They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do you believe this to be true? Do you believe that each individual person defines beauty? Or do you believe that each person in this world is beautiful?
I believe that we are all beautiful. I believe that beauty is so much more than our outside appearance. I also believe that because we are created in the image and likeness of God that we have to be beautiful no matter what we look like, because God is beauty.
Listen to the song You're Beautiful by Phil Wickham. His song reminds us that every beautiful thing we see is God's beauty.
As women we are always being put down and told that we need to improve ourselves. We need to buy this product to take the "flaws" out of our skin. We need to buy this pair of jeans to make ourselves look thinner. We need to wear our hair a certain way and color it a certain way to make ourselves more beautiful. We are certainly not "born with it" because it's Maybeline that makes us look so pretty.
Every time we turn around we are being told what to do to improve ourselves. I am not saying that we should not take care of ourselves, but society and the media are constantly telling us that we are not good enough. But who are we not good enough for? Are we not good enough to grace the covers of the magazines? Well to be honest most of the models out there are not all that attractive and photo shop can make anyone look "beautiful".
Do you remember the reality show The Swan from a few years ago. The show where they took the "ugly ducklings" and turned them into beautiful swans through lots of plastic surgery and spending everyday at the gym. Then to make these women feel even more insecure about themselves after being told by the world that they are ugly, they make them compete in a beauty pageant to see which one is the most beautiful. Now I cannot sit here and knock beauty pageants, however I think that taking insecure women, telling them they are ugly, making them believe that plastic surgery is the only way to fix their insecurity, and then judging them on national television to simply turn around and tell one woman that she is the only one that is beautiful is wrong.
Plastic surgery is not going to fix our insecurity problems with our bodies. That is only a band-aid for a much deeper problem. It is a problem that all women have, whether we choose to admit it or not, we are all insecure with ourselves. We are constantly judging our bodies telling ourselves that we need to tone up, lose weight, change our hair, and do something with this face! We all suffer from insecurities; we just think no one else does. This is our curse as women, put on us by each other. If we would stop judging each other and comparing ourselves to each other we might actually begin to see our own unique beauty.
You see we can all buy makeup and clothes, gym memberships and diet food, but that still is not going to change our hearts. What we are missing is that we are all truly beautiful already, no matter what people see on the outside. You see our bodies are just a shell. They are temporary housing for our souls. And while we need to take care of our bodies, we do not need to obsess over it. When we die and our soul goes to meet the Lord, our bodies stay in the ground. We do not take them with us, until the day Jesus returns and we are reunited with our bodies. But we forget, when that day comes, our bodies will be flawless. There will be nothing wrong with them. In the meantime however, what we overlook is the beauty in our hearts. It is our personalities and the love that radiates out of us that makes us truly beautiful. When we honor God, serve others, and emit Christ's love we are showing our true beauty. Have you ever heard someone say" well she is not that pretty, but it's her personality that makes her pretty"? That is where this comes from. You could be the most beautiful woman in the world, gracing the covers of all the magazines and modeling for all the top designers of the world, but if you have an ugly heart, people do not see you as a beautiful person. They see you as an ugly person.
I have been involved with beauty pageants for the past few years now and trust me when I say this, you can have the most beautiful picture and wear the right clothes and have that "look" that we as women all want to have, but as soon as you open your mouth or look at someone else in disgust because of how they look, you are now the ugliest person to have entered that room. Just because you feel beautiful enough to stand on a stage and have a group of people judge you partially based upon your looks, does not mean that you are beautiful. Truly beautiful people have beautiful hearts. Having a beautiful heart is so much more important than having a beautiful face or a perfect body, because that is what others will remember you for.
When we look at ourselves and we start judging and criticizing the way that we look, we are in essence telling God, OUR creator that He did a bad job with us. Think of how it makes you feel when someone puts you down. Now imagine how it makes God feel when we put ourselves down. Think of the way it makes Christ feel, knowing that He sacrificed His life for us, that he had the skin literally torn from his body from the beatings He endured before he hung selflessly on a cross, all for us, and then we stare at our imperfect bodies and tell Him it wasn't enough.
We will never be perfect. We will never be flawless. But we can fix ourselves. We can change the way we think about our own bodies and each other’s bodies. We can stop focusing on the things we think are wrong and start changing our hearts and our minds. By recognizing that it is a change in attitude, we can change the way other people see us and more importantly the way we see ourselves.
We can start thanking the Lord for the ability to walk, talk, hear, see, and feel. We can start appreciating His beautiful craftsmanship and realize that we are a canvas that God paints on and He is never finished with us. From the day we are born to the day that we die and then are resurrected from the grave, God is constantly painting on our canvas. He is making improvements and changing things about us; always making us more beautiful for Him. But you see, this can only happen if we allow Him to do so. If we refuse God the ability to work on our hearts then we are taking the paint brushes away from Him and telling Him that we do not like or need His work. Do you really want to tell God that? You wouldn't tell a heart surgeon in the middle of surgery that you know how to perform the surgery better than he or she does when you are not a doctor, would you? No! And the reason is because you know that if you were to perform heart surgery on someone and you were not a heart surgeon, that person would die. When you take the brushes away from God, you then are ultimately dying. Your heart and your soul begin to deteriorate from the damage that is being cause by yourself. We are not equipped to fix ourselves on our own. We need help; we need the Holy Spirit to guide us, we need Jesus to walk with us, and we need God to protect us.
So give Him back the brushes and realize that you are a beautiful woman no matter what your age, dress size, hair color, skin color, or anything else that you think is wrong with you. Take pride in the fact that we were made in image and likeness of God and know that when you are filled with Christ love and the Holy Spirit, when you look in the mirror, you are not seeing yourself, you are seeing the most beautiful thing in the world, the face of our majesty and creator, God.
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