forever Your set apart girl

childhood friends attempt to stay fit.

i like my relationships rooted deep.

throughout my adolescent years, i was blessed with amazing friendships. friendships that went beyond talking about the superficial and the emotions. i will always remember those late nights in the classroom, preparing for silly odyssey of the mind competitions, SYF, choral/drama nights, annual lifeskill camps, study fests.

because pom poms are the epitome of grace.

or even nights of laying in the basketball court, staring at stars and all that. it was like an extended childhood because the distractions of growing up, the awkwardness of pubescence and needing to be around the opposite sex were hidden away and we were essentially just in our own happy world, spending every awakening moment together. cliques were ubiquitous, but they weren't exclusive. save for a few of them, and save for silly quarrels, we really just loved. these amazing friendships formed the fundamental, the basis of what i imagined friendships of this world to be. to me it was an all or none- either get to know someone really deep, or not at all.

3/5 of the bang bang gang

and then we moved on after secondary school, and things changed. friendships with girls were fine for me, but as for friendships with guys, being friends sometimes meant the other party wanting to take the friendship to more than friends, something that took me by shock. my modus operandi of making friends had somehow been received the wrong way. even strange boys whom i never so much as talked to fended closeness. all these unwanted emotions and attention kept coming, and life suddenly just seemed a whole lot more complicated.

the last thing i ever wanted to do was to lead people on without the intention of bringing our friendship beyond, so i ended up distancing myself and lost these friends in the process. to some it was an action thought strange, because most might have just thrown themselves into the sea of attention and love that they could receive but not ever have to commit to, but to me it was disgusting and selfish, and i would have felt sorry towards my friend if i ever led him on without needing to feel attached on that level like he did.

to the 17 year old me then, it wasn't about staying pure. it was about staying true to my values of not wanting to hurt my friends. i guess it's just the way i'm wired up, that i'd rather have some one hate me than think that i have feelings for him. just from the top of my mind, i vaguely remembered a boy who fancied me when i was 8 at a camp. he kept following me about, and it really scared every inch of me and i avoided him like a vice. at 12, i'd rather had the guy who fancied me hate me than to endure that intense stare i had to put up with the whole day in class. (i think he eventually did)

to be honest, i don't even wanna begin to sound saintly and say that i disliked the attention. it was definitely ego-boosting, but a whole part of me knew that it wasn't something i wanted to build my self-confidence upon. for the longest time, i thought that maybe my way of making friends was too suggestive, and that there must be something wrong with me. had i, in being a prude, done any thing to suggest something that meant more than just friends? maybe i was more of a slut than i made myself out to be.

the point of liberation actually came when i went into a relationship, because i knew that if a friend knew me well enough, no one whom respected me would ever take our friendship the wrong way. i felt so happy and carefree that i could freely be friends with anyone and everyone. of course, then, there were still the occasional weirdos, but then i guess i wouldnt have minded losing those kind of friendships.

but when i got out of the relationship, i got stuck with the same issues. after much saga, i changed. i just couldn't bring the same expectations of a friendship with a guy as with a friendship with a girl without fearing.

i've had people tell me that they see a vast difference in the way i treat guys and girls. i tend to keep this invisible proximity because i'm scared of overstepping and sending the wrong signals, but i adore the closeness and the time with my girlfriends. it is the right mindset to take, but i think i border on extremity, because i find myself stepping back just as a defense mechanism, even when there was nothing to begin with, that i'm pretty sure i appear like a really strange person to many around me. it isn't a very nice rut to find myself in.

it's scary because i realise that i was even unconsciously masculating my personality so that i could be less attractive. seemed like a safe bet. after all, boys like the feeling of protecting, and if i made myself seem like i didn't need to be protected, then i wouldn't appeal to their primal instincts. it seemed logical that the more masculine traits i possessed, the less attractive i would be. i've ever had someone told me that i'm someone who stewards my emotions so well so that i don't waste my time on frivolous things that prove no value to the world. haha, seriously, if there could ever be a better statement made about me that epitomised how well i managed to cover up my emotions.

it felt really silly, because that wasn't the real me, that was the conditioned me trying to be strong, and building walls to protect myself and my friendships. the worst part was that as i began to condition myself with these masculine traits, the more out of my own skin and disconnected i felt. not only that, i didn't even feel like what i was doing had even an inch of godliness. masculating myself meant emasculating the guys around me, stripping them of their chance to be fully yielded in Christ. there is a role for men and women in God's Kingdom, and it seems like the world really prizes masculine traits, resulting in some kind of shift in gender roles. in modern society, it is largely accepted for these roles to be blurred.  there is a fight for control or 'equal rights', and then we as women, end up complaining that men are not manly enough. what silly contradictions.

one night i laid in bed, feeling like the saddest girl ever, that no one could understand me. i sobbed, and sobbed and cried out to God, out of the desperation and fear of getting lost in this persona that i had created and was morphing into. God, why would You create man and woman with the traits they possess, only to make the world dangerous to her, that the only way that she could protect herself from all the unwanted attention was to exhibit traits that she wasn't made to have?

my phone was in front of me, and out of the blue, i had a fellow sister whom i haven't talked to in ages share with me a link which answered the questions that i needed answering- where i was, as a woman, in God's kingdom.

**

1) God never intended for the relationships between opposite genders to be the same or to share the level of depth as those between the same gender, at least not before the season of marriage. (Song of Solomon 8:4) and for that reason, it was wrong for me to expect that guys would share my expectations of being 'just friends' when i treat them as i would a girl friend. for this reason, i realised that for someone to fall for you is always a choice (save for unrequited, obsessive love). most people don't just tumble into love at first sight, it takes a certain mutuality of both parties to build up to that stage. that is why ignorance, or earnest intentions just isn't an excuse for leading someone on when you know he/she is committing feelings or hoping to be more than just friends when you want none of that. self-centredness, and wanting to feed the human ego while playing around with a friend's emotions is. fun, but someone will get hurt.

2) femininity, as prized by the world, is so stark in definition as the one prized in the Bible. in this world, it could very well mean the way we dress, the amount of skin revealed, the way we laugh, the way we flip our hair, the wittiness exuded, how smooth we are in conversations, the way we manipulate all these to point people to the personality that we are. 

but is that the kind of femininity that we want to hold people hostage to?

femininity in the Bible points to Proverbs 31- a lady of submission to the men in her life. and in contrast to how we imagine someone who 'submits' to be, the portrait drawn is a person of wisdom, confidence, righteousness, faithfulness, virtue, and a leader in her own right. 

honestly, it is tough when personality is always the easiest way to make someone like you. i've many a time fallen prey to using personality as a tool of manipulation. but i don't want it to be that way. i want my character to exude and overwhelm, for my own self-interests to take a back seat. that's not to say i become someone serious, prudish and frumpy just for the sake of letting the character shine, but that it stands out, much more than my interests and hobbies and philosophies and habits and what makes me unique in the Kingdom of God. because i know that the most important thing in my life is not to point people to who i am, but to point people to Christ, the author of my salvation.

and submission is a tough one. honestly. when you've grown up in a family where the dynamics is kinda topsy-turvied, it takes every inch of depending on God, to not want to control. to honour how He has made man and woman, to guide and not to pursue or demand, to allow men to make decisions, and to ultimately respect their leadership. something i've realised over the months, that if we want to live out the bible, then to start off, God has given us freewill in our main choice of submission.

to be submitted to is to be worthy of submission.

**

i've realised, that a steadfast love rooted in human strength is destructive to the individual.

but a love higher than the ways of man, is a love that does not destroy; a love that builds people up. my convictions will be challenged, but i believe i've been brought to a point where i know that this is the only way of love that prevails.

nyco rox. ^^hehe