Skirt vs. Girl

Well.

Well. Well. Well.

The skirt challenge has come to an end.

Guess who has a really hard time wearing pants now? This girl.

I have definitely fully re-embraced pants, but it’s just not the same. I wear them and I enjoy them, but I just feel less girly.

Sigh. In the skirt vs. girl challenge: skirt won.

Dang it.

I’m still going to wear pants though. I love my sweats. I cannot get enough of them. But I am certain I will be wearing more skirts/dresses than I used to thanks to this challenge.

Now, in my last blog I pretty much explained what I was learning about the way wearing skirts was helping me to understand my femininity more; that they are an outward manifestation of an inward reality. And that this inward reality was the feminine soul that the good Lord gave me.

I pretty much left you all with that: the feminine soul. I was trying to figure out how to be more feminine, and I came to the conclusion that I should be more like Our Mother, Mary.

Well. Let me tell you. I am awful slow at picking up my own advice.

I did ask myself WWMD more often than before, but it actually didn’t hit me too hard until this past weekend. I was on a retreat called “Suffering Redeemed,” with my fellow grad students. It ended with us celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday (woowoo!). It was a gorgeous retreat, and I had a great time; it was during Adoration that this revelation of womanhood came to me.

I was rereading “The World’s First Love” by Fulton J. Sheen (if you haven’t read it, stop reading this blog, go to the bookstore, purchase it, and start now), and I decided to use his meditations on the Joyful Mysteries while I said my rosary. I know, I know. I was supposed to be thinking about suffering – but! It all worked out in the end, don’t you worry:

I got to the first Joyful Mystery, which is the Annunciation, and FJS said this: “A woman’s role is to be the medium by which God comes to man.”

Brain. Explosion.

I sat there and I thought to myself, well of course Mary’s role was to be the Mediatrix for Christ, which is just one of the reasons she is so stinkin’ awesome. BUT what FJS is saying here reigns true for human relationships as well. Women are meant to bring God to man. Man is to bring God to woman. In marriage, man and woman are to “become Christ” to one another in order to bring one another closer to God and to love more fully and perfectly (Dr. Asci says “Who can love you or your spouse more than God? No one! So in order to love your spouse most perfectly, you need to become God!”).

So I sat there and pondered this in my little brain. Hmm… hmmm… hmmmmmmmmmmm….. shoot. If I want to be a good woman, I should bring God to man[kind]. How can I do that? Aha! Be like Mary! Of course! Just what I have been telling myself! Well. How do I become more like her? Let’s see… she was patient, kind, trusting, obedient, faithful, and humble, loved unconditionally, among many other things (her virtues and their Scripture references can be found here).

Then I came to the horrible realization that I stink at pretty much all of those things.

But I was ok with this realization. Jesus and I were hanging out, and despite me being bad at being a girl, he loves me anyway. So I then went through the rest of the Joyful Mysteries and learned all about being a woman of God through them. Here’s a brief rundown:

The Visitation: Mary’s JOY at sharing her Son. She doesn’t wait to share him with Elizabeth. And p.s. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Yeah. Our feminine souls should do that too.

The Birth of Jesus: Humility. Hard. Core. Humility. Giving birth in a barn? Wrapping your first and only child in swaddling clothes and putting him in a manger? When you KNOW he’s GOD?

The Presentation: Suffering. Suffering out of pure love. Suffering out of love in order to attain a higher good. And a pure and total gift of self. Mary gave her whole body to Christ, both in the sense that she provided her flesh as a means of his nourishment and Incarnation, as well as spiritually by virtue of her fiat. And she knew there would be suffering, and she still said yes! Talk about trust!

The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple: Keeping our eyes on Christ, and finding refuge in Our Lady, who experienced three days without Jesus. Sin is the loss of Christ. Losing him for three days, FJS explains, gave Our Mother an understanding of “the gnawing heart of every sinner.” Ouch.

So, in conclusion, the skirt challenge really pushed me to think about authentic femininity this Lent. I thought about it a TON, and a week later I am still trying to get it straight. Why was I wearing a skirt? Why was it feminine? Because of the inward reality it represents: that I am woman and I am awesome. And how can I be a great woman who is truly feminine? Be like my Momma: bring Christ to others. Being more like Mary is only going to help me grow in my feminine identity and increase my ability to be the master of my own mystery, and to grow in the feminine genius. She, with the Holy Spirit, will lead me straight to her Son, because she knows he is the coolest of cool, and the manliest of men, and he’ll help me live out my femininity the way Our Father in Heaven made me.  (WHOA Trinity! Hold up!)

Keep your eyes and heart fixed on the Lord.

 Happy Easter!

Ashley