And as I grow older, I can't help but look at the older Christian women I admire, to think about what makes them who they are. I want to grow like they do, to be more and more filled with Christian beauty as the years go by.
I also begin to take a back seat to a lot of younger ladies' lives, and I witness how these young women come of age and learn "adulting" in so many different ways.
That one quality is femininity.
Being feminine doesn't mean being helpless, or worthless, or ditzy, or dumb. True femininity is not weakness or ignorance. If anything, biblical femininity is an image of strength and wisdom and noble character.
Being feminine means rejoicing in my identity as a woman. It means reveling in the fact that God made me a woman out of His perfect will and sovereign wisdom. Being a woman comes with its unique blessings and unique challenges, and femininity acknowledges and embraces them all.
Femininity comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. For some people, it means dresses and long hair and high voices and sweet smiles. For others, it means acting in a distinctly womanly way even while defying traditional expectations in the workplace, the sports arena, or the academe. In my husband's words, femininity is that intangible quality where someone just "is a girl." A woman can be wearing jeans and a T-shirt and sport short hair but still be irrefutably female with her presence.
Men are drawn to biblical femininity. But, even more importantly, God is pleased when we ladies, young and old, live out biblical femininity.
Biblical femininity involves kindness, and joy, and gentleness. It involves being equal image-bearers with men while embracing our role as women. It's pruning and growing the fruit of the spirit in every aspect of our being. And as with so many things in life, it involves accepting God's plan and living it out to the fullest.
Time and time again, I see young ladies on a global stage or in my personal circles trying to avoid femininity - thinking of it as a curse rather than a gift. They inevitably encounter frustration. They grow increasingly embittered by their own choices to defy what God has made us women to be.
We as women can intuit, and nurture, and organize like nothing else. We can take charge of the things entrusted us and assist in the things in which we're called to help. Some of us are called to do that in the context of a family - as daughters, as sisters, as mothers, as wives. Some of us are called to do that in entirely different ways.
But I rejoice that we all can welcome the gift of femininity and to allow it to permeate every facet of our lives. We may fulfill that calling differently: in different roles and different outfits and different eras and generations.
But God made us women for a reason, and we get the unique privilege of serving Him best when we embrace the gift of femininity that He has chosen to give to us. To desire anything less is to lose out on the beauty of His promise and His will.
