Never Cast Out: How the Gospel Puts an End to the Story of Shame by Jasmine L. Holmes

Author:Jasmine L. Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION/Christian Living/Women's Interests
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

A Better Image

My hope chest sits in the corner of my bedroom.

Now, unless you’re Amish or grew up in my evangelical subculture, the hope chest vibe might not be one that you’re familiar with. It’s a big cedar chest that my parents gave me when I graduated high school. Proverbs 31 is etched onto the front of it. And inside, I put all of the things that I wanted to take into my future marriage. There are rare books, gorgeous handmade dolls for the fictitious daughter I never had, aprons, children’s books . . .

In the middle of this hope chest, there is a box full of pink notebook paper. Lists of my favorite baby names, short stories, and even a retelling of an Arthurian legend adorn those pink pages. And poetry. There is so much poetry.

There are romantic poems—silly poems—poems about identity. But two poems in particular drove me to open that cedar chest and dig into my box as I wrote this chapter. One is called “Trapped,” and it’s all about being trapped beneath the expectations of others. And the other is called “The Playwright.”

In the beautiful cursive of a middle school homeschooler, it begins:

Because she is an actor and a playwright, she is always acting out a play.

And it ends:

But she can’t stay on stage forever.

The lights will dim.

The audience will leave.

The curtain will fall.

And she will be left holding the mask.

I was fourteen years old when I wrote those words. I returned to them again at sixteen, eighteen, and twenty. I felt them more and more deeply every time I read them.

Looking back through those poems, it’s a wonder that I wasn’t diagnosed with depression long before my perinatal anxiety sent me to my first appointment with a therapist. But I blamed my melancholy on a flair for the dramatic—a penchant for navel-gazing. If you had asked me if I was being slowly crushed under the pressure of trying to live up to extrabiblical standards of femininity, I would have told you to take a long walk off a short pier.

The Wrong Image

Growing up in Sunday school in the Bible Belt, Romans 12:1–2 (niv) is a passage I returned to often:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, and mentors have stood in front of me to wax eloquent about standing out from the culture around me. Romans 12:1–2 meant not being conformed into the image of the world, and instead being set apart for God like the perfect, blameless sacrifices that his people used to offer him. (We’ll talk more about those in the next chapter.)

My parents were first-generation Christians trying

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