P.S. I think I love you

“You have made me, Oh God, to live forever in Your love...my heart is restless, until it finds rest in You.” - St. Augustine

Ok, so up to this point I’ve kinda shared some insights about little things here and there that have to do with modesty. But tonight, as I sat here trying to figure out what to write about this week, I realized that one thing I haven’t shared yet is the biggest reason why I am so passionate about it! So here goes...bring on the fire, this post is gonna get a little more personal.

I am, by nature, an extremely intense person. You can get me pretty fired up about a subject, but I’m also one of those people who refuses to stop just at the tip of the iceberg...I have to go all the way. And in all the different life experiences that I’ve been blessed (and not so blessed) with, I have discovered a very deep and powerful desire to love in an extreme way...so I do! In fact, the basic principle of ethics states that all men desire happiness. The way that I find myself searching for this happiness is in, through, and by loving people.

I have a confession to make. I’ve never had some deep relationship that opened my eyes on how to love another human being with everything I have, exclusively. Actually, in high school, I thought that there was something wrong with me because of that. I thought that the way to discover how to love was by “getting a boyfriend”. And I’m not gonna lie, right after senior year of high school and into the beginning of freshman year of college, I got one...but I found that I couldn’t pour all of my intensity into loving him, it didn’t work. So we broke up, I moped for a little bit, and life went on.

A few months after that, I was reading through some papers from Fr. Shea’s senior religion class, and my eyes focused on a poem written the notes, a beautiful piece from St. Augustine’s Confessions:

Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new...late have I loved You!

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You.

In my unloveliness, I plunged into the lovely things which You created.

You were with me, but I was not with You.

Created things kept me from You; yet if they had not been in You they would have not been at all.

And so You called, You shouted, and You broke through my deafness.

You flashed, You shone, and You dispelled my blindness.

You breathed Your fragrance on me...I drew in breath and now I pant for You.

I have tasted You...now I hunger and thirst for more.

You touched me...and I burned for Your peace.

It was in that moment, that I suddenly learned how to love, and Who to love. It’s still something I’ve never actually felt...yah that’s right, I’ve never actually felt that warm, fuzzy feeling that love (or is it really just infatuation?) is supposedly known for, and yet for some reason I know that I love, and I know that I’m crazy enough to do absolutely anything and everything for Him. And you know why? Because I know that I have the capacity to love, and in this capacity to love, is an intense longing to help everyone love the way that I do! Who cares what they think about me, as long as I’m giving of myself entirely in an abandonment to love, nothing and no one can shake me.

So I’m extreme, crazy, and intense in every sense of those words. If you knew some of the things that I do in the name of that intense love I have, it would blow your mind. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime, maybe I won’t. It depends on how I feel about it. But for the record, I’m writing this because I care, because I’m passionate about it, because I LOVE YOU! Enter: Modesty...

Can I, may I, have this dance?

“Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.” - Francoise Sagan

Imagine being six again. You’re a little girl, or a little boy. Ever experience is new and exciting, and life is just beginning for you. Nothing you want to do is impossible to fathom, and everything that you dream is possible. Insects, flowers, twigs, and dirt are the best toys that you could possibly ever imagine, and you are too innocent to realize the heartache that it will cause Mom when you come back to the house covered head to toe in mud!

We were all young and innocent at one point in our lives. I know when I was a little girl I absolutely loved dressing up in fancy, way-to-big-on-me dresses and dancing around the house. Then, in true six year old fashion, I’d go outside and jump around enough that the dress would be covered in dirt. I’d give almost anything to go back to those carefree days when heartbreak was impossible and the most hurt I encountered amounted to scraped and bruised knees.

These days, it’s so much easier to get hurt. Knees aren’t the only things that get cuts and bruises anymore, hearts do too. And heartbreak isn’t nearly as easy to clean up as a scraped knee is. A woman, the same one who once was a little girl pretending to be a princess, is now pretending to be other things. She doesn’t dance because it’s fun anymore, she dances to feel more secure about herself. She doesn’t dress up so that she can feel beautiful anymore, she dresses up so that she can feel beautiful when someone else tells her that she is...even when that someone else really doesn’t mean it. Sure, she’s a grown up, but deep down inside, I’ll bet that more than anything, she wishes that she was a kid again. All she wants to do, is be a princess.

Girls, let yourself be that princess, because you ARE one! Don’t let yourselves be bogged down by the world’s expectations, but be beautiful because you ARE beautiful, not because you have to be. Dressing modestly begins with the heart.

Daaang!!! Check out that floor length jumper!

“Most girls will be quick to point out that lust is the guy’s problem, and she shouldn’t be liable. This is because most girls don’t understand how guys are wired. Guys are, initially, sexually stimulated visually. They are quickly moved by what they see to begin dwelling on an eventual outcome. Girls, on the other hand, are generally, stimulated by touch. Since she doesn’t commonly experience the same process of stimulation, she often isn’t cognizant of the signals or messages she is sending to the opposite sex. It is our duty as followers of Christ to recognize gender differences and processes and be careful not to cause others to stumble.” - Modesty: Developing Dress Codes

As my ministry team discussed modesty this summer, and considered some problems we’d been having with it, we brainstormed ideas about the most effective way to get girls to realize that it is kind of a big deal. At one point, we just felt like we weren’t really getting anywhere, so we decided to take a break for a little bit. As we left, our team leader/boss gave me a CD talk to listen to, claiming that it might help me think of some ideas.

As I listened to this talk, I found something very interesting in what the speaker did. At one point in the talk, he read a handful of testimony letters from men in the community. These men wrote about how the different aspects of modesty effected them, no matter how hard they tried to make it not matter. Between hearing these letters be read and remembering one moment from a little earlier in the summer, I started to create an idea to help girls care more about what we were saying.

The thought that came to my mind from the summer was a memory of multiple discussions I’d had with one of the guys I worked with. Daniel and I actually had a lot of conversations about modesty and purity in general over the few months that we were working together, and he shared a lot of things that were really helpful to know from a girl’s perspective, some of which I’ll share in a later blog.

Between those conversations, and knowing that one of the most powerful things that I’ve ever had said to me was being thanked by a guy for being modest, I came up with the plan to collect letters from young men, ranging from mid-highschool to college age, who would be willing to write about the struggle it was to be Christian and pure in today’s world, and how important it is for girls to CARE about modesty. On top of that, Daniel agreed that he would talk to the girls himself, as well as thank them for dressing modestly.

To make a long story short, it seemed to work pretty well. It tugged the heart-strings to hear young, great, Christian guys write about purity, and it meant a lot to girls to have a guy thank them for being the women of God that they’re called to be.

Now, it doesn’t stop there, because one of my awesome guy friends who wrote one of those letters was also amazing enough to give me permission to post in here on my blog too! I know,personally, that as a young woman trying to live purely and modestly, it helps so, so much to know that I’m choosing to do the right thing, because there is so much crap out there telling me otherwise. Here’s what my friend wrote:

“I try to be the best guy I can be and I can treat any girl with outright respect with whatever she is wearing. The underlying problem is the way I think on the inside however. I'm a guy, and people always say, "It's okay, I'm just a guy," and as lame of an excuse as that is, there is a little bit of truth there. When girls wear low tops or short bottoms it's my natural instinct to think, "Daaang!!" This physical attraction is obviously natural, but our society has told us that physical attraction is all there is. If you can't seduce a guy through sex appeal, then you have no hope. As a guy, naturally that's the first thing I notice, but it's become really hard for me personally because sometimes it becomes all I notice. The fact that sex appeal is such a big distraction in everyday life, however, makes me more attracted to modestly dressed women because they seem so much fuller and more real. I don't know if that makes sense but I guess since without the distraction of the details of the female body, I can see her beauty in other ways. It's tough to explain but basically I always hear guys say," She's someone you don't hook up with. She's more the marrying type." Those girls are always the modestly dressed ones, and obviously get more respect, whether the guys mean to or not. The guys don't see her as an object but rather as a person.”

Wow! Every time I read that, I feel so thankful for the young men who are trying to do the right thing. It’s encouraging to know that there actually are guys out there who appreciate the virtue of modesty. If you are a guy reading this, thank you SO much for being real and striving to remain pure. If you’re a girl, just know that there are guys out there who appreciate you. Thanks for being the amazing you that you are!