danny and mommy asleepI love listening to Grace sing Adele.  She is so soulful, and in tune as she sway’s back in forth to the music. She sounds amazing, and I often pity the fool who ever messes with her someday or breaks her heart. When you’ve got that much soul at 5, you are going to be something else…

Yesterday I was driving with my son Jonah and his friend to an event at their middle school.  When we were at the stop light there were three girls there waiting to cross. Jonah said, “They go to our school.” When I looked at them I didn’t notice their faces, but how incredibly tight and short their shorts were barely covering their backsides.  It made me so sad.  And please don’t say that’s the style, so were fanny packs…and really?!

In the past year one of my biggest soap boxes has been body image in regards to our girls and boys.  But I also have, as I now raise someone who is growing older, and has started the transition from boy to man…have someone who notices and is aware of how girls are dressing. Aware of how “sexiness” is promoted.  It is so screwed up. It’s not like this is new, James Bond, had ladies oozing with sexiness. But the age of those becoming and acting “sexy” is getting younger and younger.

Some of it is deathly serious…

Human trafficking is sky rocketing.  It is a huge issue and one of the biggest “hot spots” is in Portland Oregon.  It’s not so far away. Children having their entire world stolen to become a sex slave.

Pornography is still a huge issue. Pornography ruins lives.  And is an addiction.

And then some of it is all around us desensitizing us.

I am doing my best to teach my sons to not objectify women, but society and every other outside influence are not helping.  Why in the hell are we still keeping “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition” out on our coffee tables? What does that say to my son? What does that say to my daughter?  I thought we were past the age of women pushing their boobs together on cars, mouth slightly open, and then I see an ad in the grocery store, while my son and I buy notebook paper.  I wanted to crawl in the magazine and give her a blanket, or drive her to the beach. I want to tell her she’s beautiful and she doesn’t need to push her boobs together to prove that.

What do I say?  Because it’s ok to think someone is attractive. We were created by God to do just that.  But the level of objectifying and “hotness” has messed up the true, real, meaning of what sexiness is.  If we promote and act that way, what we are we teaching our sons, or our daughters.  I want Grace to be a little girl.  She should have that right. It’s the reason she can’t wear two piece swim suits, and I will always monitor the length of her skirts and shorts, not because I think she wants to be sexy but because of how skewed and sick others are – because she deserves to feel pretty because of who she is, not how she looks.

My husband and I are madly in love. And while I don’t think of myself as sexy, he is the only person I need that gratification from.  I am committed to only him. Not social media, not the world.  And he loves me and finds me most attractive, in my tattered sweatshirt, first thing in the morning as I peel the five year old’s foot off my face. He loves me when I am surrounded by chaos at the dinner table, and we lock eyes and know we are perfect for each other.  Sexiness is so much more then outside surface stuff. It’s disheartening when I see people, promoting “sexy” and raising children…because they are watching. Your children are watching you. They see everything, and once you bring them into the world…it is about them.

Most nights I walk back into my boys room long after they are asleep and I look at their changing faces, and wonder how I will ever survive sharing them someday.  Every night I pray for their future girlfriends, or spouses if they get married.  And I pray that these girls know how beautiful they are for the right reasons.  That they aren’t being duped by magazines, and reality TV. That their innocence is protected.  And I pray for my boys, for their innocence and that they find and love, and honor and respect women.

And I watch Grace, so small and beautiful.  I watch her face round and cherub like. Her self esteem is beautiful and precious. And I pray that she never looks to others to ensure that, that she finds being beautiful is so much more then what she wears and that she is protected from all the outside voices that say it should be shorter, perkier, and she should be prettier.  I pray for her innocence, and that she becomes a nun. (smile) I will pray for her spouse someday…

I heard recently Modesty is sexy.  Word. They. Are. More. Aware. Then. You. Think.

(*for 8 years DYP worked nights and I slept every night he was at work on the couch until he got home. This picture was taken 7 years ago, when Daniel was 3.  I still wear this sweatshirt every night to sleep.)