dear women

Single Threads is not a platform for discussing current events. Mostly because I'm no good at it. But there's something about what's been trending online that I can't leave alone.  

_______poses topless for________.

 Nude photo of______makes the front of________magazine.

 _______tweets image of her...

These headlines trend all last week. And with everything in me, I want to reach past them. To take the hand of these women. To look them in the eye, and speak soft and gentle and firm. To tell them something like this...

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Dear women, nudity sells. Topless will always trend. Our bodies? Always have a buyer. 

My guess is, you get this.

But I don't think you get who you are. 

Whether or not you feel it, like it, or believe it, you are made in the image of God. He formed you in your mother's womb. You bear in your body the indelible mark of this Creator. It's what makes you so beautiful. 

And get this: He didn't create you to be the way you are today.

Because everyday the world paints us glossy with its message. Liberated! Empowered! Cast off morality! Be yourself! Do what you like! It's your body. Your life. You own it. Flaunt it. Be shocking. Break down respectable. You're worth it. Want it? Get it. Do it. Live it. At all cost. 

And like the emperor in his new clothes, we believe these words. We thrash about in our power and right thinking we are making ourselves. We expose, and flaunt, manipulate, and consume. But we're not making. We're destroying.

You see, broken people will always break things. 

And the broken festers just under that shiny, painted veneer. You'll find it as a vicious gnawing for acceptance. Acrid lust eating at your very center for something, anything that hints of love. Obsession for whatever empowers, satisfies, and pleasures you. Poison of must-have-more that pushes through your veins. From the very Garden of Eden, humanity chose this path of destruction. And, try as we might, we cannot stop our feet from hitting that path the moment we're birthed into this spinning world.  

But understand this: you don't have to be this way.

Our Creator came to earth as Jesus Christ to bind up our throbbing broken. Came, and we were so enamored with our own way that we hung Him on a cross. But this was His plan all along. For in dying? He killed death. Destroyed destruction. Paid for that evil choice His creation has made. Paid it in full. Bearing all our brokenness in His own body on that cross. Smitten, so we need not be slapped senseless by our own lust anymore. Then, after three days, He rose from the grave. And in doing that?

God laid another path. 

Dear women, I'm on that path. God placed me on it the moment I believed what He'd done for me through Jesus Christ. And listen close. I mean, don't miss this: Now, those destructive desires? (yes, I have them too) They're what's broken. Their power over me? Crushed like the head of a serpent after a mighty blow. And I'm whole. 

God remade me that night I believed on Him. I'm complete. I know such perfect acceptance, love, and satisfaction in Him that there's no need to wring it from those around me. Don't need to believe this world's glitter sheen: I've the solid-real of Truth. Don't need to scream me! at all who will hear. I've found my identity in my Creator. And you can find this too. 

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Dear women, you don't have to expose yourself to make yourself. You've been made. 

And though broken now, you can be made whole. 

Beth