About our headcovering practices...

LisaM asked about why our youngers wear coverings. I realize this isn't an overly 'common' practice, even among Christian, these days, but we fully believe that Scripture has called us to do so. It is being seen more and more among modern Christian families, but still...there is a long way to go to get truly back to the Bible standards all Christians once shared.

In a nutshell, we believe The Lord has led us to cover, according to His Word shared in 1 Corinthians 11. We believe our hair is given to us as our glory. Therefore, we choose not to cut off that glory, and keep our hair long. We wear coverings over our hair because we also believe this is contained in the same Scripture. We read that we are to be covered, as women, whenever praying or prophesying. As we are called to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17), it just makes sense to us to be covered at all times.

For my older daughters, they wear a covering all the time, same as I do. My youngers, while not at an age of understanding or accountability so to speak, are growing up with dresses-only and headcoverings as their normal attire. It seems easier to me to not place them in both worlds...being allowed to dress in a manner that we will not allow later on. As Christians, we cannot live in both worlds and must choose which ppath we will follow. We cannot serve two masters. If my daughters are raised from the start to seek a modest dress and covering, the struggle of coming to it later, once the 'worldliness' has crept in, won't be there as strongly. It will simply be normal life to them.

So, we try to make headcoverings as easy and comfortable for them at a young age. As infants, it was easy -- kapp style. No one placed a denomination label on that at their young age. But now, as toddlers and young school-agers, there is a label based on the style of covering they wear. Our hanging veils just don't stay on active young ones with thinner hair as they do older ones, so we are trying to find something else.

In that same light, we believe that we are called to be a light to men (Matt 5:16) and to be a peculiar people (Tit. 2:14 and 1 Pet. 2:9). We are to be different than the unsaved, not only in heart, but in appearance.

We choose to go back to the gender roles that once dominated our society. Men were dressed like men and you had no doubts when you saw someone at a distance what gender they were. They were dressed differently. Woman were in dresses, never in pants. That was one of the main distinctions of amost every generation past. Every generation past, that is, until we began stepping off into modern feminism. WWII pops to mind as being one of the early movements that brought woman out of their norm and into the man's world, though I'm sure there are examples sprinkled here and there before this time as well . Some women continued along in that 'man's world' and things pretty much moved ahead from there to what we have now...virtually no distinction between the sexes at all. Everything is moving 'gender neutral' in our society today.

I don't want to be 'gender neutral'. I don't want my daughters...or my sons...to be 'gender neutral'. We are made differently and I want us to remain that way. I want us to be full of praises for the differences in our lives, not find some common ground between the two. Even in the animal kingdom you can see a lot of male and female differences in appearances. Boys are to be men, and girls are to be women. Not some fuzzy gray area in-between somewhere. Our sons dress just as modestly as our daughters do, and they maintain a distinction that is obvious to anyone. For us, personally, that shows up in hair length and design and in clothing styles. They wear simple pants and shirts; we weear dresses and coverings. Nothing form-fitting or revealing on either.

God sees the inner man, our heart. He judges us by what our heart contains. Man, however, cannot see our heart or inner man, and has only our outward appearance to base judgement on. Sure, outward appearances can be deceiving, but sometimes all people have is our outward appearance. Some people never get a chance to speak to us and get to know us, learning about our heart and our attitude, seeing a bit of our inner man.

I do want to make it clear that in no way do we see any of our decisions here are being connected to our Salvation. They aren't. These are merely 'tools' of our testimony, one that is personal and between ourselves and God. There is nothing we can do to ensure Salvation outside of believing on The Lord Jesus Christ and asking Him into our hearts, repenting of our sins and becoming a new creation unto The Lord. Works are just that...works. They are part of our Fruit, but not a deciding factor in our Salvation. We are known to man by our Fruit, and just in case someone never seeks an opportunity to truly know us, I pray that our appearance and choices in life will still shine the Light of Christ brightly to them.
Yes, I tend to get long-winded and ramble...sorry about that. It's just in my nature to be rather 'winded' with things. I hope this has offered something of an answer for you, LisaM, and anyone else who might be wondering :o)