How I Started Wearing Headcoverings and Dresses - Christina Baer

Lesson Transcript

So you'd mentioned earlier how a lot of things changed with how you dress and so forth. I want to dig into that a bit more. Tell me about that process of changing your view on the way you dress, the—yeah, and so all of that, that whole package you mentioned, the jewelry, all of this. What was that process like? Was that an easy thing for you, or did that take some time? That wasn't easy. The head covering was hard. Makeup wasn't so hard. I was a stay-at-home mom at that time.

I didn't really get all dolled up that much. So that was a little bit easier. It didn't go completely. It kind of went step by step with what I got rid of. But the head covering was difficult. Sam mentioned it one day. This was new in our journey, probably a few months in, because of his upbringing. His mothers and sisters wore head coverings, his mother and sisters. And when he first mentioned it, I said, "Just no, I'm not ready for it.

We're not even going to talk about it." But he did mention that there was a series on YouTube that I could watch, a three-part series about the head covering, and that was by Finney Crivella from Followers of the Way. So one weekend, Sam was actually out of town for work, and for some reason, I was ready to listen to what these sermons said because I knew—because you read the passage, First Corinthians, and you just try to write it off. Well, maybe the hair's the covering, or it was just a cultural thing.

But I knew in my heart of hearts that wasn't right. I knew that what the Bible says is true. Like, you don't need to read between lines. It's very plain and simple. It can be difficult, but I think most of the part, most of the time it's simple. So I watched these sermons and felt that, yes, a woman is supposed to wear head covering. So the next day was Sunday, and I went to church with my children by myself, and I wore a scarf that I put over my head during the sermon. And I was very embarrassed by it.

My heart was pounding. I was up in the balcony and put it on for the message, then took it off, and no one even saw me or knew what I was doing. So I felt kind of cowardly. And then the next Sunday, Sam came home and he watched the messages. And the next Sunday, I put on a head covering, like tied it onto my head and went to church that way. And again, my heart's pounding, and people are commenting on it. "Oh, that's really pretty. Oh, you look so good." And I realized that they think it's just a fashion statement.

So the next Sunday, I come back and I'm wearing it again. Then I stopped getting so many comments on it. People, I think, realized what I was doing, and they didn't want to go down that road themselves. So that was difficult. There were times where I didn't want to wear it, or some, especially around my family. Sometimes I would wear it and sometimes I wouldn't, and it was very confusing. Sam one time asked me, "Well, just take it off. If this is such a struggle, don't wear it." But I said, "I have to.

Scripture says I have to, and I feel convicted to, so I must." So it took some time, probably about a few months, where I really wrestled and struggled with it. But now I wear it full time. And it's amazing the sense of peace that came over me when I wear it. I feel, I don't know, protected almost. Like there was something about it where I felt in the world's eyes that maybe it's a suppression, but yet I felt freedom with it on. So it was a very interesting thing.

And I don't really know how to explain it, but there was a freedom of putting it on. How did that go for other elements of changing your attire? Again, you had mentioned the jewelry, the makeup, these other things. Was there a similar process for those things as well? In a sense, my engagement ring was really hard to give up. We have such a neat story behind that. Sam proposed to me on top of the Eiffel Tower. Oh, wow. But what's more important? And I think God is.

So we took that off, and then a little while later, we sold it because what's the point of having that? But my attire, that was probably the last big change that I made, and it was hard. I didn't want to wear dresses or skirts all the time. But I realized that God created man and woman, and he created me to be a woman. So I want to be a woman. So when you go to weddings or when people go on dates, what does a woman usually wear? Well, they usually wear a dress or a skirt. And why is that?

Because they want to be feminine. They want to be maybe beautiful. And so it's still in our culture. It's just not upfront as much anymore. But especially with all the gender stuff going on right now, God created me to be a woman, so I want to look like a woman. So I put on skirts and dresses full time. And honestly, I didn't want to. And there's times where I'd look in the mirror and go, "I can't believe I'm wearing this right now," or I look, I don't know. But I just did it.

And one thing that I learned, and this is with the way I dress and the head covering, is if you dwell on it, that thought gets stronger and more powerful. I think it's the evil one in our minds or putting thoughts in your mind. And if you just dismiss that thought, "I don't want to do that," or "I look frumpy or silly or whatever," just get rid of that thought and stop thinking it. And I found that's given me a lot of power to get over that and just be accepting of how I look now.

Tell us a bit more on like the practical side as you're making those switches to changing how you dress. Yeah, it was really hard because I didn't have anyone in my life that was doing these things. Of course, I had Sam's family, but I wasn't going to sew a cape dress. So what was I supposed to wear? It was really difficult.

You'd go to the store and things were just not modest enough, or they were maybe too expensive because that's another part of modesty, I think, is being very simple and being careful with what you're spending your money on. So that was hard. It was a big struggle at the beginning, or what's a head covering supposed to look like, or how are you supposed to tie a head covering? But one thing, one place that I found very useful actually was a secondhand store.

Surprisingly, there's a lot of long skirts in a secondhand store. And layering is another thing that was very useful because it's hard to find tops that are modest, but if you layer, you have a tank top or a shirt underneath a top, then the neckline's not plunging anymore or you don't see your shoulders. And so layering is a good friend of mine. And then for the head covering, at first, it was a scarf that I just had at home that I used.

And I found I had bandanas that I would use sometimes too, and just a lot of, actually, one of my favorite head coverings, I found at a secondhand store as well. So just taking steps. Things have changed along my journey already, and I'm sure that it'll continue to change. And yeah, another place I actually buy a lot of my clothes now is Amazon because it's very hard to find specific things in the stores. And I'm also a mom of small children, so Amazon's my friend.

You know, this is a real part of the story, like those practical things. And it's a process, and there's iterations to this story where these things don't happen instantaneously. This is what I'm, I guess, what I'm getting at. About how long of a stretch of time was this from conversion to a lot of these changes in dress and lifestyle and all of that? Like how long did that phase take? A lot of them happened in the first year. Most of them did. The head covering came first, even before makeup and jewelry.

And then my attire came last. And that was probably two years after conversion where I really started embracing dressing like a woman and being more modest.