My Journey into Christian Headcovering

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How a 21 day fast started my path into Christian headcovering.

This week I’m changing it up and sharing a testimony of how God showed up during my recent 21 day new year fast. Fasting is a wonderful spiritual discipline to help use draw nearer to God and rely on Him at a deeper level.

I haven’t fasted in over a decade, but God blew me away with His faithfulness. He asked me to step out boldly in faith and obedience in the area of headcovering, and blessed me in such a sweet, beautiful way.

If He’s asking you to step out in area of faith and obedience, I hope this encourages you to trust Him and follow through. He is so good when we lean into Him!

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Today, I’m going to do something a little bit different on the podcast, and I’m going to talk about a personal experience, something that’s been going on with me, what the Lord’s really been showing me here this first month of 2023, and how it’s been such a wonderful enlightening, just God filled experience for me.

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Table of Contents

Preparing for a 21 Day Fast

I’m going to be talking about fasting today, and before I get into it, I just want to point out that it’s been a long time since I’ve partaken of a spiritual fast. It’s been well over a decade. I told myself all these years that I couldn’t do it because I was nursing, and to be honest, I had a lot of valleys where I didn’t really feel like it was something I needed to do, or really wanted to do in my spiritual life, and so I had a lot of excuses.

At the end of 2022, I guess towards the beginning, actually, everyone starts talking about their word for the year. They’re starting to focus on something, and I’m not really a big word of the year person, but God started to whisper something on to my heart anyways. And the word that he gave me was restored, and I got really excited because I love the idea of restoring these places that have been dry and sort of neglected, and these areas where I’ve been really been praying for just spiritual growth and growth in general over the last several years.

Then I posted that somewhere in a Facebook group, and someone said, “Oh yeah, I had a similar concept, and then I started to look into it, and I came across this idea that when it comes to furniture and restoration, you have to actually strip it down first before you can restore it.”

And I started to feel a little bit less excited because I don’t think any of us really like that stripping down process because it’s really a season of pruning, which can feel so painful when God asks us to let go. So I was pretty apprehensive at that point about what God had for me for 2023, and about this time as I was ruminating over excitement for restoration and then apprehension over even more pruning, I was offered the chance to participate in a 21-day New Year’s fast.

I had already committed to doing a whole 30 for health reasons, and I thought, You know what, why don’t I just dedicate my whole 30 to the fast. I’m already giving up sugar and coffee and dairy and all kinds of other things, so why not just go ahead and dedicate the sacrifices that I’m already going to be making for health benefits to God and just see what he does and do this fast and jump all in.

If you’re not familiar with fasting, it is a spiritual discipline. It is mentioned multiple times throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament as a way to really draw near to God it, to lean on him in the seasons of desiring or wanting. When fasting, you remove something from your life, and it doesn’t have to be food, it can be social media, it can be anything that steals your joy or your time from you, or just a season of sacrificing a little bit to draw near to God and to really be able to hear his voice.

So I actually joined a fasting group, and we had Zoom calls a couple of times a week that were just prayer calls and inspiration, and at the beginning of my fast, I thought about what I wanted God to do, what I really desired, what I was praying for. What I really wanted, and I’m just gonna read it directly out of my prayer journal for you guys in full transparency and then show you what God did in this season for me.

I wrote down, “Lord, I pray for freedom and break through during the fast, I pray for supernatural time management in this next season, I want to feel your hand growing and bounding in my family and marriage, my home and my business. I know I will see you move in powerful ways. Restoration is coming.”

So really, there were a lot of things I was asking for in the season. I was asking for freedom, breakthrough to see God move in powerful ways, I wanted supernatural time management. I’m in a crazy, busy season with my business right now, I’ve got a lot of things going on, and I just wanted God to give me the time management and the energy to push through, and then I wanted to see his hand in my family, my marriage and my business.

So I’m going to just share what actually happened during the fast and what God actually did and how it ended up being very different than what I expected, but such a tremendous, rich, sweet blessing from the Lord. I’ve heard it said that sometimes we don’t see all the results of the fast immediately in the fact that they can come later, and I fully expect that God has got so much other good things coming, whether it’s because of the fast or because of other reasons.

But I know that He is faithful to bless us and to help us gain ground when he’s calling us into a place, but I want to just tell you what I actually got from the fast. Now, before I go into this, I want to make note that the topic I’m gonna be discussing is one that is possibly controversial in Christian circles, and what I need you to understand is that this is an area of personal conviction, it is not in any way a salvation issue, it’s one of these what we consider in theological circles to be a tertiary quaternary issue. It’s one of these areas where you have to come to God and God has to come to you and it has to be a decision that feels authentic to your relationship with God, your spiritual journey, your relationship with your husband, and all of these areas.

So know that when I talk about this, I am in no way saying that I think that you need to do this. Nor am I judging anyone who chooses not to do it, that’s not the case at all. And also when I point out that I know I feel more righteous because of what’s going on with me in this area, I just wanna share because what it really showed me was God’s goodness and His faithfulness and his sweetness sometimes when we follow through on what He’s asking us to do.

Long Hair for His Glory

So let me jump back just a little bit to the end of 2022, around the beginning of the school year, so August, September. I really renewed my bible study time, prayer life, and I was really just starting to dig in more to spending time with God in the mornings and being really intentional about it, which can be really hard when you have small kids because you don’t get enough sleep and you never know what time you’re gonna get up.

Especially as a stay-at-home mom, sometimes you have the ability to sleep in or make up for that baby waking up five times or fifty, and mornings can just feel really chaotic and crazy. But I really took the time to start being intentional and to make time for the Lord first thing in the morning.

One of the things that He started to show me at the end of the year was part of passage in 1 Corinthians 11 about our hair and about how our long hair is our glory in Christ, our glory to God. And I just immediately felt like it was time for me to grow my hair.

I have worn my hair short for a very, very long time, probably the better part of the last 30 years, my hair has been short, much more often than it’s been long. Funny story, I actually grew my hair out when I was in my early 30s. I was ready to start settling down and find a husband, and my hair had been short.

Again, it was one of these moments from God, I thought, “You know what, I should probably grow my hair… It kinda says so in the Bible, I’m gonna grow my hair out. Men find it more attractive.” And I did, and my husband met me with long hair and married me with long hair, and then after our first baby, I cut it off again.

Just to tell you, my hair hasn’t been long since I had my second child, which was 2015. It’s been a long time, but I just felt good about it, it felt okay. All my vanity thoughts about how I looked with my hair long disappeared, and I trusted that God would just make it work, make a way.

One of the other areas that I had really started to feel stressed about in my personal life and my overall life and schedule in general, was how long it took me sometimes to just take a shower and get ready and do my hair in the mornings. It always felt really chaotic because I like to take a bath in the mornings and wash my hair, and that would cut into my time for cooking breakfast, and cut into my time with the Lord and cut into my time doing homeschool.

It felt like this big thing in the middle of my day, I didn’t want to take a bath at night and wash my hair, because my hair looked crazy in the morning, because it was short, and you can’t really control short hair. When you sleep on it, it gets really insane, and so I feel like this was His answer to a lot of these thoughts I had and these hang-ups I about my time and my hair and how I was spending my time, but he went even further in this passage with me during the fast.

Convicted about Christian Headcovering

The truth is, I don’t even really remember the first time he really lied on my heart during this period to think about headcovering. I don’t even remember exactly what was happening when he laid it on my heart the first time, but I remember thinking…

“Huh. Okay, I’ll look into that. Alright, you know what, God? You laid it on my heart, I’ll pray about it. We’ll see what happens.”

So I’m pretty sure the next morning during my Bible time, I opened up my Bible to 1 Corinthians 11 and I started looking at that passage, and I went and I looked at the Greek language, and I went and I read commentary, and I went and I read a lot of different things from different sides. I read testimonies of women who had been covering and how it impacted them, I looked at the different reasons why women cover, the history of Christian headcovering.

I went all in, guys, you gotta understand, I am an academic mind kind of person, I’m very analytical. I like to study things from all perspectives, but the funny thing is, at the end of the day, it’s just what He asked me to do. After I had studied this in depth and I had kind of gotten to a place where I was like, “I am okay being obedient to this, I know it’s going to be uncomfortable, especially with certain people in my life and in different areas, but if this is what you’re calling me to do, like I’m willing to be obedient here.”

So the next step for me was to discuss it with my husband because ironically enough headcovering is a symbol of submission, so if I’m not willing to talk to my husband about this area, maybe I kinda have it all wrong in the first place. To my surprise, he was completely supportive and on board from the beginning. He has friends from when he was younger, and the wife has been covering for a long time, so this was not something at all unfamiliar to him and he was very supportive.

Once I had God drawing me to this information, I had the Bible backing me up. I had all this study that really just impressed upon my heart that this is what God intended for me in this season of my life, and then I had confirmation from my husband. So I jumped on the train and I ordered some things to start covering and looked into some different ways it’s done and kind of figured out my own process.

But one of the things that I was really concerned about (other than feeling uncomfortable and being judged by some of the people close to me), was how it was going to affect my business.

I am a Christian image consultant, I work with Christian women, but I recognize that headcovering is not for everyone. I realize that it’s such a personal and it can be such a divisive conversation, and I was so… I was worried. I was worried that it was going to hurt my business, it was gonna hurt how people perceived me, that it was gonna be a big deal..

And God really showed up in this way, and I’m crying because it’s just still so sweet what He did. I went into my Facebook group and I just put it out there just like I’ve done with you up and like, “You know what? This is what God’s calling me to do. I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna be obedient, my husband’s on board. This is what it means to me. I don’t expect you to do it.”

The response for my group was really sweet because they’re amazingly sweet women, and it was wonderful, but the thing that happened next is really where God just blew me away.

Obedience Brings the Blessing

A few days later, I started getting tons of requests to join my group, dozens of requests for my Facebook group, and I didn’t know where I had come from. I could tell that someone had shared the group, but I didn’t know where. It wasn’t somewhere that I was an active member, and the request kept coming in.

I have some intake questions, and everybody who joined was talking about modesty and head covering and dressing for the Lord.

It ended up being over 100 people that joined, and I was so blown away. Here I am, doing this thing that feels so uncomfortable, because God has asked me to do it. And I just want to be obedient, because I just really believe from the depths of my soul that obedience to God does bring blessing in our lives.

It’s happened to me in so many areas, and it’s just been such a rich area for me with God to be obedient. Here He’s asking me to do this thing that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, and I was really scared and I was concerned, but I did it anyways.

THEN for Him to come back within a week and just be like, “You know what, thank you my daughter for being faithful…Thank you for being obedient. Here is blessing, I’m gonna give you because you’ve done what I’ve asked, and because you’ve been honest and true in your relationship with me.”

So God did move in powerful ways, he gave me a tremendous breakthrough, such freedom. I feel joy, satisfaction in my life. It feels really good, it feels authentic, it feels like exactly what God has for me. I don’t know how it’s going to play out in my business long-term, I don’t know how it’s going to play out in my family.

I don’t know if the other things I prayed for, what’s going to come of them either, I just know that this is what God gave me during my 21-day fast, and it’s been just a blessing, it’s been beautiful, it’s been a wonderful reminder of God’s faithfulness and God’s goodness to us, and how He is holy and righteous and deserving of our praise.

Final Thoughts on Christian Headcovering and Encouragement

I know this episode really didn’t have a lot to do with fashion, other than the fact that head covering itself is a whole new level of fashionable accessorizing, and I really love that creative aspect of it. But what I really want to encourage you today with is this:

What is God asking you to do in obedience that feels hard, or it feels uncomfortable, or you just don’t want to do it? It doesn’t have to be related to your style or your fashion, but I just want to encourage you.

If God is asking you to step into that space of obedience, DO IT.

Do it because He’s so good and He blesses us so much when we’re obedient. I know it can feel hard and really scary. I know you are worried about other what people are going to think.

But at the end of the day, that doesn’t really matter, because the joy and the piece that you’re gonna get from following God and His will for you is so much greater than what the world is gonna give you.

And so I just wanna close this one out with a prayer, Father, thank You for Your holy righteous goodness, thank you God for your word, which instructs us. Thank you, God for the Holy Spirit writing these things on our heart, reminding us of what you’ve said, reminding us of what you’ve done, urging us into greater obedience and greater growth and greater sanctification in you as we lose ourselves. As we let go of our flesh, as we dig in to what you’ve called us to be, to who you’ve called us to be. Father, I pray that for my sisters, if you’re asking them to do something hard in obedience, that you would give them the courage and the strength to step out, I pray abundant blessing for obedience over everyone listening today.

He cares for you so much greater than the sparrows, He cares about every hair on your head, He created you fearfully and wonderfully, and I love that verse, because at the end, it says, marvelous are his works. Let Him make you marvelous sister. Let him do the work. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

If you’ve listened to this whole thing, thank you so much, this really has been such a growth area for me, and it has felt so uncomfortable, but I couldn’t be quiet about what God has done, I had to give Him the glory, and I hope that you enjoyed this episode, and I can’t wait to see you on the next one.