Modesty (dun dun dun....)

Chrissie started it.

So now I've got modesty (unwillingly) on my brain. I'm not gonna lie--I hate the "modesty talk"...because usually it means I'm doing something wrong. And I really hate doing things wrong...or rather, I hate being called out on it.

But, alas, here we are in the throes of picking summer wardrobes and I'm half-way tempted to throw out everything I own and start a new line of fashionable paper bags for the women of Shoreline. Anytime I start to read stuff like The Modesty Survey (which touts statistics like, 6.8% of men agree or strongly agree with the statement, "it is immodest for a girl to show her calves." AAAAHHHH!!!), I feel like I just can't win.

I have a theory: there are certain girls who have bombshell bodies--girls who can wear the most covering and modest of clothing and still look so sexy. In books and magazines they tell us that so much of dressing well is dressing to flatter your assets. When you have a naturally womanly silhouette, it would seem easier to wear pretty much anything modest and still look quite lovely and feminine. I feel like when I dress super-modest, I just look fat. When I take a good look in the mirror, I'll admit, I think some of my best features are my legs and my shoulders, and if, like they say, the goal is to "flaunt what you've got," I really need to wear those short shorts with the flowy tube top.

But in looking for hard and fast rules about modesty, I feel like the ones who are making them would also like to arrange my marriage and ensure that I stay home with the babies, cook three meals a day for my husband, clean and keep our home, and never speak in public. I really like rules. I really can't handle theirs.

Then I stumbled across this excerpt by C.J. Mahaney:

"There’s an inseparable link between your heart and your clothes. Your clothes say something about your attitude. If they don’t express a heart that is humble, that desires to please God, that longs to serve others, that’s modest, that exercises self-control, then change must begin in the heart.

"For modesty is humility expressed in dress."

Basically, he's saying that I have to take a good, hard look and what my goal is when I dress each day. If it's something along the lines of attracting, seducing, enticing, then, yeah, I'm way off. It's fine to be feminine. It's ok to long for loveliness, to dress in a way that is beautiful. But it is not godly to act in a way that I know is tempting to my brothers.

I've been working a lot lately on guarding my heart, now it's time to check it.