Fundamentalist Underwear

I love period costumes. Anything from the 1700 or 1800s I just adore. I wish that people dressed like that today. We would look so sophisticated. While I love the clothing from that era, my real passion lies in the undergarments. I recently took a history of fashion class and my final project and paper was on the evolution of undergarments. I love underwear. But, my favorite kind of underwear is the corset. It fascinates me. I think it is just genius. An instant waist shrinker. For those of a not-so-delicate build, like me, you would have to appreciate the implications of this contraption. Imagine going from a size 22 to a 12, or a 16 to an 8? And all you have to do get dressed in the morning. I love corsets so much that I own two and I have patterns for three different kinds.
While the romantic ideals of the corset are wonderful, the fact is that they destroyed women’s bodies and made it impossible for women to do the simplest things. In the Victorian era women were cinched in, sometimes, 15 inches. Most corsets were constructed out of stiffened cloth and whalebone. During the French Revolution in the 1800s society took a break from the all-constricting undergarment and instead of women celebrating their new freedom they started dieing. You see, a lady of breeding wore a corset from about the age of twelve or thirteen. Women never learned to use their lungs to their full capacity and never developed core muscles, so that holding their own backs up was physically impossible. Because they didn’t know how to use their lungs properly women got sick from being over oxygenated and were more prone to diseases such as pneumonia. The only option was to be bound up again in a corset.
Throughout history we see women returning to the restrictive garment and molding their bodies into a shape that doesn’t tend to occur naturally. I think it is the same spiritually. There was a time in my life when I went through a fundamentalist “holier than thou” phase in my life. Everything that had even a hint of this earth was beneath me, people weren’t allowed to make mistakes and no one, and I mean absolutely no one was allowed to tell me how live my life regardless of how I was acting or behaving. What does all of this have to do with underwear you may ask? Well, here it is.
As I grew deeper and deeper into my holier than thou phase it was almost like I was tightening the corset that was around my waist. I couldn’t go to parties, what if people were going to be having fun? Where would that lead? I couldn’t go out with my friends, they might have problems--- and besides how would it look if Jesus showed up to take us all to heaven and I was caught with people who weren’t saved? I even had a problem with Church. You see my Church (as all Churches should be) was open to anyone who wanted to worship. To a pretentious, pompous, self-righteous, uhhhh…cow that is a definite no-no. You see I was trying to live as Jesus, perfect, pure and holy. I just forgot one simple component. Jesus lived with and loved the people of this earth.
With everyday I got more and more uptight and at every turn my corset got a little bit tighter. I got so caught up in presenting a God-like portrait to the world that during worship, instead opf falling on my knees before God all I could think about was that part of the song that the worship team played wrong. Praying no longer held any joy for me because part of me felt that God was beneath me. And reading my Bible—forget it, I wasn’t in the mood to be humble enough to accept God’s word. I knew that I was a sinner, but somehow I was convinced that my sins weren’t as bad as those around me and with just a little bit more discipline I could get rid of my own sin (my own sin!! Can you believe the implications of this statement?). I acted as though somehow I had been granted the privilege of being able to stand in front of God and expose my friends as the wretched sinners that they were.
My lowest moment was when I heard that my friend had slept with her boyfriend and was afraid that she might be pregnant. Upon the advent of hearing this news my mind was not full of thoughts for my friend, it was full of thoughts of how I would never be caught in a situation like that and how sexually pure and moral my current relationship was. I was so blinded by my attitude that I did not see that if my boyfriend and I kept carrying on the way we were we could have just as easily ended up in that very situation. Looking back it shocks me to see how mean I was. Instead of walking her through the vastness of God’s grace, my boyfriend and I threatened to squeal to the youth pastor if they didn’t come clean to him within the next week. It was done under the guise of helping them get counseling, but I’m sure that if you were there with me that day you could plainly see that it was done so that I could feed my false sense of security and so that I could deflect attention away from me and my crumbling spiritual walk onto some one who had “real problems”.
This corset was great because it hid my faults from the world. No one had to know about the lie I told or the guy that I looked at, as long as I was pretending to be Miss Super Christian 2005. However, as the months dragged on my corset started to have a mind of its own and began to take complete and total control. Like a Boa Constrictor it began to squeeze the life out of me. As the air was being squeezed from my lungs it became harder and harder to mask the pain that now consumed my chest and abdomen. I was cinched in at every corner, and every time that I thought that the corset could not get any tighter it did. My act fooled everybody, people came to me for advice, they came to learn from my wisdom and to hear what God had been teaching me, they came to me for prayer but the sad thing is that I had nothing to offer them because inside I was dying from hunger and thirst. My soul was literally starved for love and grace, but I was the only thing stopping me from receiving it.
It took God a long time to untangle the mess that I had created and there were many dark and silent days as I learned the gravity of my actions, but God pulled me through it nonetheless. He guided me through dark deep valleys and cold gloomy winters and in the end set me on the highest hill so that I may never walk without Him again. God stripped me bare and the process was harder than pretending to be fine but it had to be done. He bound up my wounds and healed me to my full capacity. When I look back on those days I shudder and mourn, but I also realize that it wouldn’t be difficult to step back into that again. God doesn’t want that for me and He for sure doesn’t want that you. Maybe you spend time with Him everyday and maybe for some of you your Bible and prayer journal are being held captive by the dust bunnies under your bed. Whatever it is break them free and crack them open, get active in His grace and swim in His love. Anything less than that is only damaging. For someone who has been there, run now. Run back to His arms, He will untie that corset and allow you to breathe in His majesty. Don’t put it off, no amount of pretending will or ever could save you. His love is too precious not to be a part of.