Submitting my body as an object for unknown men to drool over and enjoy is not a power I seek, and indeed, it is not power at all. It is self-objectification.

While starring in the Super Bowl half time show, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira pretended to model female empowerment to the young girls on the stage through hyper-sexualized dance. It didn’t empower women, Denise McAllister wrote, it debased us. One commenter noted: “There was a time when men had to pay good money or commit a crime to see a woman debase herself and submit her body as an object for their enjoyment. Now self-deceived women are happily doing it for free, all the while believing that somehow it makes them stronger. Does that seem tragic to you? … Me too.”

“Submit her body as an object for their enjoyment.” It got me thinking. What do I want instead? What does God want to give me?

My Desire

Here’s my desire: One day, completely by God’s grace, I will submit my whole self as a subject for one man to enjoy. He will know and love my whole person — at the cost of laying down his life for me. It will be expensive for him to die daily just as Jesus laid down his life for the Church. And I will love him for choosing me. Choosing to love me sacrificially for the rest of his life.

This is the dignity that my God bestows upon me as a woman. This is the beautiful reality of our sexuality that the power-hungry world will never understand. The way of this world is to use our sexuality to become a firework that everyone looks at for a moment. Then it’s gone and everyone walks away and moves on. That’s not enough to satisfy the human heart. We want a lasting, committed attention. We want to be fully loved.

Confusion About Freedom and Female Empowerment

This post-sexual revolution world doesn’t understand that female empowerment is not the freedom to do whatever I feel like at any moment with my body. To express myself sexually without any awareness of what sex is other than a pleasure and an urge.

True freedom is the power to use my body as God meant it to be used. To be who God made me to be.

If I was made to love but my heart is too untrusting, I am not free to love. If I was made to give myself to one man to love me fully, but I cannot wait for him, I am not free. If I was made to create new life and to love the children my body has the power to nurture and feed, but I kill my children while they develop inside me, I am not free. I am not free to be who I am most deeply, that is, who I was made to be.

We think we can choose who we are. And so to choose what we want is to be true to our self-made selves.

But are we free to choose what we want? Can I choose what my desires will be?

In reality, I can make some choices, but I do not get to ultimately choose who I am or what I desire.

I did not choose to be human. That was a gift God gave me. I did not choose to desire to love and be loved. That is simply how God made me. He has chosen.

I am Fully Loved

He made me to know his love and love him. To know my parents’ love and to love them. To know a man’s love and to love him. To love children and know children’s love.

God knows what will make me happy because He made me. If I choose not to follow Him, I am not free. If I choose not to be myself, I am not free. I am a slave to my impulses and my hurts — my defensive, desiring heart.

I can choose all I want and still be empty and unempowered if my choices go against the very nature of who I am as a human, a woman and a loved daughter of God.

In Him, I am free. I am empowered. I am healed. I am whole. I have dignity and purpose. All this, because I am fully loved.

No brokenness of this world or lack of love in it can take away God’s perfect love. No pain from the past or mistake I have made can hold me back from His love.

I am complete in Him. He empowers me with His love.

Aliya Kuykendall is a Staff Writer for The Stream. You can follow Aliya on Twitter @AliyaKuykendall and follow The Stream @Streamdotorg.