Were we ever in that stage? Can we turn a head?
Tabloids. I hate them. They lie beauty to woman heart. Pages with them airbrushed, too close to nude. So much skin. Skin so smooth. No spider veins, no varicose. Legs and breasts firmer and perkier than than any true natural reality possible. Smiling faces and bikini laces...
So we walk thru narrow lanes to pay for bananas, and we buy " I am not enough". We drive wondering if our husbands noticed the magazine. Do they want me, like that? Hearts throbs soft. We know what's accurate. There isn't a "me" like that. So what about us?
Beauty. We crave it.
Let's be real. We want to be breath-taking. We want our husband to cast us smiles, because he can't help be caught up. We want to feel confident walking in stores or standing in line at Starbucks.
Let's be real. We ask stupid questions. In the aloneness of our own head. How does my bum look in these jeans? Then we look at her in front of us. Her with the REALLY cute pockets all blinged. Is my butt bigger? Maybe if I found those jeans....
We put ourselves down as we walk the catwalk of comparison. Or what's worse, we belittle other women we see in a meager attempt to make ourselves come out "on top."
Let's admit it. We watch ourselves in the mirror. We check if the thick in our belly is more than last week. We try on 10 outfits, cutting ourselves down as we rip off the ones we determine make us look unattractive. Am I hitting home with anyone?
We dress and makeup ourselves hoping to remain among the beautiful.
My hubby hates when I ask him which outfit he prefers, to only walk out to leave, in a different one then he chose. Me. Choosing my selfish method of approval over trusting my husbands heart and eyes. " I am the only one you should be trying to please when you dress lover." He's right. After honoring God, as a married woman, its him I should desire to please. So if not him, what am I after?
Here's my vulnerable. I want to be seen as beautiful wherever I go. I fear someone thinking my bum is too big, my baby flap showing over my jeans, and my arms measuring too thick up top. I worry someone will wonder why I chose to wear that?!! I worry I will be the woman another woman puts down to make herself the better.
Ladies. We can't possibly be the impossible. We will never be beauty in the eye of every beholder. I ask you, what I very often need ask myself,
Whose eyes are beholding you truest?
Because vogue says I'm shabby. Fit magazine says I'm flabby. Parenting magazine would level me as a frumpy mom in need of a shopping spree! The ladies in public with the better jeans...yeah. They might just feel sorry for me. And the tabloids?! To them I am dimpled, pimpled, and full in all the wrong places. So if those eyes, and those standards are what has me bound...I'm in trouble. Because I have to face it...I cannot be an airbrushed empress of beauty.
So what now. How do we meet this tiring battle and beat it daily? There is only one way I know.
Love.
His.
God has me saying these words. And friend, whenever I do, I feel this amazing sense of coming home in my heart.
"I am beautiful because I am His."
I am beautiful.
Because. I. Am. His.
This incredible thing happens when we know real love, we become our fullest selves. There is no love like my Jesus'. And when I realize how much He loves me, notices me, values me...how truly personal He is WITH ME.... I begin to beautify under such gift.
We "become" the more we know Him and His personal love for us in our daily life.
A woman who is confident, whose soul is calm, has a countenance that radiates loveliness. It's true.
We need to quiet our souls into His love. Let HIM tell us our value. Let HIM tell us what HE sees. It's only when we are confident where our love comes from, where our beauty originates, that we can be confident we already have what will never leave. Love.
Love always radiates beauty.
Lets talk proof.
" ...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; AND THAT YOU, BEING ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE, may be able to comprehend with all the saints ( with all your fellow sisters in Jesus. Hee hee!) what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to KNOW THE LOVE OF CHRIST which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the FULLNESS of God." ~ Ephesians 3:17-19
Do it again. Read it. Slow.
Whose love? His. This incredible pursuer of our affection.
What do we become? Grounded. Settled into it. Into HIS love.
What happens when we are grounded? We begin to comprehend! To comprehend how deep His love is, how wide His love is, how high His love is, how long His love lasts! That my dear friend leads to security and divine confidence!
What happens? We become. Filled with the fullness of God. Filled with this fullness of Beauty Himself.
We "become" because He is beautiful.
Oh dear one. He is why you are beautiful. He is why vogue, blinged jeans, poised hair, and smooth thighs don't matter. He is why those goals are empty.
Why pursue empty?
Here's a challenge. If you have a hard time seeing "how" He loves you personal, get a journal. Please. Begin writing down what you are thankful for. I promise you will begin to see how involved in your life He is, even when YOU don't notice. Track His grace and hear the love song.
Then this. All of us deal with this. When you are in public and your eyes fall on her. This poised, seemingly flawless woman... Talk to Jesus about her instead of to your flesh. Thank Jesus for her beauty, and pray she will come home to knowing His love personal. This gets our eyes off comparing, self focus, and beauty that is fleeting.... It puts our minds on what's true. Directs our eyes to the training of His. And it protects her you are sizing up. Give that gift to her. How blessed we would be if another would do the same for us. Let's start giving hope instead of taking it away... Spreading the kind of beauty that vogue can't touch.
Lastly, I wanna leave you with a prayer. For my heart, and for yours.
" Arise, shine; for YOUR light has come, And the glory of The Lord has risen upon YOU. For behold, darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples; BUT THE LORD WILL RISE UPON YOU, AND HIS GLORY WILL APPEAR UPON YOU. And the nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising." ~ Isaiah 60:1-3
Our time has come. His light is finding our faces. This world will continue to be dark, and the peoples lost in it. But The Lord is rising upon you...His love and glory will appear on you! You can show His beauty and be like light. Heavens light to a world of hurting women. Women chasing fullness from dark and empty places. Verse three says they can come because of your light! His love, grounded in you, shows in brightness as He raises you up!
Your countenance tells a story.
You are beautiful because you are His.
His.
May we be blessed as we rise together. I can feel such light upon this face....
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