Post the Fifth: Modesty

A series of posts I made to a forum which I have hopefully tied into a vaugely cohesive blog post.

I find it so hard to find good quality, modest clothes. I really need to buy myself some new clothes but I find it hard to justify the cost when I am trying to lose weight - hopefully a good 10kg this year.

Also, I have two daughters and I find it almost impossible to find them appropriate clothing.

Personally, I dont wear pants. Well I do own a few pairs. I have a pair of jeans that I sometimes wear under a skirt or dress. I have a pair of exercise pants that I wear for riding a bike or aerobics classes - neither of which I have done in a few years. But I wear mostly skirts and a few dresses (hard to find many dresses that are breastfeeding-friendly though). Skirts need to be at least knee length - mostly as I've switched to wearing skirts I've worked out that any shorter is too hard to be modest in while caring for little children and taking care of our home. I also don't show my cleavage to people! If you can see the crease between my breasts then my shirt is WAY too low cut. A lot of shirts and dresses I end up wearing a singlet underneath.

My boys... They don't wear clothes with skulls on them or inappropriate slogans (like "I'm a little monster"). They have shirts on all the time too. My girls... skirts or dresses, with shorts or bike pants or leggings or thick winter stockings underneath for modesty as necessary. I don't like any crude slogans on their shirts like "Drama Queen" etc.

Oh and everyone's clothes (shirts or dresses) have sleeves. Partly as a sun safety thing anyway but also for modesty.

When swimming the kids and I wear rash shirts and boardies over our swimmers. Again partly sun safety, partly modesty.

I want to make it clear that while I feel that this is the most God-honouring way for me and my family to dress, I don't condemn Christian women who dress differently - ie wear pants etc. I do have difficulty understanding married, Christian women who wear very revealing clothing but that is between them and God (and all the men who sin by looking at them lustfully... hmm... that's a whole 'nother post... I'll step down from my soap-box).

I am not wonderful at sewing but I have sewn myself a few skirts before. I find the fastenings the most difficult part - I'm no good at sewing zippers in! The more I think about it, the more I think I need to get myself some sewing lessons and a sewing machine and sew our clothes. Op shopping unfortunately doesn't yield a lot that is modest and not completely ugly (especially in my size). I think I will sew some skirts, but shirts and dresses are the problem. I like to wear dresses but there aren't many that are breastfeeding-friendly.

I am trusting God for provision and I've been praying for some more clothes, and some ingenuity to make my current, limited wardrobe work. Current because I don't want to spend a fortune on fabric on something that wont fit in six months because I've lost weight. Limited because at least half of my clothes don't fit at the moment and I've had to discard some with holes, some are getting a bit see-through from a lot of wear etc.

Even when I lose weight, a lot of my clothes are wearing out from being worn so much. But I can justify the investment more when I know I'll get more wear out of them.

My conversation with DH re this was enlightening. He'd like me to wear more feminine clothes and some more feminine colours (standard wardrobe being denim, dark green and brown). We're going to have to trust God for the provision of those (even thru great op shop purchases) because we can't afford to do a wardrobe revamp. Plus also perhaps wearing different combinations of clothes to make them look more feminine or using accessories I might already have. Creativity is the order of the day I think :-).

- - - - - -

I don't know what has made me so scared of looking different these days.

As a teen I still wanted to look good but was happy having my own sort of style.

I guess as an adult I still feel like I'm kind of "finding myself" as far as a style of clothing goes. The journey towards modesty didn't even start until after #2 was born. Up until then I wore pants almost always (actually he was almost 1yo when this all started).

So the almost-ubiquitous jeans were replaced by denim skirts. Shirts stayed kind of the same although looser.

In 2008, after losing a lot of weight, I bought some more feminine skirts - some tiered cotton ones (from Tree of Life) but they keep tearing a lot.

I like dressing femininely and looking feminine but it wasn't really how I was brought up. So I still need to work on moving and sitting/standing in a more feminine way because it's not how I grew up. I still need to work out what I feel comfortable in and what suits me while still looking feminine. And some of the modest outfits available online are nice but in some ways too obviously modest. I want to be modest without making the statement that says "See how modest I am" and "I'm very different from you" by my clothes. Feminine doesn't have to equal peter pan collars! LOL! and some of those styles of dress aren't all that feminine anyway...

More things to ponder...

One can be modest and still not really be that different to men - it is easy to be modest and still lack femininity. So femininity, with modesty, is what I am working on at the moment.

I guess the other thing is that while the Bible makes it clear that women should dress like women, and men like men, and also makes clear that we are to be modest and discreet, it doesn't set out guidelines for hemlines, sleeve length and so on.

So as long as a woman is modest, discreet and dressing like a woman, then I think the rest of it is freedom. I personally choose not to wear pants (on the whole) because of the way they make me feel, which is a way that is not what would please God.