Pause for Beauty Tension

Pause

Deep breath in…1…2…3

Exhale…1…2…3

God, I thank you for these beautiful humans. Whether they believe it, see it, or feel it, it doesn’t matter because they are. We ebb and flow in our feelings about ourselves and our bodies, what others seem to want, and we think we need to have. It is sick. It exhausts us. We are frustrated with the very thing that sets us apart. Our beauty. Please take our perceptions, beliefs, and views of ourselves and replace them with truth and the reality of who we are. You hand crafted us. We are masterpieces. If others do not respond to our beauty, it does not mean we are ugly. Help us to believe that. Our beauty is subjective to the world, but fully desired and delighted in by You. Thank you for making us all together beautiful with purposes to fulfill, and always being there when we do not feel it, see it, or believe it. You are always by our sides on our bloated and negative image days. We love you. 

Deep breath in…1…2…3

Exhale…1…2…3

You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.
Song of Solomon 4:7

- Hannah 

You Are Chosen Beautifully

There is something about being chosen that makes us feel beautiful and desired.

For such a time as this. Esther wasn’t just a beauty queen. A beauty and a queen. She was chosen. But, Esther was not just picked by the King, she was chosen by God to rescue her people. He just happened to use her outward beauty to get her into the position to carry out her calling. 

Samuel went through every attractive son of Jessie’s, before he found out that there was another one. A younger one, just a boy; David. I imagine he was a little bit awkward, a lanky looking teen boy would be anointed to become the future King of Israel. Chosen by God. A man after God’s own heart. Chosen, not because of how he looked, but because of his heart; what God saw in Him

Beauty is beyond how we look. I know, I know. But, hear me. 

Your beauty is beyond how you look. Always has been and always will be.

Sometimes you may be chosen or noticed because of how you look.  A poppin outfit, a great hair day, a gorgeous pair of shoes, or how your body looks may get eyes on you, but it is not what will keep them with you. More often than not, it is going to be who you are that attracts people; a reflection of what you model in your life. 

Beyond the worldly tension, you are chosen all because of Jesus. You are chosen. I don’t know for what purpose. I wish I could tell you what it is God has planned for you. But, you have a purpose. God has a plan for your life. And while he may use your outer beauty, it is who you are and what He has given you that qualifies you every time. He sees you, and no matter how you feel, or what you are going through He chooses you.

You are chosen. 

I repeat it to myself daily. Because, being chosen, wanted, and needed makes me feel beautiful, strong, and capable on the days when I feel anything but who I truly am. I am qualified. 

We are beautiful.

Not because of how we look, but because of whose we are and who He made us to be.

Beauty has very little to do with our outsides and what others want to see, it has to do with our hearts and what God is doing in us. 

What we believe, who we are becoming, and what we live out. That is beautiful. You are beautiful. 

- Hannah 

Beautiful Tension

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. Psalm 139:13-14

Beauty

Beauty is only skin deep.

Beauty is really found in the heart.

Look like this, be this size, buy these clothes, wear a full face and you will be beautiful.

Being a person of integrity and grace is more important than how you look.

To be attractive.

To be desirable.

To be accepted.

The messages conflict. They are thrown at me from every side. Invest in your heart. Invest in a workout program. Invest in others. 

What is beautiful? At the end of the day, what is beautiful? I want it to be my heart, rather than my thigh gap. I want it be my personality more than personal style. I want to be seen as beautiful for who I am instead of what I look like. 

Off and on through middle school I struggled with an eating disorder; anorexia. I didn’t fully starve myself, but I did eat the bare minimum. Raw spinach was my food of choice. I looked in the mirror and all I saw was fat and ugly, the little girl all the boys made fun of. I hated my frame; broad shoulders, big boobs, hips, and lean legs. And the double chin, don’t get me started on that. I would suck in my tummy so tight. I worked out like crazy. I hated myself. 

Sometimes I still do.

I recently did a mini photo shoot to get some new pictures for the socials. I looked at the girl on my computer screen and all I saw was fat and ugly, the little girl all the boys made fun of. I was visited again by the self-loathing monster. 

I texted a friend and confessed how I was feeling. Bring the feeling into the light and it will be better.

She texted back and told me my eyes were popping in the photos. 

That is true. I love my green eyes, but no one ever compliments how I look. It is always my eyes, smile, dimples, sometimes hair. I can’t remember the last time someone told me I was beautiful. I can’t remember the last time I believed it. 

Beauty is both a perception and fact. 

Fact, everyone is a beautiful creation. It’s truth. God created man in his own image and said it was good. He knits us together in our mama’s, with his hands he molds and crafts us. He takes great care in creating us physically. I am beautiful, because God made me. You are beautiful because God made you. We reflect our creator. 

Perception, everyone has one. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone judges a book by its cover. We try not to, but we do. If it is not pleasing to our eye, we don’t want it, or to be associated with it. We avoid them. We avoid ourselves. Things that look good are easy for us to accept. There is truth in “easy on the eyes”. It is what we desire. It is in what we seek out. It is what we want to be.

Beauty. There is tension. Perception pulls me away from fact, from truth. I swing from one end to another. Maybe it is okay to feel the pull, because it is there I am reminded of truth. It is there I fight to believe that how I look and who I am is beautiful. All of it. Every inch. 

It is okay to feel the tension of what is beautiful. Maybe it is there we will find what is beautiful for the first time.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling, beautiful in every way. Song of Solomon 4:7

- Hannah