Embracing Your Sexuality and Modesty

In my 20’s I dressed how I felt. In came religion so I stopped. I was told we were no longer to dress “like the world”. First Timothy two and nine was always used which states, "And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes."

Soon as I was engaged to be married, the sermons were thrown at me to “cover up” as I was about to be wife of a minister who would also pastor, so I should not "cause men to sin".

From that point on I dressed as “modest” as possible. Look at pics of me pre-locs and you see the difference in the way I dressed then and after. I have a dope shape but I’d do everything to cover it because I’d be so in fear of “causing men to sin”.

But I learned what modesty was and more importantly what modesty was not. I found that the more I learned to embraced my sexuality, the less I lived in fear of, as they say, "causing men to sin".

After having 5 babies I said “NO MORE policing my modesty. GOD KNOWS MY HEART. I will NO LONGER be repressed even in this”.

Six years ago my former assistant chose a dress for our family photoshoot. I was nervous as hell like, “You sure this gon fit ME”? She said, “Girl yes this the one”. My husband and children loved it and we had a good time at that shoot.

I decided to post the pic online and lord...let the condemnation begin. I was inboxed. dee emmed. Texted. Called. Told I looked like a sex worker. Said that I had fallen away from God. Said that my husband needed to check me. Asked what kinda example I was setting for my daughters all over a damn dress. They didn’t bother to see it was a family shoot and I’ve never worn the dress since. They didn’t bother to notice this was the body of a mother of 5. They didn’t take time to notice the stretch marks from the constant weight gain and loss from having five babies in eight years and that I was finally not ashamed of them being seen. No. I was a sinner woman causing men to sin.

But you see, modesty is not about the clothes, it’s about the heart. It’s about the freedom to love God while loving my body knowing that my works and the way I carry myself in that dress or not, commands respect and show’s Godliness and no ones’ misjudgment can stop that truth.

Embracing Your Sexuality is a God given right even in apparel and I no longer allow misused bible verses to refrain me from embracing it.

~ OEV