Sunday, June 26, 2016

AM I BEAUTIFUL?




What if I am beautiful?  Not just my inner self, but my outer self as well?  How will that change my perspective of myself?  Will I allow the world to define my beauty?  Will I finally believe others when they say I am beautiful?  Will the Lord speak truth into my life?

For all my life, I have looked at other women and compared them to me.  What do I define as outer beauty?  Long hair that is wavy and luxurious, for one.  Color of hair doesn’t really matter to me.  I have wavy hair, but it is frizzy and unruly.  A slender body that is free from stretch marks and free of fat.  My body is not slender in the least.  I could lose more weight than I have been.  And I will most likely never be slender.  My body is not that type.  It is big boned and more prone to excess weight.  Eyebrows that is full and even.  My eyebrows are missing hairs, I believe.  They are full, but very uneven.  Skin that is smooth and free of any kind of blemishes.  I have moles on my arms, especially in the summer.  And my cheeks stay red constantly.  And I have stretch marks from my constant losing and gaining weight.  Full lips and perfect white teeth.  My lips are full, especially my bottom one.  My teeth are stained and in horrible shape.  Plus they are crooked.  No, I don't believe that I am beautiful.

Some people have called me beautiful.  Especially my future husband.  He calls me beautiful very often.  And it hurts him when I don’t believe him.  Yet my definition of beauty has been so in grown in me that I cannot perceive why he sees me as beautiful.   They say that love is blind, and maybe that is true for him.  Yet he has been calling me beautiful since we first began talking online.  Surely if he didn’t think I was beautiful, he wouldn’t have sent me a message.  I simply cannot see what he sees.  To me, I have a lot of physical blemishes that makes me feel unattractive and ugly.  The most I will go is pretty.  But I don’t feel pretty when I have so much excess weight.  My weight is defining how I see myself.  Should I believe my future husband when he calls me beautiful?

Is it the world’s label that makes me believe that I am not beautiful?  The world labels outward beauty.  You have to be a size 0, have long hairless legs, have gorgeous hair, and have no imperfections at all.  The world looks at weight.  The more you weigh the less beautiful you are.  What if the world is wrong?  What if it doesn’t matter about the pounds you need to lose or not lose?  If the world is wrong, then what defines beauty?  Should I believe the world?

I long to feel beautiful.  I am not the kind of woman that spends excess amounts of money on makeup and beauty treatments.  For one, I don’t have the money.  Even if I did, I wouldn’t be spending it on makeup and beauty treatments.  There are better things to spend money on.  Maybe beauty is an inner thing, not an outer thing.  Maybe it doesn’t matter what I wear or what I weigh.

For so long I have been labeled as fat, ugly, and disgusting.  Kids in school were the first ones to label me as such.  And the abuse I suffered through didn’t help matters any.  Every time I was abused, I felt dirty, disgusting, and ashamed.  The kids only hammered in the truth.  Looking back, I wonder what was wrong with me.  Or maybe what was right?  What caused my abusers to abuse me?  I know it wasn’t my fault.  I was just a child, and adults are supposed to protect you.  Yet, what did they see in me that they didn’t see in someone else?  Did they see my beauty and wanted to destroy it?  Or did they see something else?  I don’t blame the kids for making fun of me and calling me names.  They were children; they didn’t know any better.  And they were being taught themselves what beauty is labeled as, just as I was being taught to hate myself and to consider myself as ugly. 

Years of believing I am ugly makes it hard to change.  And the fact that I consider myself as pretty is a huge step for me.  It didn’t come easily, but through years of constant doubt, struggles, and ultimately healing.  Would I say I am attractive?  No, I would not.  Yet my future husband insists that I am very attractive, especially to him.  Is he right?  Am I wrong?  Or is he wrong, and I am right?  Should I believe him?  Or should I believe myself?

The Lord calls me a precious jewel.  The word precious has a very special significance to me.  The first time I was called precious was in prayer, and the Lord softly told me I was precious to Him.  The first time a person called me precious was in church when an elderly woman called me “Precious”. 

God calls me a precious jewel.  Yet does He call me beautiful?  When I think of a precious jewel, my thoughts immediately turn to a rare and beautiful stone.  The jewel is beautiful in darkness and in light, but its beauty really shines through in the light.  Is God trying to tell me I am beautiful by calling me His precious jewel?  Is He telling me that my beauty reflects even in the midst of darkness?  Is He lying?  Or is He blinded by love?  God is truth.  Do I dare call Him a liar?  If He is lying about my being beautiful, maybe He is lying about everything else.  If I believe He is lying, I need to reconsider everything I spiritually know.  No, God is honest.  Is He telling me that I am beautiful?  If He calls me beautiful, then should I believe it?  Should I believe Him?

Maybe beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder.  Maybe beauty isn’t in the eyes of the world.  Maybe beauty is in the eyes of the Lord God.  And if He calls me beautiful, maybe I should believe Him.


1 comment:

  1. My eye is not blind I saw the beauty of you on the inside and out. Its not me and i do understand that it is hard for you to see hiw beautiful you are to me. All I can do is show you tell you and be there for you someday you will be able to see that if the world does not see you as beautiful that in my world you are everything to me and I behold the beauty in you.

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