For as long as I can remember, my sisters and I have always dressed up for Halloween. It is one of the fun things we all do together. Our motto is “dress all out or don’t go out!” Needless to say we always went all out. From prima ballerina to Tinkerbell, to witch, to pirate, to soldier, to a Parisian woman, etc. We’ve done a great variety!
Yet surprisingly, Halloween was different for me this year. Come to think of it, many things in my life are very different. It’s not that I didn’t dress-up. I actually had a costume, which I’ll explain later. While I can’t say a lot has changed for me externally, the changes I’m talking about have happened deep inside me, in my mind and in my heart.
This year, I wanted my costume to be a statement, a statement of my new realization: the deep brokenness of women in society. So I went as a battered and bruised, pregnant trophy wife. Before you misunderstand me or misinterpret my costume (as many others did when I went out that night), let me explain why.
Of the many realizations I’ve had this year, one of the most meaningful is this: God has blessed us women with beauty and love. Yet society has exploited these gifts, and we find ourselves trading away our God-given beauty and love for cheap imitations. We open our hearts to the wrong people. We love the wrong things. We allow our beauty to be used for the wrong purposes. The end result is a woman, meant to be a beautiful bride, meant to give birth to so much life, but battered, bruised, and broken instead. Sometimes this brokenness is physical, sometimes it’s emotional, and sometimes it’s both. It’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t been damaged by the darker elements of society.
As I went out, I got a lot of mixed reactions (partly because some people actually thought I was really pregnant). Some people were wondering why I chose this costume, and some thought I was making a mockery of women. But I wanted, at least in my tiny way, to get the chance to talk about the brokenness of women, that we can no longer ignore or deny that materialism and the objectification of women is good, or cool, or sexy. No busy-ness, or accumulation of money or things, or success can ever fill the emptiness in us. We can distract ourselves but we know deep inside that there’s something broken.
I knew I felt it, the brokenness, even if I didn’t know what it was or how it got there.
Until I learned about how much Jesus loves me, and how He sacrificially died for me and faithfully waits for me to turn to Him. I realized that I didn’t have to fight this battle alone. I was broken because I was giving myself to the wrong things but now I had the perfect person to fill me. Yes, we are battered and bruised, but the love of Jesus keeps showing us that if we choose and accept Him, He will heal our hearts of the wounds and brokenness. He shows us what’s true and what are lies. He guides us to live lives that help heal others and break their chains. We become women who free other women, instead of women who lead others to more brokenness.
This realization has brought a new fulfillment to my heart, but it has also brought the difficult responsibility of choosing what’s good and right over things I used to accept as “valid” or “ok” or “not wrong”. But I draw strength from two verses I’ve only learned about recently. His word is a lamp to my feet, a light on my path (Psalm 119:105) and that He is the way, the truth, and the life that leads us to God (John 14:6). With Him guiding me, I have nothing to fear, even in a broken world, and even on a scary night such as Halloween.
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