Thread by @bethallisonbarr

Patriarchy & beauty: a 🧵

“I can do hard things. God, help me do hard things.”

That was my running mantra for 2019-2020,the year I wrote #MakingBiblicalWomanhood. I had run regularly for 10 solid years before 2016–the year my husband was fired. 1/10

But the shock of his firing disrupted everything in my life. Maybe one day I’ll tell the strange health issues that developed for me that year, primarily bc of stress, but maybe I won’t either.

Needless to say by 2018 I had mostly stopped running. 2/10

I was trying to get back into it just when I began talking with @BrazosPress about writing a book. I decided to do both: run and write. It worked, with my mantra, and I was flying again by the time I birthed #MakingBiblicalWomanhood. My clothes fit better and I felt better. 3/10

Then, for the third time in my life, I faced significant emotional upheaval and stress. Instead of running, I wanted to sleep. (and I don’t need anyone’s diagnosis—I have a physician who is superb). & then, in October 2021 after I had finally found my running groove again 4/10

I got Covid. It took a solid 6 weeks for me to begin to feel myself again. Part of me was so frustrated bc I felt I was back to square one with my body again. But then, after witnessing God do another absolute miracle in my life, I realized something: 5/10

The only times in my life when I hated my body and felt the weight of not being beautiful coincided with the times in my life when Christian patriarchy weighed me down the most. When I worried what men thought of me instead of what God thought of me. 6/10

You see, God has never judged me by my external appearance (neither has my husband for that matter).

God never required “weigh-ins” for me as @StuffCCLikes recently told me about.

In fact, God has shown us that what matters most is our internal beauty—not external. 7/10

So when I began to see the tweets last week that feminism makes women ugly, I just laughed.

Because that just shows how wrong the whole system of Christian patriarchy is. Instead of seeing women the way God has always seen us—as made perfect in God’s very image—8/10

Christian patriarchy, purity culture, complementarianism like that expressed at Mars Hill, is doing the opposite: judging women by what matters least and belittling women for not fitting impossible standards of worldly beauty. 9/10

Tonight, y’all, I started running again. Not to be beautiful; just to be healthy. Because by the Grace of God, I can do hard things. And God’s opinion of me is what will always matter most.

Be free, y’all!! 10/10