In The Beginning……
During my childhood I grew up not ever having been introduced to dress as an expression of one’s state of mind and heart. I was a child in Nigeria where clothes were functional, intended to hide ones nakedness and most attempts by my elder sisters to express their teenage angst through style were met with immediate disdain and a certain order to change clothes, cover up and be modest. Other inhibiting rules applied, such as covering ones hair in church and never wearing trousers as a woman. Accessories, long hair, jewellery, long or painted nails, high heeled shoes…..you name it; they were all satanic expressions of the ‘world’ (as it was referred to back then-everything outside of acceptance by the church and misunderstood by hardcore Christians).
Coz I’m Just a Teenage Dirt-bag…..Maybe!
Evidently this took its’ toll on me. So when I arrived in the UK a pre-teen to see girls of my age converting their school uniforms into seduce-machine outfits, I was adequately shocked. The skirts just about covered the buttocks and couldn’t even be bent over in (as when this occurred white panties would often be in full view); the shirts were fitted and during sunny break times outdoors, tucked into the bottom of what probably was their first bra, exposing their midriffs in order to gain some colour. Said shirts also unbuttoned far down enough to reveal the bra and their emerging boobs, shirts begrudgingly pulled back down when it was time to go back to class. Not forgetting the girls wore no tights and at the end of perfectly toned legs, were heels that gradually became higher the older we got until at sixteen; stilettos were the only shoe of choice.
The hair was long and wavy, the eyebrows plucked, the lips plumped and the make-up and jewellery adorned their faces. Topping up on the lippy between lines of The History of communist China went hand in hand; and the conversation was nearly always about boys, sexual encounters and conquests, drunken nights out where drug taking was commonplace, boasting at how one avoided being caught by one’s parents and any other teenage gossip; notes were passed around by the ignorant few asking what the vulgar terms used by the slutty masses were in order not to seem as ignorant and inexperienced as one actually was. And this was my school, an excellent, high achieving school full of upper-middle class children who pretty much all went on to further and then higher education.
I never really knew how I fitted into this and my honest confession is that in a bid to find out, I did a stint in every clique. I was a chav (townie/ ned/ scaly) for a while, then a mosher (emo/ skater-chic/ Avril Lavigne wannabe) and then a trendy (none of the above/ Topshop)! I went to those parties, hung out in parks and in the street outside house parties drinking myself into an unspeakable state more times than I care to even think about and doing drugs albeit less frequently than I did the booze! I snuck out God knows how many times and tried to convince myself that my parents had no clue what I was doing-how stupid I was! I was the girl from Africa, one of the few ethnic students who allowed the local kids to tell me who I was, was not OK, unaccepted and mercilessly devoted to being accepted by the same people who are now in lower social classes than their parents were at their age! Safe to say-I don’t know much now, but back then I knew less than nothing. If wisdom was a currency, I was dead in the red, overdrawn more than I was when I left university almost £40,000 debt.
Voulez Vous Couchez Avec Moi Ce Soir?!?!?!
I ended up consumed with the mentality that when I hit the clubs with my girlfriends (which we started to do at fourteen), I had to look something like this!
Keys: Check
Card: Check
Scarf: Check
Lippy: Check
Jacket: Check
Phone: Check
Blusher: Check
Eyeliner: Check
Cigarettes: Check
Digital Camera: Check
And this was my list, all firmly stuffed into my oversized designer clutch-and it was off to town with a few bevvies (slang for ‘beverages’ of the alcoholic variety) down me I went, for what I knew would be a great night that would permit me to head straight to the top of the gossip list at school. Even if only for a week, it would bide me enough time to come up with some new antics. Every week was a popularity struggle and popularity was a drug. I was addicted and was prepared to do almost anything to get my fix!
So there I was, in the clubs up to four nights a week, with my 5” heels, flawless make-up, fake eyelashes, eye catching accessories wearing an outfit designed to shock and awe on every occasion, synch in the waist, accentuate all the wrong assets and draw maximum attention. Not to mention the expensive jewellery, perfume and smoky-eyes made up look perfected to make all men in the vicinity swoon towards me offering to buy me and all my friends a drink, having no clue exactly how underage I was. Little Bella was all grown up, a child in a woman’s body, a kid playing an adult’s game, a force to be reckoned with and a far cry from the same innocent and modest girl that had arrived in the UK from Nigeria a few years back. I had mastered the art of many persons. I was the homely Christian teen who attended church, the school girl trying to fit in, the naive girl working in the bakery and the wild child out on the lash BUT…………..I was the unhappiest teen I know, so something had to give!
I to the Izzy, B to the Bella!
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet – Charles Caleb Colton
I came across this quote recently and to be honest, it sums up the state of my mind at that time where I was being pulled apart by all my personalities, by everything I was trying to be, for everyone. Never have I read a truer quote and whenever I read it, my heart skips a beat.
After many years of unsettledness and profound unhappiness, I decided that I had to change and so my journey began by ditching the horrible nickname of ‘Izzy’ I had earned in school. For years it had never been a cause for concern but all of a sudden being associated with two very unsavoury home-wrecking women from the two most popular soap operas on TV began to take its toll. It would be a long time before people stopped calling me that but I was intent on gathering all my parts from all the places I’d left them, to put them back together under a very large covering. This was me, beginning to understand the relationship between modesty and who God wanted me to be. And sure enough, my first pit stop was the bible. And this was what I found……
“[I desire] that women should adorn themselves modestly and appropriately and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with [elaborate] hair arrangement or gold or pearls or expensive clothing, But by doing good deeds (deeds in themselves good and for the good and advantage of those contacted by them), as befits women who profess reverential fear for and devotion to God” 1 Timothy 2:9-10
And any woman who [publicly] prays or prophesies (teaches, refutes, reproves, admonishes, or comforts) when she is bareheaded dishonours her head (her husband); it is the same as [if her head were] shaved. For if a woman will not wear [a head] covering, then she should cut off her hair too; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her head shorn or shaven, let her cover [her head]………Therefore she should [be subject to his authority and should] have a covering on her head [as a token, a symbol, of her submission to authority, that she may show reverence as do] the angels [and not displease them].Nevertheless, in [the plan of] the Lord and from His point of view woman is not apart from and independent of man, nor is man aloof from and independent of woman;For as woman was made from man, even so man is also born of woman; and all [whether male or female go forth] from God [as their Author] – 1 Corinthians 11:5-6, 10-12
Conundrum?
Knowing the controversy surrounding these verses and the chapters they are taken from, I decided to look very carefully at the context and found that Paul wrote the book of Timothy to encourage Timothy on his own ministry. Paul had planted the Ephesus church himself putting over three years of his blood and tears in to the effort (Acts 19:10; 20:31) and he describes his being pleased with Timothy’s work pastoring in the Ephesus Church. Paul writes him to tell him to stay there despite being sometimes discouraged (as I can imagine all young pastors feel at times) and continue his good work there. This is most likely a letter written in Paul’s late life and can be seen as being among his departing advice to his former student who has risen up in the ranks of church leadership himself. As Paul becomes more aware of his impending end, soon to be at the hands of Nero, he is setting things in order for the next generation. Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church echoes much of the same warnings and this is not surprising, the two cities were close together, separated only be a small section of the Mediterranean Sea. According to scholars, it is likely that it was written during Paul’s extended stay in Ephesus, where he refers to sending Timothy to them (Acts 19:22, I Cor. 4:17).
Now the church was located in Ephesus, near the mouth of the Cayster River only three miles from the coast. It became the capitol of Asia Minor, was connected by highways with the interior of Asia and all her chief cities, and became a great commercial centre. The emperor had made Ephesus a free city and it was given the political title “Supreme Metropolis of Asia.” The Roman governor of the region lived there, and it was the religious centre for the worship of the fertility goddess known by the Greeks as Artemis and by the Romans as Diana. Corinth was no different. They both had those temples located on the outskirts of the city, the one in Ephesus being known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world which was renowned across the world as it was known then, as a centre of mystical cult worship.
“The temple was 425 feet long, 220 feet wide, and 60 feet high, with great folding doors and 127 marble pillars, some of them covered with gold. The worship of Diana was ‘religious immorality’ at its worst.” (Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament – Warren W. Wiersbe).
Diana’s temple, present in both cities and considered sacrosanct throughout the Roman world, became the primary banking institution in Asia Minor. The cities were controlled by the educated prostitutes affiliated with Diana worship and part of the cult of Diana was the use of ritual prostitution whereby the devotee became “joined” with the goddess through her priestesses, ensuring her favour throughout the year. This world was also known worldwide for the sacred prostitutes of the Temple of Diana. ALL young virgin girls were required to serve for a certain period of time in the temples as prostitutes before they could be permitted to marry. They included all girls belonging to the families of those who were followers of Jesus. The ancients considered sexual intercourse to be a re-enactment of the fertility cycle in nature, and that such re-enactments pleased the gods. They hoped that by offering up the bodies of all girls in the region, they would be blessed with abundant crops and herds in the coming year. For most of the population, their carnal human nature had no arguments against such “logic,” especially as it satisfied their deepest of lusts.
These were to whom Paul was writing, a world not unlike the one we live in now, morally bankrupt, inundated with perversion, drowning in depravity. I came to the conclusion in knowledge and understanding of the text, pretext and context-that this still very much applied to me!
Take-Off
So first I asked myself who I was. I didn’t know the answer to this so I moved on to my next question which was who I wanted to be. I didn’t have to look far as my heart was then as it is now; full of hope for the future and so this was much easier! On the eve of my 21st birthday I made a list, of everything I wanted to be and then came the shocking realities that surrounded me. Where I was screamed anarchy at everything my heart deeply desired. I was in a relationship with someone taking me further and further away from all the influences of culture that God has precisely placed me in from the moment of my conception, I was living with a friend who I knew would not go with me where I desired in my heart to go with God and I was in a church that was taking me away from God. Somehow I was becoming this horrible, ugly half baked excuse for a woman, twenty-one years old and dying, far from what my heart wanted and even farther from what my soul needed.
Freedom and reconciliation took time-but started something like this:
“Jesus, I believe that you are in my heart and that my heart wants what your heart wants. Please forgive me for the wrong I can’t seem to stop doing, please teach me to do right and please free me from every place, everything, and everyone that will keep my heart from moving forward towards your heart because my heart wants what your heart wants-Amen.”
FFwd…..
Three years later via a bumpy ride in which God answered that very simple prayer with a vigour that would shake me free from all my oppressions, I had been detangled from all my complicated relational and geographical situations. In the midst of these years, I had my mouth seriously dealt with and learned my most valuable personal lessons……
That covering up had to start from my mind, through my tongue-it simply had to be still and stop wagging. I also had to learn (somewhat the hard way) that a woman’s beauty is in her gracefulness, that I did not need to fight everyone about everything. I learned that I had to stop being seen everywhere, stop being at the top of every party list, stop answering to people too self absorbed to have my best interests at heart, stop putting everything I was on show, stop the public appearances and ultimately, stop undressing my heart and my body.
It took me a while, but in the end I discovered that my absolute glory was in my tongue being bridled into edifying as its sole priority, in my heart’s modesty, in my mind being subject to a Saviour and in my body being kept pure and holy by covering. This is what inspired me to write this post to challenge popular opinion on the covering as applied by Muslim women all over the world…….
Keep your eyes peeled for the second half to ‘Cover Me-In Front of You’!
Stay Fabulous
One Love
Bella.x
The Emancipation of Bella! 