I walked into the closet this morning ready to pick out the perfect outfit for the day, and I grabbed a halter dress, light pink and white, since it is still 90 degrees here. Then I quickly remembered, “Oh, I can’t where that dress today. The shoes that I wear with it are white, and I can’t wear white shoes after Labor Day.”
It made me start to think about this “white rule” that I have followed since I was a little girl. No doubt it came from American aristocracy long ago to differentiate the “haves” and the “have nots”. But still, here, in 2011, I follow it, and the thought of walking out of the house in September with white shoes on makes me scared. Scared of what people would think. Scared of how I’d be perceived. Scared of my pretend identity becoming tarnished.
There is no doubt the the rule about not wearing white shoes after Labor Day is probably more regional than anything, but down here in the heart of the South we take these things very seriously.
But don’t we all make up fake rules for ourselves and others to protect our pretend identity?
We say things such as:
- If you’re not married by thirty then something has to be wrong with you.
- Only mothers who stay at home can truly love their children.
- You have to home school or your children will turn into heathens.
- Homemakers don’t live in the real world and are obviously privileged.
- She must neglect her family if she has time to work-out.
- Only a housekeeper could keep a home as clean as that.
- She doesn’t do anything at church, so she can’t be growing with Christ.
- Her priorities are all wrong if she goes out of town on a girls’ weekend trip.
The list goes on and on.
The culture that made up the rule about not wearing white after Labor Day is the same culture we live in today. It’s the one that screams, “You’re not good enough the way you are, so you need to make up rules to make other people look worse in order to make yourself look better.”
We are sucked into these rules from the Enemy every time one of the statements above comes into our heads. But God has a different set of rules. His say that our sufficiency is of Him, our identity is in Him.
“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.” 2 Corinthians 3:5 (KJV)
So will I wear white shoes after Labor Day this year? I’m still not there yet. But my white shoes have made me think and given me something to pray over – that my identity will be in Christ and Christ alone, not in rules from the Enemy.
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