A Lady

A Lady. The word seems quite important to me, a summary of everything I want to be. It is, after all, a big part of the focus of Maidens of Virtue. As the potential future director of a discipleship ballet school for girls, I have tried to be a mature, mannerly, sophisticated lady for many years, and have almost succeeded a number of times; but I always get nervous and soil the white linen table cloth at the tea party or realize that I have said the wrong thing in an introduction. In recent years, I felt a strain on my social life as I found that I pressure myself to say just what a lady ought to say, but instead the wrong thing escapes my lips. I want to teach my girls in Bright Lights (our discipleship group) how to be ladies also. Just the other day one of my girls asked me why I emphasize being a lady so much. Perhaps it is because a lady is respectable. A lady is virtuous, noble, and beautiful. All the world respects her strong yet gentle spirit. Perhaps that is also why I like ballet. To me, ballet is the perfect expression of all that a lady is. Strong as steal, graceful as a bird. The problem is that I am not a lady all the time. That is, I do not act like one. I am foolish and say the wrong thing. I giggle too much and act immature. I seem to be very good at doing exactly what I do not want to do sometimes.

In many ways being a lady has become something that is more important to me than almost anything else, but being a lady is not what is most important. Being a lady is secondary to being a woman after God’s own heart. My daily focus is always on proving myself to be a competent, independent, beautiful woman when in reality my focus should again be on Christ. The funny thing is that when I am loving Christ with all my heart and loving others, I am truly being all that a lady should be. Who cares if I introduce the older person to the younger first or vice versa at an important social gathering? Who cares if I scoop my soup spoon away from myself or not? Am I loving my God and King? Am I serving and glorifying Him? I create for myself many rules to help me hold myself together. Anything from food guidelines to courtship standards, but when it comes right down to it, all these things arte futile efforts that will lead me only to realize failure apart from Christ. It is the grace of my loving Lord and Savior and His sanctifying work in my life that will bring about a truly noble character. Everything else seems rather superficial. I have failed in all of these areas this year, and the girls that I mentor know it; however, rather than being dismayed by my failings, my compulsive foolishness, my lack of a heart focus on God, and an over-all immature outlook on the responsibilities of my life, I am encouraged to see that God keeps reminding me to turn to Him, to love Him with all my heart. My life this entire year has been submerged and saturated in His grace, and my testimony is only that of a weak, redeemed sinner turning her eyes one more time on Jesus. A lady? What’s that? I am God’s handmaiden.