* This is our first guest post from Marilyn Steinberger. Marilyn is a junior speech-pathology major from South Dakota. Feel free to read, disscuss, comment and pass it on!
-LG and MJ

Dear Woman,

I want you to know this. You are worth more than the world tells you. You are beautiful. Incredibly beautiful, in fact. I’ve been facebook stalking some of my old high school friends lately, and as I see the emptiness and struggle in their new lives, it breaks my heart. I see them taking drunk, half naked pictures of themselves, posing in provocative stances, and being used and broken by men who can’t be bothered enough to learn how to truly be men. And then I see the women at the Newman center. Women who know who they are as children of God, but perhaps women who don’t get as much attention as my scandalously clad friends. I want to encourage you, woman, to continue being a light. I know it’s hard and I know it’s frustrating, but the world needs you to be who you are. The world needs you to be the kind of woman you were created to be. Mary Jaros has talked a lot this year about how women need to be scandalous in a different way, and I would like to add my voice to hers. There are hundreds of women on this campus who have allowed themselves to be used. There are hundreds more who didn’t and don’t even know what being loved looks like. This is where you come in. Behind every single one of those women is a boy, or several, who have told her that she is not dignified, that she is not pretty enough, beautiful, or loveable. By your presence on this campus, you need to show women that we are, in fact, amazing, beautiful, capable, and precious. And we need to show men that we are as well. While talking with many of you, we’ve discussed that we need men to be men, and if they will not be men for us, that we do not enable their ineptitude. Unfortunately, we cannot teach men how to be men; that is something only another man can give. However, we can become more and more the women that we are called to be, and allow men to love us. As hard as it may be, it might mean waiting a lot longer to start dating someone, it might mean leaving a friendship that is becoming more use than love, it might mean spending more time in the chapel praying for strength for us and for our brothers, but as a woman in a beautiful (although definitely not perfect) relationship, I know that having a true man who is willing to protect you, take care of you, and even give up his life for you, the sacrifice of patience and prayer is completely worth it. I, like many of you, have been with men who have not treated me well. I’ve been with guys who have undermined my beauty, my intelligence, my very heart. They’ve told me I’m too much, I’m not enough, I’m not beautiful or loveable. But (and I know this sounds cheesy) Jesus told me otherwise, and then he sent me a man to tell me otherwise as well. And I am so grateful for both of those gifts. And I’m grateful for you, and the witness that you are to me and to this campus. Thank you again for being beautiful, brilliant, and whole.