The day finally dawned with sunny breezes, and my tumbling, excited thoughts. I scrambled to get ready to make it in time. I had prayed for this day, for so long: and here it was...the Becoming Beautiful II Conference!
Learning about Beauty Myths
and dressing in correct proportions and colors for you.
Our models are Lauren and Mikaela.
This is the first session, recorded live, called "Finding Beauty in Your Valley." Yes...that's me talking all over the stage, and my sweet friend, Ruth. The talk starts at minute 12:41. I pray God uses these words to bless you, as much as He has powerfully used the same truths in my life...
I've been thinking about you and your amazingness and I've got to tell you something. If apologizing for yourself is truly your personality, I can handle it. Otherwise, please stop. You are you, and that's good enough for the rest of the world. In fact, you being you, is perfect. It is possible that no one cares about your insignificant faults but you, and drawing attention to them may be completely unnecessary. After all, that's awkward, too. In fact, if you think you're boring, someone thinks you're safe. If you think you're too large, someone thinks you're just right...and doesn't notice otherwise until you force them to acknowledge it in an uncomfortable conversation.
What if we were to think about other people, instead of ourselves? What if we were to forget our glaring faults that make us self-concious and exchange them for caring for others? If you met her and had a chance to talk with her before she left, did you ask Mother Theresa what she didn't like about her body or personality: what did she want to change? No, its perposterous to even think of asking her that. She is known for her love of others and we know its practically impossible to critique her appearance because it doesn't matter. But, empty self-focused people? Its easy to see the attitudes, the faults, the imperfections. Spend too much time scrutinizing yourself, and others will too. I don't know about you, but that doesn't appeal to me to be picked apart.
Where is your purpose and focus? Do you think of yourself first and subconciously? Do you hestitate to be you because you are so focused on you? It doesn't have to be. Let it go and love others: give without motive of self reward and I can guarantee you're flaws disappear because they don't matter. That's all.
I leaned over my Starbucks and looked at the photo. I glanced back up into her trusting brown eyes, a little startled. “She was so gorgeous before and then she...oh my! What do you think? Isn’t she just crazy?” she asked me. “Before and after”: we all are intrigued by those photos, and this time I was, too.
Before and After
My response to her? “We all are crazy.” And then I went on…At least everyone one of us who looks at what God created in nature and says, “Hey…that’s needs switched up. That mountain is too craggy and that flower is just too pink!” We are not all Megan Fox, but that is a wonderful thing. Together we may look at her and ask “Why? Why is she ‘so perfect’ and then why did she feel like she needed to change her appearance?” But I ask, “Why are you so perfect and want to change your appearance, little pink flower?”
I am told by my young informant that Ms. Fox is trying to look like someone else, another famous celebrity. This I don’t know for a fact, but what I do know, is that it sure seems like it and it is so sad. If people like a specific person, they will go to that specific person, not their copy. It is a privilege to be your original, just as you are: zany, hilarious, awkward, quiet, and always growing up. Large, small, wide, narrow, muscley, plump, or teeny-tiny is perfect, as you live a life of health for you.
Girls especially like to look into the mirror, out of curiosity. Honestly, some days the reaction is, “Oh my! I’m so beautiful the world must see me today!” and then a few days later its “Oh my! I’m so hideous I want to hide forever under my covers!”Why? This happens because you don’t know what you’re looking at.
You think it is your face. Really, it’s the outside of a created thing that is. Yes, one might say “it is just the way things are and that’s that” and while that’s true and a relief, there’s more. When you only gaze upon yourself, figuratively or literally, you can’t see anything else. You lose perspective of when, where, who, and what. You forget who you really are, your blessings, —and your purpose.
Is it your purpose to be looked at by people like an exhibit? That rather sounds disgusting and every human’s value it above that! But do you accidentally live like that? Is your value based upon comparison? It happens easily mentally, too. But, it is not true. God determines that. And He sent His Son to die for each individual.
I will say what you’ve heard before. “Beauty comes from within.” I turned down the street, glancing into my rearview mirror with a deprecating look. My sister piped up in the back seat, “Man, you are just so ugly when you frown at me like that.” She did instantly put my computer down and stop browsing, but she was right, in a way. Frowns are ugly. Mean is ugly. Brats are ugly. Selfishness, lack of caring, no character, anger, and jealousy are all ugly. But, you don’t have to be. What we think, say, and choose to feel shows in our appearance.
Don’t tell me anything remotely like, “Easy for you to say.” or I will post photos of myself between the ages of 12-15 and the world will not be at happy place. No, actually, I am joking. But I did go through a gajillion times 85 negative thoughts about my appearance as a teen and I had those desperate moments, too. Give yourself time as you grow in good character and kindness. You might be surprised eventually, if you ever even feel like looking in the mirror, after you find yourself captivated by the goodness of God and His other designs around you.
Your “before and after” is easily made perfect for you. You are not too pink and no mountain is too craggy. No cloud is too puffy and you are just you, like all creations. Become your best you from the inside out, because that is how it works.
This is one of my favorite movies to show how photographed women get airbrushed. We wouldn’t think that she became pretty if we didn’t know what fake pretty looks like.
This is deeply personal and kind of embarrassing to both of us, but as a friend, it would be awful if I didn’t tell you. It is really hard for everyone not to notice. Truth is...you are smelly. No proverbial green clouds of curling stench are rising, but the current state is close enough. The last time you washed-up, it was just your hands, actually. And that was last Thanksgiving. Oh, and once on Mother’s Day. Almost everyone is too polite to tell you how severe your odor has gotten. But they know.
You feel grimy, too. Its not just the other people noticing. That dirty feeling where you just have four too many layers of chalkiness, stickiness, grittiness, flakiness, scabbiness, and oiliness in all their respective places is overpowering at times. Its several notches past what my sister calls “the pinto bean state.” You know you’re a little bit of a mess, and somehow you don’t know where to start. Where did it come from?
I’ll stop before I gross anyone out further, but someone had to tell you. What you need is a bonified, no holding-back, pressure wash from head-to-toe—in gratefulness. “What? Ungratefulness don’t make me stink!” you say…Bummer. We already know how much you’re aware of!
Sure, you’ve said, “Thank you.” dozens of times over the past days, hours even. But did you mean it? When was the last time you truly came to the place where you realized the absolute necessity of others and their gifts into your life? Gifts of time, care, words, smiles, personality, friendship, and simple presence are for real. It is the unconscious attitude saying, “I didn’t really need that, and I sure can make it on my own.” that stinks up a room, a home, a community, a country.
What starts to rot on us especially, is when we forget that we aren’t perfect. Of course we know that, but do we act like it? Living without responding to the truth we have learned about ourselves from experience and time, is darkly, deeply ungrateful.
Ways to clean up
Think about yourself. Yes, realize how much you need the people in your life.
Think about yourself. Know where you go wrong and use what you’ve been taught: taught by life, experiences, mentors, books, God, parents, friends, etc.
Think about yourself. Look at what you have and realize how much is there.
Think about yourself. Take time to examine what you know. Where did you learn it? It didn’t come from “no where” or…your-inner-whatever.
Take those thoughts you just discovered and act on them. Express yourself to the people you owe for those benefits in how you cohabit with them.
Yes, maybe go out of your way to show that you mean it, because now you do!
Voila! You, my friend, now smell uuuhhhhhhhh-maaaa-zeeng. It is refreshing to even be near you. Even compared to people I thought smelled nice, you now take my breath away. I am loving the fragrance of your life. Look! It even makes you smile, too. That’s all. Glad I could tell you that; get it off my chest.
One of my friends is the hottest blonde you can possibly imagine. Wait. That didn’t sound right, at all. Everybody stop imagining. Let me start over. Ahem.
I have a friend who is just so naturally stunning, and “fearfully and wonderfully made.” She’s the Barbie I wanted to be when I was little and used to think real women like my mom were blonde. And as a descriptor, she's the weight I can’t possibly be now that…I’m not little. She’s the healthy mother of a healthy boy and looks like she can’t possibly have birthed a child from her body. Anyhow, she’s blue-eyed gorgeousness on steroids. But there’s something else about her that makes me know she’s real beauty itself…
Not long ago and late at night, she told me a story. My hands were sunk into dishwater up to my elbows, and she leaned on the counter across the bar from me. Her lovely face was illuminated by the tealights nested in a long row on the countertop, their little flames bouncing joyfully in painful contrast. I pen “painful contrast” because her story breaks my heart. How could it be possible?
No tears fell from her eyes, no despondent sighs escaped her lips, just heart-rending, factual accounts followed one after the other of late events. Wiping her hand across the counter to brush an imaginary something away, she paused. “Johanna, is something the matter with me? Why do I give up these things so easily? You know I’m strong. Am I getting a double personality or something horrible like that because I can walk through this without going nuts? I’m going to go to counseling because I’m not scared, because I’m not crying.”
I reached for the dish towel to dry my eyes and hands. (Not a habit or anything to use the dish cloth, you know, just for the record.) The truth was obvious to me. “It might be a good question to consider, but the fact is, people who are not normal, don’t have normal responses. The closer you are to God, the less likely you are to respond how everyone thinks is ‘right’ or ‘healthy,’ even. It’s not some abstract thing, either: I can see that.”
Joseph Caryl wrote, “God takes the most eminent and choicest of His servants for the choicest and most eminent afflictions. They who have received most grace from God are able to bear most afflictions from God. Affliction does not hit the saint by chance, but by direction. God does not draw His bow at a venture. Every one of His arrows goes upon a special errand and touches no breast but his against whom it is sent. It is not only the grace, but the glory of a believer when he can stand and take affliction quietly.” Oh. Wow. Read that again…
“Taking affliction quietly” sounds—very unrealistic. But, Christian reader, it is our glory. It is our chance to direct attention back on God. It is our chance to become Christlike. It is our chance to mature, to grown in wisdom, to prove how real God is in real life, to become truly beautiful from the inside, out. Why would we actually want to skip a chance like that?
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:
But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.
But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.
Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
