Hello Friends! Greetings to you all, and is it safe to say Happy New Year to you? lol
Seeing this week's prompt got me laughing at myself due to the belief I once had. I believed that it is a sin and inappropriate for both males and females to wear jewellery (earrings, nose rings, necklaces, ankle chains, bracelets, etc.); also, a female should be wearing trousers. I found it irritating and I also considered it as a taboo lol.
This mindset was fuelled by my background (I lived with grandparents since I was five) and my church I attended growing up. It was believed that the Holy Bible says that women shouldn't wear the clothing of men, which is trousers, and jewellery (gold, silver, diamonds, etc.) represents idols because the Israelites turned the jewellery they got from Egypt into a golden calf (an idol) they were worshipping when Moses was on Mount Sinai.
I can remember that the time I started living with my grandparents, I removed my earrings, and my earlobes got blocked over time. Also, I can remember that any female wearing trousers would have to stay at the gate of our church because she wouldn't be able to enter the church premises, and if it were really compulsory for her to enter, she would have to tie a wrapper over the trousers.
When it was time for me to write my West African Senior Secondary Examination Certificate, popularly known as WAEC, in 2016, I had to move back to my mom's place, and in her house, there's nothing like that. My elder sisters would always scold me and shout at me to dress smartly. There was a woman attending Deeper Life Church in our neighbourhood at that time. She really loved me because I would always wear a big skirt and blouse, and she complimented me always.
I started becoming flexible about my dressing; I started wearing earrings and trousers, but I didn't wear them to church because I still saw it as a taboo. When I entered university, I saw ladies wearing trousers to preach and worship God. At first, it was really weird, but their prayers are being answered; they are doing well academically and also deeply rooted in God, and I thought that if it's a sin, God would have cautioned them.
At the end of the 200-level second semester: I went to my grandparent's house from school, and then I was going to my church, and I wore small round earrings. As I was moving towards the gate, I just heard my grandma shout at me to remove my earrings that I looked like a prostitute… lol, but I wasn't really pained because it was her belief, and wearing round earrings doesn't make me a prostitute. I never stopped wearing them, and soon she stopped complaining.
As I studied the Bible myself, I started having a better revelation of the word of God, and my perspective about those scriptural references started changing. I also see that it's not by the things here on earth that I will use to measure my faith or my righteousness in Christ (that doesn't mean that I live my life carelessly), and as a corporate girl, I fell in love with corporate pants trousers because it really makes my life comfy, and I work in a hospital as a pharmacist, you know how stressful that can be sometimes.
As much as there are unending arguments about wearing trousers (for the ladies) and jewellery (for guys and ladies), that doesn't mean that the people not wearing them are better than the people who are wearing them; vice versa, it's just a matter of individual choices, and I also know now that there's more to right standing with God than your physical dressing.
I appreciate you for taking the time to read and engage with my post, also for your upvotes.
See you in the next one.
All images are mine.