she’s beautiful.

When she tells you she’s too X or not Y enough, tell her she’s beautiful.

When she tells you no one will ever want to date her, tell her she’s beautiful.

When she says nothing at all, tell her she’s beautiful.

She won’t believe you, any more than we believed our own fathers and mothers. But she will hear it from someone who genuinely means it, with no ulterior motive. She will hear it from you first. And that matters.

Because you don’t want her to hear it from someone else first. If we leave the soil of our daughters’ self-worth unwatered by our unconditional admiration, we send them into a world happy to satisfy that parched ground with conditional praise. What if the first person who tells her she’s beautiful is a shady guy she meets in class? Let her blossom well-watered by your compliments, offered for no other reason than the sheer joy of knowing her.

Your daughter knows when you tell her “You’re beautiful” that what you mean is “You’re beautiful to me.” And though initially she may perceive this to be the most well-meaning lie ever told to her, in time she will grow to recognize it as the most basic truth she can ever hear you speak: No matter what anyone else sees when they look at you, I see you when I look at you, and I say that what I see is beautiful. The end.

I see you. I love you. I know you. You are beautiful. To me.

We become more beautiful in the knowing. Which of us has not met someone who we at first thought to be plain, but upon longer acquaintance we grew to find beautiful? Your daughter will perceive this truth as she sees how your belief in her beauty intertwines with your love for her person. Because you know her better than any other human, your opinion counts more than anyone else’s. Only her Heavenly Father knows her better than you do, and his fearful and wonderful verdict has already been spoken.  When earthly parents model the love of a Heavenly Father who “sees not as man sees”, we give our daughters permission to measure beauty differently than their peers: by focusing not merely on the outward appearance, but on the heart.

Tell your daughter she is beautiful. Tell her, not because she needs to know she’s beautiful, but because she needs to know she is beautiful to you. In our image-driven culture, she will already perceive her physical “flaws” to the point that the face value of your words will ring untrue. But she will learn to trust their deeper significance because of who speaks them. She will learn, God willing, that “face value” is fleeting and deceptive. When every billboard and magazine cover and pop-up is telling her she is not beautiful, the knowledge that you absolutely, irrationally, vehemently disagree may just be the thing that keeps her heart whole. Don’t let the shouting match be one-sided. Tell her she is beautiful. Because, by the only measures that matter, she is.

gladness immeasurable

I am standing with both of them, the one that looks like me on the left and the one that looks like her father on my right. They are tall, tall as me, and full of the willowy grace of hastily retreating girlhood.

He regards them. He smiles and says: “I’m glad I don’t have daughters.”  He means it as a compliment. A lighthearted joke. We smile back and laugh.

I smile, yes - but I am thinking it was funnier the first time someone said it. When they were perched in a shopping cart in tutus, all of two-and-a-half feet tall. How many fathers of sons have said this? How many times?  I’m glad I don’t have daughters. Glad. I’m glad about it.

Why, I want to ask? Why glad? Are sons so much easier to raise? There are two of those under my roof as well. What is it about daughters that their absence in your home is a relief to you? Is it their emotions? Sons have those, too.

But I can see the answer as you look at my girls: how can that sweetness be brought safely to adulthood? Men you understand – the paths of their thinking, the patterns of their acting. If your sons act rashly with women the consequences can be minimized. If my daughters act rashly with men the consequences can be massive.

You think I should be afraid. You ascribe truth to the common crass joke that with a son you only have to worry about one set of sex organs, but with a daughter…

I reject this analysis of the risk. I reject the fear-mongering apparitions of predatory sons and pregnant daughters as motivators for my parenting.  These are the substance of a philosophy that believes a pregnant daughter is the worst thing a parent has to fear. This is far from the truth. My greatest concern cannot be that they reach marriage unsullied and unharmed - it must be that they grow to love God above all else. If they make mistakes on the road to adulthood, even mistakes with permanent consequences, we must face them bravely and run to their Savior for forgiveness and help.

Do you think that your sons are at less risk to be harmed by wrong decisions? You take too much comfort in their lack of a uterus. You have calculated the risk only in physical terms. There are always consequences for sin - some of them just gestate longer. If you considered my daughters as valuable as if they were your own, you would raise different sons. In all likelihood, one day you will have daughters. Raise sons who choose them well.

I am glad I have daughters.  You must hear this: Glad. They are strong and smart and serene. They know what their bodies are capable of. They know what men’s bodies are capable of. They are not afraid of your sons. And neither am I. They will know if your sons are worthy of their attention because their father’s example has hard-wired them to recognize character. Instead of intimidating someone else’s sons at the front door, he has wooed the hearts of his daughters every day of their lives. I am glad I have daughters, and by God’s grace the father of their husbands will be glad I had them, too.

You do not mean to offend or challenge. I know this. My head measures your words and finds no fault, but my heart measures the culture that has taught you to repeat these lines. You catch me at a vulnerable moment.

They are running - running, I tell you – toward womanhood. No more tutus and sequined shoes. The heavy-lashed eyes of their dolls have long grown accustomed to the darkness on the highest shelf in the closet. On a day not far distant those two rumpled beds will remain neatly made side by side in the room they share. There will be no more jumbles of hangerless clothes, no twisted cords of curling irons, no fine dust of beauty products adhered to the sink top with a film of hairspray. They will be gone. Let it be known that there has been gladness in their growing and going. Let it be known that I have been glad beyond measure.

Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.

For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.

Psalm 33:20-21

new year, new self-control

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A new year is upon us, and unless this one is much different from others, our conversations will be laden with talk of fitness goals and holiday diet missteps. The New Year is traditionally a time for resurrecting our self-control, so this is no surprise. But this New Years' I have a different form of self-discipline in view - one with potentially longer-lasting impact than dropping a dress size.

I recently came across an article showing ads from the 1930’s and 40’s selling products to help people gain weight. The ads made claims that sounded completely comical to our 2012 ears: “Add 5lb of solid flesh in a week!” “Since I gained 10lb…I have all the dates I want!” I showed the ads to my daughters, whose response was “Mom, I don’t think those are real. Have you checked that on Snopes?”

But they’re real alright, despite how preposterous they seem. My first reaction, I am ashamed to admit, was that I was born too late. How great would it be to live during a time when well-padded women held the glamour-girl title? (As long as I’m being honest, I had a similar reaction to learning that in South America women get implants in their bottoms to achieve their culture’s ideal shape. By some cruel twist of fate, had I been born on the wrong continent? Why couldn’t I live where hips were hip?)

But of course, to seriously entertain these thoughts is to drink a Kool-aid that has been served up to women since the dawn of time: the belief that ideal physical beauty exists and should be pursued at all costs. For much of human history, the curvy beauty has prevailed. Statues of women from ancient Greece and Rome celebrate a body type we would call “plus-size” today, as does Renaissance art. Historically, padded women were considered beautiful because only the rich and idle could achieve such a figure, and because curviness indicated fertility. For women of past generations curviness was extremely hard to achieve unless you had the money to eat well and work little. Thanks to trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, this is no longer the case. Ironically, the rich and idle of today strive to look undernourished and overworked. And the rest of us rush to follow suit.

So, would it have been better to live during a time when well-fed women were hailed as beauties? I doubt it. Because the issue is not “fat versus thin” – it is “perfect versus imperfect”. There has never been a time when women have not defined themselves by (enslaved themselves to?) some ideal of physical beauty. Though its definition may change across the centuries, one element remains constant: it is always a definition of beauty that is just beyond our reach. We want what we cannot have. If curvy is hard, we want curvy. If thin is hard, we want thin.

The expectation of physical perfection hits modern females early and often.  In middle school, girls cut themselves to deal with the pressures of conforming to the ideal. In middle age, women do, too – but allow the surgeon to hold the knife. We carve the record of our self-loathing into the very flesh of our bodies – a self-marring, a literal carving of an idol. Increasingly, physical perfection is the legacy of womanhood in our culture, handed down with meticulous care from mother to daughter, with more faithful instruction in word and deed than we can trouble to devote to the cultivation of kindness, peacemaking and acceptance that characterize unfading, inner beauty.

In this as in all things, there is hope and good news for the believer: one day we will be free of our self-loathings and will live in harmony with our physical appearance. We will be given new, incorruptible bodies – bodies that are no longer on a collision course with the grave. We dare not reduce this future hope to that of an eternity with thinner thighs or a smaller nose. We must celebrate it as the day when vanity itself is dealt a fatal and final blow.

But how should we live in the meantime? By all means, we should steward the gift of our physical bodies – but for the sake of wellness, not beauty. Two women can step onto two treadmills with identical fitness goals and widely different motives. Only they will know the real reason they are there.

January is typically a time when we talk a great deal about calories, work-outs and weight loss. What if we didn’t? What if we didn’t talk about body sizes at all? What if we made it a point not to mention our own calorie sins or victories in front of our girlfriends and daughters? What if we started living in right relation to our bodies now, instead of at the resurrection? What if every time we looked in the mirror and were tempted to complain we said “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, laying claim to the future hope that our bodies will one day celebrate function in right relation to form, living in the glorious truth of that future hope now?

What if this New Years’ we decided to fast not from food but from body-talk? Sure - hit the gym, eat the Paleo diet, run six miles a day, wear Spanx from neck to knee  - just stop talking about it. Stop telling your friend she looks skinny – instead tell her you love her sweet spirit. Choose compliments that spur her to pursue that which lasts instead of that which certainly does not.  If someone comments on your own shape, say thanks and change the subject. Banish body-talk to the same list of off-limits topics as salaries, name-dropping, and colonoscopies. Apply the discipline you use to work out to controlling your tongue. Do this for your sisters, and by the grace of God, we could begin a legacy of womanhood that celebrates character over carb-avoidance, godliness over glamour.

Sister in Christ, physical perfection is not within our grasp, but, astonishingly, holiness is. Where will you devote your energy in the New Year? Go on a diet from discussing shape and size.  Feast on the Word of Truth. Ask this of yourself for your sake, for the sake of your friends and daughters, for the sake of the King and His Kingdom. On earth as it is in Heaven.

“Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:10-11