Beauty
I try to get myself to every dance related fitness class they have got going at my gym that fits in my schedule because I love to shake my booty. A few weeks ago I was just thanking God for the work he has done in my life because somehow he’s got me to the point where I am comfortable enough with myself to be in a class full of very slim, coordinated women and not feel like a total misfit – an entire world away from my journal entries of 4 years ago which at times basically consisted of a list of things I hated – and I mean hated – about my body. I have accepted I am never going to be one of those women who I used to really envy – long limbed, slim, and graceful. My limbs are short, I am … curvaceous and … as for being graceful – clumsy is a better description. But the thing is despite not fitting into the stereotype of what beauty is – a lot of the time, most of the time (because I am a work in progress) I believe I am beautiful.
So what is beauty? Why have we bought the lie that we need to become identikit versions of each other? Is beauty the inner confidence of knowing that you, as you are, are beautiful – that God created you, that he thinks you are a hottie?!! How do we get beyond our perceived inadequacies and lack and move to the place of knowing that our beauty is not just dictated by fashion or culture and that it is so much more than that.
Beauty is more than a mould we all have to fit, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty shines from within, surely we become who believe ourselves to be, so regardless at what the world shouts, what is the King of Glory saying to us? I for one KNOW he is not saying to me “sorry Vanessa made a bit of a mistake with you – sorry I made you fat and ugly!” I don’t think so somehow. He made us to be beautiful.
I went dancing on Saturday night and all around me were women dressed to impress. Barbie was definitely most people’s role model – big boobs, very slim, extensions, inches thick make up, teeny tiny clothes, fake eyelashes, fake tan, fake nails. My heart broke. I wanted to stand up and shout – what’s going on underneath all of the makeup and the fake hair/ boobs/ nails/ eyelashes/ tan, what do you really look like? I don’t have a problem with anything that enhances beauty, it’s more when we hide behind enhancements and they become the veil from under which we operate and rely on that I think things get a bit tricky.
For me that place of knowing I am beautiful came at the foot of the cross, when I took my years of ungodly beliefs to Jesus and left them there and began to walk out the process of knowing and believing how God sees me – whether that meant speaking Song of Songs over myself, or choosing to counteract a lie – you are ugly – with the truth – I am lovely, being accountable and talking about how I felt about myself, setting myself challenges like NO makeup days!
God loves us, cherishes us, and thinks we are gorgeous. It is not a cliché – I have sat in so many girl talks where they have talked about image and thought “not sure that applies to me … all this God thinks you are gorgeous, what is that about, why are people so hung up with this issue?” Then I would go home and journal rubbish about what I believed about myself. When we live without knowing how precious and lovely we are, we feel insecure about ourselves, we try to hide ourselves; we buy into the culture that tells us we are only good enough when we become something else.
I want to be a woman who lives in the reality of Song Of Songs 1:15 every single day of my life and thankfully it is possible because of Jesus.