faith + inspiration

Ok, first of all…the title of this post is a little misleading. Forgive me for that.

Because I’m not going to tell you how to feel beautiful.

I can’t tell you how to feel beautiful, because beautiful is not a feeling. We think it is. We think beautiful is a feeling that is there on some days or some occasions or sometimes only on some moments…and the days that we don’t feel that feeling, it just feels so…yucky. It feels so purposeless…like somehow I am failing miserably at the very thing that I was designed for.

I’ve talked about beauty countless times before, and every time that my heart centers on that topic, I’m amazed again at just how central beauty is to my existence. It is so vital to the health and life of my heart, and that, my friends, is a good thing. It’s how I was designed to be.

But somehow in the course of life and in the crazed ways of our culture, beauty has lost it’s…well, beauty. It’s become something entirely different than what it was created to be. Beauty has become cheap and plastic and fake and actually completely unattainable in our culture. The world has taken something to essential and so valuable and so core to the heart of a woman and turned it against her.

Our beauty is used against us, and that makes me mad.

It’s used against us because we have beauty and we are beauty…but all the voices of this world only laugh and mock us for daring to entertain that as truth for even a second. “…you? beautiful? it cannot be true because you don’t have the right hair or facial structure or body type or engaging personality…you look nothing like beauty…you are a mere shadow of what you are meant to be.” And when we listen to that, it leaves us only two choices: try harder or stop trying at all. Care too much or care not at all. Neither option will give you the life of purpose and joy and beauty that our Creator created us for.

Your beauty can only be taken from you if you believe it to be taken from you.

Once again, I’m not trying to sound all guru here…where you just believe something and it will be so. But actually that’s really the deal here. Beauty is a state of existence and cannot be taken from you…I don’t care what you weigh or what you look like or how little or how much makeup you wear or if you have wrinkles or acne scars or cellulite or deformities or anything else that our screwed up society tells you is a flaw. Your beauty cannot be taken from you. Period.

We have reduced beautiful to a feeling, when all along, beautiful is a state of being. It is a characteristic of woman, every woman. No one is exempt, no matter what.

We have reduced beautiful to something physical, something you can see. But I say this: you cannot see beautiful, you can only feel beautiful. I know that sounds like a contradiction because I’ve just said that you can’t actually feel beautiful, but what I mean by that is that I don’t see beauty in another person with my physical eyes, but I feel her beauty with my soul. Think of the women you know that are physically gorgeous, but yet they are hard and driven and leave you feeling empty instead of filling up your soul with life and grace and femininity. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that kind of woman. I want to be the woman who gives life…not through my appearance, but through my heart.

This might show my age and inner teenager, but as I was writing this post, I literally pulled up the song Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney on YouTube…it completely took me back to those hilarious days as a teenager feeling like you were on top of the world with the music blasting and friends laughing and your whole life in front of you (please tell me i’m not the only one who used to love this song). Those were good days…but these are better. Anyway, I feel like this song captures the idea of beauty so well: “i don’t want another pretty face, i want you and your beautiful soul.” Beautiful has nothing to do with your face or body, but everything to do with who you are.

You can’t feel beautiful, because it’s not a feeling.

I know this whole idea is so so SO much easier to say than to do. Trust me, I feel it too. I feel that raging battle every day inside of me to let the world give me the standard and to do all that I can to meet that standard. But I know this…even if I were able to somehow meet all those standards of the perfect hair and face and body and essentially turn into a Barbie doll (ew), I would still not be satisfied. My soul would still not feel beautiful, because beautiful is not a feeling.

And that’s why I can’t tell you how to feel beautiful…I can only tell you to be beautiful, because that is what you are. But I believe this: that the more I realize that beautiful isn’t a feeling, the more beautiful I will actually feel.

What about you: do you tend to see beautiful as a feeling instead of a state of being or a characteristic of yourself?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

When everything falls apart, Your arms hold me together…

Yesterday one of my best friends lost her four year old niece in a tragic water accident. And I know that today her and the rest of her family feel like everything is falling apart. How do you process such an awful and sudden death of such a young, lively child? How do you let go of all the future hopes and dreams you have for this little one? How do you look at the rest of your life knowing that there will always be a small piece of your heart and your family that will be missing?

I don’t know.

I don’t know how to process those emotions and questions and tumultous feelings. I’ve never lost a child, and in all reality, I’ve never lost anyone that I was really close to in all my twenty six years. My grandpa died when I was too young to really understand death and I lost a cousin only a few hours after her birth, but beyond that, I’ve never experienced the feelings that death brings to your heart when it’s someone you cherish.

I want to understand…and yet I don’t.

I know it will only be a matter of time before I will also experience death in a real way…sometimes that thought wants to paralyze me. It makes me want to put up some form of self protection so that when the pain of death and separation comes, it won’t hurt so much. But you can’t do that…because then you lose. I can’t pull away from loving those that I do with all that I have simply to avoid pain. I might evade pain, but I will also then evade love.

Love is worth the price of pain when the separation comes.

And when I hear of death, it only makes me want to hold the ones I love closer and tighter and hug harder and kiss more. There is great hope in death, yes, and I can’t imagine experiencing it without that hope. The life of Christ offers hope in life and hope in death, and that, my dear friends, is a beautiful thing.

It’s in these kinds of times that make your heart cry out “come, Lord Jesus, come.” Come to comfort and offer hope. Come to give your children courage to face the days ahead. Come and bring your Kingdom to earth. Come and set all things right. Come and give us the reality of no more death and no more tears and no more goodbyes.

Abby’s mother wrote a beautiful tribute to her young daughter that is now with Jesus.

To the Miller + Marner family, you are in the thoughts and prayers of many, including my own.

What about you: what are your thoughts about processing the death and separation of one that you love?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!