Beauty…Part 1
Dear God, I ask that any and all who read this will develop a burden for this topic. Eyes and ears to be open, hearts broken if they need to be, hearts mended for healing, and minds that will become aware of this cry. Please keep us humble and help us find our confidence in You and You alone. Amen
This morning’s topic is very near and dear to me, so I would like to take my time and set this up in a multiple part series blog topic. I am not sure at the moment just how many post will be towards this topic, but it will be as many as it takes.
Beauty: noun: beauty; plural noun: beauties
1. 1. a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight.
"I was struck by her beauty"
§ a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.
synonyms:
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attractiveness, prettiness, good looks, comeliness, allure; More
"the beauty of the scenery"
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antonyms:
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ugliness
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§ denoting something intended to make a woman more attractive.
modifier noun: beauty
"beauty products"
2. 2. a beautiful or pleasing thing or person, in particular.
Psalm 139:14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Anyone who knows me…knows that I am very sarcastic, funny, and always the jokester….but those same people know that deep down, I have the same insecurities as any other female. They also know that I heart and passion for teen girls and how they see themselves in the world. I’ve always felt a need to reach out and try to be there for them as I too was one of them. So as I’m writing this, please dear hearts know that I sympathize with you. I know that pain you feel when you see yourself in the mirror. I know the longing you feel to be told you are beautiful, and know that in every aspect you compare yourself to other females. I also know that you’ve probably hit your knees a multiple times as I have and asked for God to give you and to restore that confidence in you through Him.
Recently a friend and I were talking and she mentioned how ugly she felt after having her three kids. This mother is absolutely stunning to me! Inside as well as out, yes, she may have aged and she may no longer feel like she looks hot and toned in a bikini...but she still takes care of herself and has the most wonderful inner beauty. Since there is always a need for comic relief I had to say…”Well think about Psalm 139:14…God had to give warning on me! He had to just let me and the world know that I was made out of fear! You know He had to be like...’well, do I hit send on this one or just hold her in the “draft” folder? Is the world really ready for this one? I’m scared!’ I bet I scared God!”
While it got a laugh out of her and made her mood better, it still hit home with me on different levels. Here was a woman that I found beautiful on many levels and I know her husband still finds her stunning but what makes her thinks this? What drives our need to feel and be beautiful and why if that need is not met by human kind does she often feel anything less?
My Personal Beauty Story
Personally, I never gave my own looks much thought until I got into Jr. High (seventh grade, first pep rally, in the gym by the boys locker room, where the seventh graders had to sit-yes…I could tell you exactly what I had on.) My group of “friends” were either, pomp squad members, cheerleaders, or band kids. I never had a desire to be a pomp squad member, cheerleader and I was really into choir-so I usually ended up sitting alone. I honestly thought this group of girls was my friends but I was sadly in for a very rude awaking as I soon found out that I was the joke of many of their jokes.
I’m not sure where it went wrong. I find it hard to believe that they were ever truly my friends at that time due to how quickly they became “mean girls” to me. I was asked to carry backpacks to the gym, as we had lunch right after, well, me being the great friend that I tend to be…loaded up, carried all these bags to the gym and sat and watched. It wasn’t until someone knocked over one of the bags and a notebook fell out and out of that notebook, a sheet of paper that would forever change my life, fell out.
The sheet was talking about how I was a “fat blob that followed them around” and asked what was the best way to get me to leave them alone…I could have told them that the best was to do that was to let me read that, because I got up from that area, left their bags and I’m not sure I ever confronted them or talked to them on a real level again. The sad part…I was not fat, I look back at pictures from those days and think,” I thought I was fat? I look like I have an eating disorder! “
I was done.
I was a loner.
I didn’t need friends.
I was lonely…and I too started looking for a way out becaus it seemed easier than facing day in and day out.
I became depressed and essentially started to see myself as the “fat blob” (and still do to this day), I would go right to class, not talk to anyone, spent my lunch in the bathroom because I saw myself as fat and didn’t dare eat until I got home. I spend the remainder of the year there, going right home after school. I didn’t participate in any after school activities and I never attended any games or dances. It wasn’t until that next summer, that I had with a “safe group” of friends did I finally start to come out of my shell. You can ask my friends from youth group…they seen this utterly shy girl turn into a wild child over summer break! (Not wild in the bad sense…yet!)
That next school year and up until my senior year of high school, I spent lunches with my best friend and other church friends. They were a group of male and females that I still hold very dear to this day. While, even then I never got over the fact that I was once thought of as the fat blob and even to this day, I feel like others think of me that way…that I’m a person who follows them around or pushes myself upon them. But, the greatest thing, I could go home and not have to think about it. I could get away from feeling bad about myself for a few hours when I was with my church friends. I had a “get away” a “resting place” that I could retreat to.
Today
Sadly…today, girls do not. My heart breaks for girls who are adolescents in today’s time. Times may have changed but it hasn’t changed for the better…and to be honest, I believe that I had it a lot better than these poor souls do.
In exchanging emails to a teen girl a few years ago that seemed so run down, she told me “I can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere. I go to school and it’s the mean girls against me, I go home and my parents favor my sister who is a cheerleader over me, I get on the computer and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is full of these girls posting mean remarks about me, I dream about it when I go to sleep, only to wake up the next day and repeat this. I can’t even get away from it at church because these same girls are in my youth group. I want to stop going but my parents will not let me. So when my parents drop me off I hide in an empty room with my Bible until they pick me up, I try to get out a few minutes before hand so no one will see me and say anything. I can’t wait until I start driving myself so I don’t have to go at all. I will just pretend I’m going. They think that by me going to church it will make things better but all it’s doing it making things worse. I can’t keep going on and I really do want to find a way out of all this pain. ”
This…my friends…hurts me to my core. It actually made me cry for her. I reached out through the years to help her the best I could and eventually I suppose she learned to put that mask on that we all as women learn to put on and things seemed to be going really well for her but the sad truth is that it all became more than she could handle and she never seen graduation. What is so wrong with us as adult Christian women that we are allowing those younger than us to make other women feel this way? Why are we not reaching out to stop this behavior and be better mentors? Why are we not telling them that there is a better way than “out”?
Can I answer this with a question…Thanks…
How can we be those mentors when, we, as these adult Christian women, are feeling the same way?
We wake up in the morning dreading it. Most of us set the tone for our day before our feet even hit the floor because we feel we have to check our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and maybe even Pintrest or MyFitnessPal-automatically we are greeted with things that drive our insecurities.
We get up already feeling defeated, look in our closets for the best looking outfit, shoes, and bag, we fix our hair, put on our makeup, and spray on the perfume, we get in our cars to drive to work and there we are greeted with other women who are better performers than us, who get promotions over us, who are in better shape than us, who drive better cars, who have higher heels, who have the latest bag, who can afford to have her hair done weekly, who seems to have it all together.
We spend our days comparing ourselves to each other and dwelling on our own insecurities. Only to go home to face the men in our lives and feel that he too notices all these things about other women and prefers them over the woman that is standing before him. Your child says what neat things that Bobby’s mom did for him and you wonder if your children would rather have a different mom. Your dog plays with your husband and you think even the dog can’t love you like you are….you too go to bed and dream of these things only to get up on a Sunday morning and compare yourself to the women at church.
Sister Liz sits in the congregation and cannot focus on the sermon for the following thoughts…“ I don’t pray enough, I don’t lead a Sunday School class, I don’t volunteer enough, I don’t do this or that…is that a runner in my hose? Oh no, it is…I best Sister Sally never has a runner in her hose! She’s always so put together…I know my husband wishes I was more like her and more of a spiritual woman like her. I bet she never raises her voice to him or their kids. She’s always pleasant looking and acting.”
Meanwhile, Sister Sally is thinking…”Why is she staring at me? I know she can tell I had to put on so much make up to cover the black eye my husband gave me from his drinking binge last night. I know everyone here knows about it. I’m a laughing stock of this church and community. He’s having an affair, I just know it. I can’t really blame him, after all these kids why would he ever want me again. That’s why he drinks because I’m such an awful person…he drinks to get away from me.”
See….we ALL have our own battles and struggles with insecurities. I do not know a Sister Liz (while I’ve felt like her many a times) nor do I know a Sister Sally personally, but I know you are out there. My purpose in writing on this topic is to gain confidence and deal with some of my own insecurities and focus more on the second part or Psalm 139:14 “…wonderfully made…” I hope to encourage other women to step out and comment on this post and tell your personal experience with this and hope that other women too will gain understanding that they are wonderfully made despite of any physical appearance, emotional state or where they are at spiritually.
Our hearts as women are so precious, so delicate, so tender and so so so dear to God. He does not want us feeling these things and above that He doesn’t want us living in a life full of unhappiness of what He made in His image. He wants us to seek our need for this beauty from Him.
Genesis 1:27 (NIV) 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
We really shouldn’t be so unhappy about ourselves that we compare how God made us to others who are comparing how God made them. I hope to encourage those of all ages to help me and their selves as we seek to find our true beauty in Christ. As well as; get advice from women who are older on this topic. We really have to come together on this because our youth for today…are hurting. They are in great danger of feeling unloved and unbeautiful based on worldly assumptions. They are being influenced by outside worldly sources that are telling them that a certain size, shape, brand, hair style, or style of dress is what makes them beautiful. These girls are grow up, go to college, get married, start family, and become US! These girls are doing all of this never knowing what true beauty is.
Please take the time to think and comment on this with any suggestions or anything that you think would be beneficial. Male or female…it would be interesting to hear any thoughts on the subject.
Dear Awesome God-I thank you for laying this topic on my heart so heavily here of late. I do not know what you want me to do with it but I am going to embrace this topic and do all I can to bring it to light for the women of who are Your children to come together, embrace their beauty and take a stand against the worlds definition of beauty. I beg of you Lord, to please protect these hearts of young girls and heal their hurts as they seek out this definition of being wonderfully made. I pray that other Christian women become encouraged to step out in faith and reach out to the youth to be a mentor that can honestly look at these girls with understanding. I pray Lord that you heal our hurts and wounds as adult women and help us remember that we were made in Your image and that we need to rejoice in the fact that You made us just how you wanted us. There are many of us who are doing things to ourselves mentally, emotionally, as well as physically that are damaging us inside and out-please Lord, help us to stop doing these things in the name of worldly beauty and to start seeking you for healing.
Amen.
