YES. I was frustrated. Certain childish behaviors were getting worse and worse and worse until I was feeling like throwing a tantrum of my own. The dawdling. The forgetting. The bickering. Little needles of irritation pricking me again, and again, and again.

And then I realized it. I was supporting all those bad behaviors, feeding them, letting them grow the deep roots of entrenched habit, and doing it all in the name of virtue. I was failing in my job as mother and destroying the tenor of my home, and I was doing it by being “patient.”

In my renewed effort at being longsuffering, I had instead become tolerant, clenching my teeth a little tighter as I smiled and reminded my way past every offense, and my children figured out that they could get away with just a little bit more, a little more sin, a little more unhappiness, a little more selfishness in our home. All because I’d tried to crack down on my own grumpiness and become more “patient” with the children.

There was a time when I imagined myself an expert on immediate discipline, on sweetly asking once, and then meting out consequences if my request was not swiftly and cheerfully obeyed. I was firm. I was steadfast…. And then I had kids. And somehow the waters got muddied by my own desire not to be harsh and unbending, to be patient. But this created cycles. And at the bottom swing of each round, I was very harsh and unbending, and also ungodly. It’s really easy for me to be a firm disciplinarian when I’m motivated by frustration, when I’ve had it up to here, and “you all had better fall in line, or else.” But then I feel that guilty nudge of conviction, resolve to be more patient, and often wind up suffering until I get frustrated again.

But patience is not “putting up with.” It doesn’t mean that we overlook it when our children run wild, push our buttons, and are inconsiderate of each other. A patient mother is a faithful mother, dutifully, calmly, joyfully correcting, and disciplining, and stopping immature and inconsiderate behaviors again and again, tirelessly nipping them in the bud. It means that while I’m correcting, I’m not losing my temper, not that I just don’t correct.

How do you and your baby communicate with each other?

My baby communicates with me by fussing and squirming, and I communicate with her using the phrase, “Would you like to go potty?” Most people who do EC use some kind of little noise, like “psh psh,” but that just didn’t fit my personality. I’m a word person. I wanted to use something real. I did realize, however, that it would be a long time before my baby was parsing the individual words in the sentence, so I’ve been careful to use the same tone and inflection every time. She had clearly learned that this was her cue by the time she was only a few weeks old. So far, she has been willing to go potty in a great many different places just based on having her diaper off and hearing me say this phrase. (I do have to be careful that the location isn’t too interesting, though, or she’ll just look around and forget to relax and go.)

I learned the hard way not to give her the cue until I had everything completely ready. When she was a couple of weeks old, we were heading into the bathroom to go potty and found it occupied by my three-year-old son. He was just finishing up, and I started taking off the baby’s diaper so we’d be all set when our turn came. Absently as I pulled it off, I said, “Would you like to go potty?” meaning it literally that time, and not as the cue. But my little girl immediately let fly–right on her brother’s head.

Is there a reliable timing of when your baby needs to go potty, and how did you figure it out?

The timing is fairly reliable. I started with my EC-ing friend’s advice that I should take my baby immediately when she woke up. And when she was a newborn, she slept so much that this was very nearly the only timing I needed to know. As she has grown and spent more time awake, I have simply observed the times that she had wet diapers and watched for a pattern. The times I’ve found she often needs to go are upon waking, immediately after eating, and right before a position change. (These are quite similar to the times when older children and even adults need to use the bathroom as well.)

Do you experience times when you catch the right moment, not through signs and timing, but simply through intuition?

This terrified me before I started. I kept reading stuff that made EC sound mystical, like you “just know” when your baby has to go. People would even talk about hearing words in their heads. That pretty much killed the whole idea of EC for me right there. I thought, “there’s no way. I will never, ever ‘just know.’” But it turns out, you don’t have to. Maybe, maybe once or twice I’ve caught a potty need on intuition alone, but it could just be that I realized it had been awhile since my baby’s last trip to the bathroom. For me, it hasn’t been any more mystical than any other area of baby care like figuring out that my baby is hungry and needs to nurse. Simple, straightforward pattern recognition, cues and timing, nothing magic.

Are your husband, your children and your close friends also involved in your baby’s potty training?

My husband is my cheering section and the head of my PR department. Nothing could be more motivating than hearing him tell people about how our baby goes potty in the bathroom. And at the beginning, when I was still getting used to my baby’s signals, my children were good helpers in listening for that special grunty fuss. Friends have been a big support, too, and if it weren’t for my friend who actually let me see her baby going potty, I don’t know if I would have ever even tried EC. But as far as actually taking my baby to the bathroom, except for a handful of times she’s gone for her Daddy, I’m the one who gets the joy of doing it. My baby actually gets pretty distracted when there are other people watching her, and the one time a friend tried to take her, my baby didn’t go.

Does EC support good health?

The main health benefit of EC that I have seen has been that my baby has virtually no diaper rash. My first three children were going through tube after tube of Desitin, but now that I’m doing EC, my baby’s skin is dry nearly all the time, and we’ve gone nearly nine months on a partially used tube of Desitin left over from my third baby’s diaper rash days.

Do you believe that EC is having a positive influence on the development of your child?

Well, I think it might be. This baby is certainly much happier than my first three and more communicative. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but it seems like it would make sense that being more comfortable and having more chances to meaningfully express herself would make a little person happier and more willing to reach out. In fact, my baby learned her first word at eight and a half months old. She very clearly says “Mama” when she wants me to nurse her. It’s possible that she got some heavy-duty linguistic gene and would have been talking early without EC, but success breeds success, and I can’t help but wonder if having me treat all her little babbles as meaningful gave her a jump start.

Is your decision to practice EC in coherence with your Christian convictions and lifestyle?

I certainly don’t think that all Christian mothers must practice EC. The Bible never says a thing about it, so in a very large sense, it is just a personal preference. But in that I am a Christian and my faith permeates every aspect of my life and thinking, there is a sense in which my practice of EC is touched by my Christianity, particularly my Lord’s command to treat others the way I would like to be treated.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. –Matthew 7:12

If I were unable to walk myself to the bathroom, I know I would much rather have someone take me than put me in a diaper and change me at their convenience (like I did with my first three children). That’s a big thing that keeps me going on this strange path. I’m treating my baby the way I would like to be treated myself.

A few weeks ago, a sweet young woman in Switzerland, who has dropped by my blog from time to time, contacted me and asked if she could interview me for a paper she was writing as part of her medical assistant program. (After e-mailing back and forth a few times, we discovered that she actually goes to the same church as our very dear friends in Switzerland–small world!) I was glad to answer her questions, and she graciously agreed to let me post the interview on my blog. I have divided it into parts, and her questions are in italics.

What was your motivation to start EC?

My original motivation for starting EC was that I hoped it would make potty training easier. As a mother of three, going on four small children, I was deep in the throes of potty training trauma, facing the laundry, the carpet cleaning, the wet footprints leading away from puddles, and worst of all, the awful frustration of having a toddler oblivious to messy pants. Proponents of EC claim that babies are born with the same aversion that older humans have to soiling themselves. It’s just that we train it out of them by forcing them to sit in their own waste for two years or so while they’re wearing diapers. Then one day, we decide it’s time for them to hate going in their pants and prefer going to the potty. But why should they? We just spent the last two years teaching them not to care.

After struggling through potty training two older children the traditional way and facing an upcoming third round with my toddler who was still in diapers, I was very interested in seeing if I could improve things the next time around by avoiding making my baby get used to going in her diaper.

But now, after nearly nine months of EC, I have a different motivation (though I’m still very curious to see how potty training goes). When I started EC, I was focused on the “E,” but now my focus is more on the “C.” The feeling of needing to go potty makes my baby uncomfortable, and I can help her feel better. It’s another need I can meet, another call I can answer. She talks, in grunty little baby words. And I understand, just like when she needs warmth, or food, or cuddles. I can’t imagine not doing it.

How is it possible to practice EC along with your busy daily routine?

Before I started, I was really concerned about the time investment. But usually, it only takes a minute to take her to the bathroom and let her go, and it slips easily into my day like nursing and changing diapers. If she finishes nursing, or wakes up from a nap, or is about to change positions (from baby sling to playing on the floor, for example), I take her to the bathroom to see if she needs to go. I don’t really notice the time loss any more than I notice the time loss from helping my older children in the bathroom.

Has the fact that you started EC changed much in your habits of caring for babies, for example, how you dress them?

My baby clothes preferences have changed a bit. I try to keep my baby in clothes that allow quick access in the bathroom and that also allow me to check easily to see if my baby has already gone in her diaper and needs a change rather than a trip to the potty. In the summer, dresses were ideal, but now that it’s cold, I mostly use sleepers with snaps on both legs that can be quickly opened on the way to the bathroom. And most important are old fashioned cloth diapers (not the super-absorbent modern varieties). The baby needs to connect the feeling of wetness with going in her diaper.

But the bigger change has been in how I respond to my baby. When my older children napped, I would usually wait until they cried before I went in and picked them up. Now that I’m paying attention to pottying, I’ve learned that my baby wakes up and lies quietly for a minute or two, goes potty in her diaper, and then cries. So, whenever I can, I try to get her before she cries. This is harder to catch, of course, but if I see her little eyes open, I scoop her up and take her to the bathroom.

I also try to pay better attention to fussing. My baby will fuss and squirm just a bit before she goes. If I don’t notice that, eventually she will go in her diaper, and then she will really cry. With my older children, when I heard the early fussing, I would often just give them a little bounce in my arms as if they were bored and needed a distraction. Now, I’m trying to take my baby to the bathroom. Old habits die hard, though. And I frequently will discover that she’s wet, and then look back and see I had tried to bounce her without even thinking.

***

To be continued…

Don’t go, Mommy. I need you.

They’re sharing prayer requests, praying, eating the cookies I baked this afternoon. Someone knocks softly on my bedroom door, but my baby is nursing in her sleep, and I don’t want to yell to see who’s there. There are women here I wanted to talk to and a Hebrew lesson. I love Hebrew. I am missing that, too. Guilt tugs. I feel antisocial. Unspiritual. I try to unlatch and sneak off, but my baby coughs and cries and reaches for me.

Don’t go, Mommy. I need you.

And so I choose my little one and throw down some Baals of my own.

What will people think of you, skipping church? Shouldn’t you be ministering to the other women?

I’m ministering to my baby. And my family is my primary ministry, my most important assignment from the Lord.

You’re home all day with small children. You need some fellowship time, some adult conversation.

I get lots of fellowship time most weeks. And sometimes serving the Lord means denying yourself.

You should be out there learning. This is your chance to study God’s word, use your brain, expand your horizons. Don’t you deserve a little intellectual stimulation?

I can read while I lie here. I can think and pray. And again, sometimes, I have to deny myself.

Are you saying you’re supposed to be completely fulfilled with nothing but this baby?

No. I am completely fulfilled with nothing but the Lord. I will not bow down to any idols, not even the “acceptable” ones that my neighbors worship, like adult conversation, intellectual stimulation, and visible ministries. These are blessings when I get them, but as soon as they interfere with serving Christ, as soon as they cause me to fret and be dissatisfied with the work He has given me, as soon as I cannot be happy without them, then they are idols, and I must throw them down.

My baby rests against me, peaceful, sleeping away her sickness, cuddled up close. I am the only thing that makes her happy. And she is my example. There is only one thing that should make me happy, too.

Don’t go, Father. I need you.

A quick look at stats can be staggering. Every two minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. One in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Only six per cent of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. It’s horrifying.

But we are not truly helpless. Each one of us has the potential to change the tiny segment of society that we are in contact with every day. We are the salt of the earth, each of us is a grain of salt on rotting flesh, slowing the decay, spreading truth, and preserving life in the face of death. So what is the truth that preserves life in this case? What is the antithesis of a rape philosophy?

Some would say that the fundamental issue is equality. We need to encourage more respect of women’s fundamental equal value. If men didn’t see women as lesser beings, then they wouldn’t treat them as consumables. And certainly, respect for equal value is a part of the necessary attitude, but it can’t be the whole story. College campuses are some of the most egalitarian, almost artificially respectful environments, and yet one in four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus. Respecting a woman as a microbiologist or creative writer seems to have little effect on whether a man feel free to use her body for his own entertainment.

Now someone’s going to argue that those college guys who rape their classmates at frat parties don’t really respect the equality of women. I’d wager that the majority of frat boy rapists are thoroughly in favor of “equality.” Women should be treated just like men in voting, academics, the job market, and in the every person for him or herself world of sexual fulfillment where “I want what I want and I assume you do, too.” And “I want your body, so I’m going to take it. Why should I stop just because you said, no? Why is what you want more important than what I want? We’re equals. Let’s have a tousle for it. If you win, maybe you can run away, but if I win…” Which, by the way, is exactly the way men treat each other. Men “rape” other men all the time. It just isn’t always physical.

The most crucial attitude is not merely one of respecting equality, but of actively cherishing women. A man with an anti-rape philosophy protects women rather than abusing them, or even just leaving them to fend for themselves. It’s not that he thinks of a woman as his equal but that he recognizes the places where she isn’t and takes it as a sacred responsibility to man up and defend her, sacrificially if he has to. The average man is capable of physically overpowering the average woman. If he does not cherish her, if he views his own desires as the highest value in the universe, then all he needs is opportunity, and another statistic goes down on the rape pages.

Cherishing starts when a man understands that women do not exist for his enjoyment, that their beauty is not an advertisement for a free buffet, that he has no right to any woman’s body, and that women deserve to be valued, protected, and defended, not just because they’re smart, or gifted, or in any other way worthy of respect, but because they are a weaker vessel, meant to be honored like fine china is meant for hand washing and careful stacking, not rough chucking over the backseat of the car like a fry box after a hasty meal. Cherishing means a man is guarding his daughters and watching out for his sisters. It means he’s checking up on what men they’re with and what their intentions are. It means he’s giving other men the message that he will not leave women alone in the world. It means taking away opportunities from men who are looking for them. 1 Peter 3:7 is addressed to husbands, but I think it gives a fair assessment of how God views women and the way He wants them to be cared for.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. –1 Peter 3:7

Instilling this attitude in our sons is a tiny positive step we can take towards making sure that our daughters live in a safer world.

“I know! The dolls can be our children! And they always do everything we say. And they never hit each other. And they never say, ‘You BAD!’” (That’s an insult at our house.)

“Wow,” I said. “What is your secret for having such wonderful children?”

“I dunno,” my son replied matter-of-factly. “Just discipline. Just watchin’ ‘em.”

He’s right. We like to make it a lot more complicated. Probably because the working out is so often sticky, and fraught with judgment calls, and plagued by our own sinful selfishness. But at the end of the day, as long as we are leaning heavily upon the Lord and acknowledging Him in everything we do, then, yeah, that really is the secret: just discipline, just watchin’ ‘em.

The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. –Proverbs 29:15

When measured against the average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more socially engaged (69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population). Average income for homeschoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers also were happier; 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population.

You can read the rest here.

***

Socialization. It’s one of the most common arguments against homeschooling. In fact, when I tell people that I’m a homeschool graduate, they almost never ask me if I thought I had a good education, or if I felt prepared for adulthood. No, the question I nearly always get is, “What did you do about socialization?” For most of my life, I have said things like, “Actually, I had more friends when I was homeschooled than I did when I was in public school.” But this week, I had an experience that made me realize that true socialization is a lot more than having other kids to play with. True socialization is gaining the ability to behave socially (and therefore, not anti-socially); it’s mastering the skill of getting along with people.

With my husband out of town on business, I decided to console my children (and myself) with a trip to the local children’s museum, figuring that we’d pretty much have the place to ourselves on a Thursday morning, a welcome change after enduring Saturday crowds on our previous visits.

My first clue that I had made a miscalculation came as we entered the front door and saw giant bins marked with the names of local schools and the word, “lunches.”

“Hmm,” I thought, “there must be some school groups here today. I guess it won’t be as empty as I’d thought.”

It turned out to be just as crowded as on the weekends, only this time, instead of being crowded with families, it was only children, everywhere. Of course, there were a few teachers and volunteer parents, but they were milling around, trying to watch everyone, and therefore not really watching anyone very carefully.

It was chaotic, and several of the children were rather aggressive. We tried to visit the climb-in ambulance, but my two-year-old was nearly knocked down by a couple of gleeful, oblivious, big boys jumping out of it. Everywhere we went, children were running around, some of them getting right into whatever we were doing with seemingly no concept of waiting their turn, others abandoning whatever they were doing and wandering off the minute we approached, looking a little shell-shocked and beaten up. I got the impression that maybe they didn’t realize that I had every intention of making my children wait their turn.

We spent ages waiting in “line” (or perhaps “blob” is a better word) for a favorite experiment, and as we waited, I watched the interactions. First of all, the child who was using it (over, and over, and over) seemed completely unaware of how long she was taking or of how many children were waiting for a turn. Second, hoards of other children kept sidling up, trying to join in when it wasn’t their turn. They were greeted with shoves and dirty looks, which seemed to me to have a touch of pitiful desperation. My children were getting bored standing and waiting, but I explained to them that we had to wait for all the children who had gotten there ahead of us to try the experiment, and that then it would be our turn.

That’s when my daughter asked a profound question, “How do you know that’s how it works?” How do I know? How do I know that that is the way polite society functions? Where was I socialized to understand “first come first served,” “wait your turn,” etc.? And, for that matter, what is the best way to learn these things?

Many people assume that by constant interaction with lots of peers, children will pick up on the nuances of life, like not knocking down toddlers, and not cutting in “blob.” This is all part of the important skill of getting along with people, of being well “socialized,” but as I watched the mobs of kids bouncing around, vying for chances at the exhibits, and getting very little guidance about how to actually treat one another, I started thinking about another kind of social interaction: driving.

Just as we have social rules about not knocking into people, waiting your turn, staying in line, etc. for everyday life, we also have socially agreed upon rules for those exact things when it comes to driving. But with driving, we have a significantly different approach to learning those rules. I began to wonder what the roads would be like if we expected new drivers to learn to behave on the road the same way we seem to expect children to learn how to behave in school groups.

What if we put a whole bunch of people who’ve never driven before in cars in a big parking lot, and just let them drive? Would they eventually figure out how to behave at a four-way stop or how to merge with traffic? Or would we have exactly what I saw at the museum, a few aggressive, gleeful drivers, knocking into others, a few oblivious people doing their own thing, not noticing the effect it had on the others, and maybe a few self-preservationists, hiding off in the corners, feeling nervous, and not really getting anywhere?

You don’t learn things as complex as the rules of the road or the rules of etiquette by bumbling around with other people who also don’t know what to do. You learn by having someone with you telling you, “OK, this is what we do in this situation,” someone like the licensed adult who’s supposed to be sitting next to you when you have your learner’s permit.

When I got my permit, my dad took me to a nearly deserted parking lot, and sat beside me talking me through my first jerky attempts. Later, we moved on to driving on back roads with very few other drivers and Dad beside me all the time. Pretty soon, I was driving everywhere, but always with my mom or dad right next to me, coaching, until at last, I passed a test, and then I was off and driving on my own.

Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to approach socialization the same way: starting small with constant supervision and coaching, gradually adding more and more interactions, but keeping children right with their “licensed adult” parents, until they truly know how to behave? This is Dicipleship Parenting applied to socialization, and it makes the whole question of how children can be socialized without classroom time seem a lot less logical.

Of, course, you don’t become well socialized simply by being homeschooled. Just as you can’t learn to drive if you never get in the driver’s seat, children will never be socially savvy if they’re never around other people. The key is the coaching. Our children need lots of chances to interact with others, but slowly, step by step, back roads before interstates, and always with help.

The museum is a very different place on Saturdays. It’s crowded, but you never have to wait very long for an experiment because the socially adept parents see you standing there and help their children take a short turn, “so the other kids can try, too.” Rowdy children are corralled, collisions apologized for, and polite conversation skills practiced. “Say goodbye to the little girl. We’re going up to the next floor now.” “Say, ‘thank you.’ That boy just got down so you could have a turn.” This is the kind of socialization that’s going to help our children get places in life. And it’s virtually impossible to give it to them in a classroom environment.

As we walked away from the museum after our school group experience, my daughter said to me, “Why didn’t all those kids have their parents with them?” I couldn’t have asked a better question myself.

Squirming under the heavy weight of glossy photographs, I shifted in my waiting room chair. I had come to have my braces tightened, and I had picked up Seventeen. There, from the pages they stared up at me, with perfect make-up, and flawless skin, and curves, gorgeous curves in all the right places. I flipped through advice on back-to-school must-haves, and how to get sexy hair, and always they looked out at me, with heartless, silent laughter. The orthodontist’s assistant called my name, and I walked through the door, with a lump in my throat, believing I would never be good enough.

When we’re little girls, we want to be brides and mommies, queens of households. We get older and we want to be cherished, wanted, adored. And as we grow we get some idea of the type of girl who gets that much attention. We hope we’ll grow up to be beautiful, to have the sort of bodies that men are shopping for, that the magazines tell us are hot. And day by day, the blossom opens, until we stand in front of the mirror, all grown up, and many of us, especially those who have been steeped in the idealism of retouched images and skinny models, are crushed by what we see.

Some of the hopeful ones go on trying to follow the dictates of magazines and television, becoming increasingly immodest and plasticized as they compete with pixelated perfection for the attention they desire. The less hopeful just get depressed. And body image is tossed around as a buzzword for a secret feminine pain. We’re so liberated, but not really. In a large sense, women are still commodities, our worth defined by our bodies.

I want to share some of the things that have helped me start to get victory in this area, both to help anyone else who is struggling, and to help those of us who are moms know how to help our daughters understand themselves as women in this body-obsessed world.

Put yourself on a low-lie diet.
Certainly, women have coveted each other’s beauty for generations, but nowadays we have more provocation to covet than ever. Women today are surrounded by lies, the twisted half-truths of marketers hoping to profit from the feelings of inadequacy their lies create. They don’t care if you cry yourself to sleep over your imperfect skin as long as you shell out your money for Noxema or Oil of Olay. They don’t care if feeling outdated in the clothes God has provided for you makes you ungrateful and jealous of other women just as long as you send a little money their way for the latest issue of In Style. They don’t care if despair over not being as thin, or as busty, or as leggy as their cover girls leaves you borderline suicidal as long as you buy the new jeans in the ad on page nine. They want you to covet what you see in their pictures. They’re selling things, products and information, and the first rule of selling is that you have to create a need. That need is born in women’s natural desire to be desired and is fed by images of an unattainable standard. The marketing is designed to provoke you to covetousness, so that you’ll pay money to have a chance at measuring up. But you never will measure up because then you would stop needing their products and information.

Covetousness is a sin, a destructive poison that separates us from God. The first step in overcoming the demon of body image misery is refusing to listen to the lie that you need to look a certain way to be OK. Go on a media fast and detox. Turn the television off. Stop watching movies for a while. Quit reading the magazines that give you trouble. When I first realized how much the world’s impossible ideal was hurting me, I put a little Bible in my purse. In waiting rooms, I didn’t look at the magazines, I read the Bible instead. Even in the checklane at the supermarket, I refused to look at pictures that tempted me to covet what other women looked like. I pulled out my little Bible, and glued my eyes to it.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do our best to look beautiful. We absolutely should! Looking neat and clean and put together is a good testimony, a delight to our husbands, and a big emotional boost to ourselves. I’m just saying that if we’re feeling bad about ourselves, it can really help to shut of the voices that are screaming at us about not looking good enough.

Worship the Lord.
Covetousness is idolatry (Colossians 3:5), and coveting other women’s appearances means that we’re worshiping a false god of beauty, thinking that if we only looked thinner, or curvier, or had better hair that somehow we’d be happier, that our lives would be better. But true happiness is only found in God. Our lives are best when they are poured out in service to Him. When we are worshiping the true God, we weaken the power that false gods hold over us. And when we’re delighting in the Lord, it’s a whole lot easier to see that the world’s offers of happiness are counterfeits.

Trust your husband to the Lord.
For a lot of women, the “voices” that scream the loudest are the eyes of men. These women want desperately to be married, but they don’t feel like the type of woman that turns heads. Or, maybe they are married, but their husbands are always looking at other women. (I also talked about this situation in this post.) The women in the media just serve to further convince these women of all the ways they aren’t good enough for the attention they long for. Let me be a little blunt, when men are staring at women, taking long looks and second looks, they are almost always doing it for that little floaty zing it makes them feel. And that is just old-fashioned lust. It’s looking at a woman for the purpose of feeling sexual feelings. The Bible talks about this here:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. –Matthew 5:28

And guess what? Any woman is powerless to hold onto a man who is in this state. Men who have given themselves over to lust are going to look at every pair of x chromosomes that walks by, hoping for a zing. We women often think that if we were just prettier, if we just dressed a little better, if we just lost a few more pounds and looked more like those girls on the magazine covers then we’d win the great beauty pageant of life and be crowned with a husband’s unswerving attention. It just isn’t so. Men in that state are like women in a shoe store. It doesn’t matter if they have the perfect pair of strappy sandals tucked under their arm, they’re still going to linger over the half-price pumps.

A godly husband is from the Lord, and that’s true whether you’re hoping to be married, or you are broken over a current difficult marriage. Faithful, honorable men happen, not when their women reach a pinnacle of beauty that satisfies them so much they are never tempted to look at anyone else, but when the Lord get a hold of a man’s heart and teaches him to say with Job,

I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? –Job 31:1

Work on being adorned with good works.
Last of all, we should put our focus on what God thinks is beautiful, developing meek and quiet spirits (1 Peter 3:4), and being adorned with good works (1 Timothy 2:10). If you’re not married, this will greatly increase your chances of attracting a quality man, instead of a lust muffin anyway, and if you are married your husband will be blessed. Best of all, you’ll feel much more beautiful because you’ll be pleasing the Lord instead of obsessing over how you don’t measure up to the vanity of the world.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised. –Proverbs 31:30