When I was a little girl, I remember not being very girly. I preferred pants to dresses, I liked mud and bugs, and I sported short haircuts often. In third grade, I had a bowl haircut, which my teacher made fun of on picture day (to be fair, it didn’t look great). In fifth grade, I grabbed a boy by the shirt and flung him, literally, across the soccer field because he wasn’t playing by the rules. In sixth grade, a male classmate who had “asked me out” (remember that silliness?), said he liked me because I “wasn’t like most girls.” 

You’ve got that right. I said no, by the way. As I grew up, I tried on different styles and personalities, none of which I would say were very girly. Even though I was quiet, liked school, and did sometimes wear dresses, I also didn’t fit in with the crowd. As a preteen, my first email address was “Frogz and Dogz” (with Z’s, of course) and I didn’t know how to put my hair in a ponytail. Sometimes I thought I was missing some kind of “girl gene.”

As a grown woman, I shut off many feminine parts of myself, dismissing the thought of marriage and kids, instead focusing on what I wanted to accomplish in a career. 

When I look back, I’m glad I had the freedom to explore my own personality as a child. I grew up when “tomboys” were still considered girls, because they are. The world now has supremely messed this one up.

Then in my early adulthood, I was heavily influenced by feminist ideology that told me I could do what men can do, without a man, because strong women don’t need men. Thus my disdain for marriage and family. 

But, praise God, I was pulled out of this lie. It didn’t happen all at once – even after marriage, I stuck to no kids for a while. But again, God had other plans. I went from not wanting kids, to wanting them but not being able to have them, to finally having one. I can’t be sure, but I think God used our struggle to build our understanding of what a blessing children are and to rely on Him. My husband and I acknowledge frequently that this blessing is most likely what pulled us back to God.

Before I knew the heart of God, I couldn’t even fathom the sweet essence of biblical femininity. I had to undo years of believing that being feminine was equivalent to weakness, and that in order to be equal to men, you had to be like men. God bulldozed that idol with truth – He created men and women equally, to be each other’s counterparts.

I also had to crumple and throw away the world’s labels: if you’re pink and sparkly, you’re “girly,” and if you’re not, you’re a “tomboy.” Nope. Our creator designed females in His image, with so much care and detail, but He did not design us all the same. The female tent is a LARGE one, and it covers a multitude of personalities and expressions.

For years, I thought I was bad at being a girl and then a woman, because I didn’t fit into the box marked F for Female. Turns out the box is stupid and needs to be smashed. It wasn’t designed by God; it was designed by miserable people reaching for a power grab.

Now, as I raise my own girl, who herself is a good mix of sparkle and mud, I am so thankful that I get to define myself by God and not by anybody else, and the same goes for my daughter.

The blessings that have come from seeing myself clearly as God sees me are really innumerable, but here are some anyway:

I am blessed to be able to accept myself as the “not like most girls” girl, made in God’s image as female, defined by Him.

I am blessed to have a Savior who takes me as I am, replete with sin and idols that need smashing, who found me and refines me daily.

I am blessed to have a husband who saw me where I was and chose me anyway, always with an eye to the future.

I am blessed to have a husband who knows I prefer chips over flowers, and he doesn’t complain that I’m different.

I am blessed to have a husband who was patient with me while I worked through old baggage and continue to work on being his help meet.

I am blessed to have been given a daughter to love and raise, who has opened up my heart wide, taught me about grace, and planted within my bones a mama bear fierceness which I never knew was possible. 

I am blessed to live a life focused on being a wife and a mom, both titles I never knew would become so much of my world. 

Praise God who made this all possible. I might be bad at being a girl, but God is good, and He will use me for His purposes anyway. So there.

“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

Psalm 139:14