The first thing people notice about me is not my personality. It is my skirt and my hair. I started going to public school halfway through third grade, and the first question everyone had for me was not “Are you new here?” It was, “Why are you wearing a skirt and why is your hair so long?”
The truth was, I did not know. Nobody ever explained that to me, so up until seventh grade, the answer was simple: it is because of my religion.
As I got older, the questions did not stop; they just got more frequent. Even after being around me for so long, nobody seemed to be able to understand me. I became known as “the girl who wears a skirt and has long hair.” Before I even got the chance to talk to anyone, I felt like people had already formed their own opinions about me.
Some people did not understand, some people assumed things about me that weren’t true, and others just saw me as different—and honestly, I used to let that get to me. I would overthink everything: what I wore, how I looked, how people saw me. Instead of just saying “it is my religion,” I began to actually learn why I believe what I believe. I started to understand that modesty is not about restriction, it is about reflection—The reflection of my relationship with God.
Wearing skirts and letting my hair be my covering stopped feeling like something I had to explain and started feeling like something I could stand in confidently. A huge part of this growth came from my youth group and my youth leaders, Nate and Carissa Hidalgo. They did not just tell me what to believe; they helped me understand it and why it’s so important.
They helped create a space where I could ask questions and grow in my faith. They have helped me, along with many others, learn that God is not about rules; He’s about relationships. Through their guidance, they helped me learn that holiness is not about standing out just to be different, but it is about living in a way that honors God from the inside out.
Because of that, I stopped seeing modesty as something that made me “the odd one out” and started seeing it as part of my identity and my testimony. What used to feel like something that separated me from others in a bad way has opened countless doors for me to help share my faith with my classmates and even teachers.
Now, when people ask me why I dress the way I do, my answer is different. It is not just because of my religion, it is because I choose to be set apart by God and follow what His word says I should do.
For those who are curious about my faith, I am an Apostolic Pentecostal. That being said, it means living according to biblical standards of holiness and modesty. For me, that includes wearing skirts and dresses instead of pants and shorts, and not cutting my hair.
These principles are based on scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 11, which talks about a woman’s hair as her covering, and 2 Timothy 2:9, which teaches about modesty. These choices are not rules being forced onto me; they are personal convictions that reflect my faith and my desire to live in a way that honors God.
Even though I believe strongly in what I stand for, I can not pretend that it has always been easy. There were times when I wished I could just blend in and not have to explain myself over and over. But looking back, I think the hardest part wasn’t being different; it was me not fully embracing it sooner.
If I could give any advice, it would be the advice my youth pastor gave me: be unapologetically yourself from the start. Do not wait to be comfortable with who you are. The things that make you different from someone else might actually be the things that shape you into who you are meant to be.
