When I was very young I had an experience that caused me to
feel unsafe as a girl so I became a very strong tomboy. I dressed like a boy,
played sports like a boy, and wished my parents had given me a name that could
have passed for either a girl or a boy. The only time I looked like a girl was
at church because I knew I had to wear a dress there but within ten seconds of
being home I was in pants again. My hair was often up in a hat so I could look
more like a boy. I believed that if I was a boy then no one would hurt me, I
would be safe.
As I got older, it became harder to hide the fact that I
really was a girl. As I went through puberty I realized that I was going to
have to come to grips with my gender because my bust size made it impossible to
keep hiding what I was!
When I was fifteen, I had bad knee pain so I went to a woman
that did a type of bodywork called Structural Integration, or Rolfing. During
my sessions we talked a lot about life, how I felt about my body, and many,
many more things. I don’t remember most of the words she said, but I still
remember the concepts she taught. One day she asked me a question that took me
by surprise. She asked, “Who are you?” I just stared at her but didn’t say anything.
She stopped working and waited for me to answer. There was an uncomfortable
silence before I finally replied with, “I am a child of God.”
She agreed with my statement but asked the question again,
asking for more detail. I could tell that she wasn’t going to continue with my
bodywork session until I gave her a satisfactory answer. My mind was racing as
she waited for what seemed a very long time before I eventually blurted out,
“I’m somebody who has to be doing something all the time.” She kind of chuckled
at that and went back to working on me but continued the conversation while
working. I don’t remember much else of that session, but her questioning stayed
with me for a very long time.
I went home and asked myself over and over again, “Who are
you?” Not only was I a child of God, but I was a daughter of God. I felt
that if I was born female, then that’s what God intended for me to be. So I
started on a quest to try to become okay with the fact I was a girl. It took
years of searching and even professional help before I finally felt that I was
okay being female.
By the time I got married I felt that I had embraced being
female and looked forward to my role as wife and mother. Being a woman took on
a whole new meaning when I thought about being married. I was excited for the
chance to explore femininity when I didn’t have to play the role of the man as
well.
At first it seemed to be a good challenge to be doing all
the womanly things a wife should do. I had been working for five years so it
was different to be home, trying to be a housewife. Within a couple weeks of
being married I was pregnant. It didn’t take very long of severe morning
sickness to make me question again what was good about being a girl. It quickly
became a difficult task to clean the house, do the dishes, laundry, and
cooking, and fulfill all of my husband’s desires.
Tension rose between us as our family grew and my ability to
be there for my husband decreased. He commented to me one time that he just
didn’t understand my lack of desire to be with him. He said that women in TV
shows and movies always complained about their husbands not desiring them and
he was showing me lots of affection that I was rejecting. His comments made me
question greatly what was wrong with me. Media told me that I was supposed to
feel and behave a certain way but it just wasn’t accurate with who I was. As
our relationship steadily declined, my self-worth went down the drain,
especially with my feelings about being a woman. I was told many times that I
wasn’t behaving like a good woman, or a good wife, should. There was something
wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just be like other women?
What little self-respect and self-esteem I had learned
before marriage suddenly disintegrated from the constant comparison of me to
women in the media. I just wasn’t like them and because I wasn’t like them I
was a failure at being a woman.
So what does it mean to be a woman and to be feminine? I am
still trying to figure that out. As I have asked others for an answer, the most
common response is to be sexy and attractive. I don’t like wearing makeup and
fancy clothes so does that mean I’m not feminine? I don’t believe so. I think
it is more of an internal thing.
As I have searched for what it means to be a woman, I was
reminded of a talk that Margaret D. Nadauld made in October of the year 2000.
She said, “Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has
enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough
women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who
are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and
fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more
goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough
popularity; we need more purity.”
I don’t want to pattern my life after what media portrays
women as; I want to be a woman of God. I think that is where true beauty and
femininity is found.
Over the last couple of years as I have worked at healing
from my marriage, I have been striving to understand how God views women. I
believe He has great respect for women. I have felt His great love and compassion.
I sense his awe of women with all they go through in this mortal existence. I
believe that He weeps when He sees his daughters mistreated. I believe that He
desires to take us in His arms and protect us from the pains and sorrows of
this world. I also believe that His love for us is so great that He allows us
to fully experience all the trials of life because He knows that is how we will
learn and grow. Like a parent watching a child learn to walk, He knows that
there are times that we must fall so we can learn to get back up and develop
the strength to walk on our own. Because He knows we will fall, He always has a
way prepared for us to heal, no matter what, as long as we ask Him for help.
Like that stumbling, learning child, I often sit there and
cry, wondering why no one caught me before I fell, why no one moved that coffee
table that I just ran into and bumped my head on, why I am not immediately
picked up and saved from the pains and trials. But like the loving parent, God
oversees all of my life, giving gentle direction, wishing I wasn’t so stubborn
in wanting to do things my way, and always, always being there to pick me up,
give me a hug, and tell me to try again.
One of my fears as I move forward in life is that by
becoming more in tune with my womanhood and femininity I will make myself
vulnerable to being hurt like I was in the past. As I have contemplated this
fear, a calm assurance has filled my soul as if God himself is telling me, “It’s
going to be okay! I have never left you in the past and I will never leave you
in the future. You are beautiful! You are safe! You are mine!”
What does it mean to be a woman? Being a woman means being
true to yourself, embracing all of who you are, being filled with the Holy
Spirit, accepting your body for what it is, being filled with compassion and
love, and worrying more about what God thinks than what the world thinks. Being
a woman is more about just allowing your true self to shine forth than about looking
a certain way or getting attention from certain people. I still have a long
ways to go before I feel truly comfortable with being a woman, but I feel that
I have made great progress in the last year. Now I can honestly say that I am
grateful that I was born a girl. There is so much more to learn and I am
grateful that I have this time on earth to be learning, growing, and becoming.
Have you ever struggled with how the world portrays your gender?
