Beauty

Beauty is a funny thing. Our culture is obsessed with it. We are constantly inundated with media telling us we need to be beautiful and sexually appealing to be valuable, that there's always something more we can and should do to be considered more lovely. And for some reason we buy into the lies and believe beauty is everything, that we aren't worth anything if we aren't lovely, and that we are never enough. 

I bought into the lies. For the longest time I didn't feel like I was enough. I wasn't skinny enough, my face wasn't finely shaped enough, my skin wasn't clear enough, I was too awkward or nerdy or lonely. In no way did I conform to the conventional concept of beauty - in face, form, social ability, or the way I interacted with boys. Nor did I have hope of ever doing so. It's just not the way I'm made. These insecurities got really bad last year - I couldn't look at myself in the mirror or go a single day without feeling like I wasn't skinny enough or stylish enough to be really valuable or to ever really, truly be loved or thought beautiful. I never made any drastic lifestyle changes, but I began trying harder and harder to dress better and be a better person so people would like me more. I was so miserably, desperately insecure, and did not think I was worth much at all. I also hated to admit to myself that these emotions were raging through me. I wanted so badly to be the confident and (of course) beautiful senior my peers would look up to.

Then something happened. I graduated and spent my summer working at Campus by the Sea (located in a little cove on Catalina Island), and by the third or fourth day I had virtually given up attempting to match my thrift store shorts to my camp T-shirts. Due to the dusty, sandy, salty, sweaty earthiness of my environment and the severely limited nature of the wardrobe I brought with me, it was virtually impossible to make beauty the idol it had previously been. As a result, I was unable to be anyone but myself. What a beautiful gift from God! I learned I didn't have to be a certain person or look a certain way to be loved - I just had to be myself. Somehow, I am enough - just me, myself, and I.

Since getting back to the mainland I have been doing some more thinking on this topic, and I've come to the conclusion that the tendency of our culture to typecast and create standards of beauty is absolutely ridiculous and futile. Just look around you! Part of the incredible beauty of God's artistry is that every human is designed to be physically different from every other human. Each and every one of us is an intentional, exquisitely designed, unique work of art. As His works of art, we are each intended to reveal a given aspect of His character - spiritually and physically. My body is an integral part of the artwork that is me, and therefore reveals specific aspects of its Artist. And because God is a beautiful God, each of us is beautiful. He would not make something He did not delight in or find beautiful.

Choose to see the world that way. Choose to see people that way. Ask God to open your heart so you can see beauty as He does. When you look at something that is beautiful, ask yourself how it reveals God's character. You will begin to see Him as so much closer, more loving, and more personal than before when you realize that everything He created (light, wind, water, roses, the sky) is meant to be a physical reminder to us of His beauty and His love for us. When you look at someone or something that initially seems ugly, remember God created him/her/it, and, for that very reason, whoever or whatever you are looking at is ravishingly beautiful. It's a beautiful way to see the world. ;)

Also, don't try to or let yourself find your value in your beauty or how others perceive you. Instead, know you are intrinsically valuable simply because you are a child of the One True King. In no other source of identity will you be able to find lasting value.

So remember: you are ravishingly beautiful simply because you are a work of art created by the most incredible Artist in the universe, and you are inherently valuable simply because He delights in you. There is nothing you can do to earn your own value - it just is because God loves you and delights in you.

I love you all! Remember tonight just how loving and beautiful God is.

The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
Psalm 50:1-2

For you formed my inward parts;
     you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.Wonderful are your works;     my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
     intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
     the days that were formed for me,
     when as yet there were none of them.
Psalm 139:13-16