You Are Beautiful

You Are Beautiful

The LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

1 Samuel 16:7

Gathered together with my oldest, best girlfriends, I noticed our conversation turn to laughing and lamenting over how hard it is to find jeans that don’t give us the dreaded “mom butt.” As I gazed upon these women with whom I’ve wept uncountable tears, prayed audacious prayers, and laughed so hard that my sides ached the next morning, I saw not a few more wrinkles, a few more pounds, and a few more gray hairs, but breathtaking beauty.

Our culture tells us that beauty lies in striving to look eighteen for the next sixty years through Botox treatments and plastic surgery. The fashion industry uses sixteen-year-old models to walk runways, telling thirty-five-year-old moms that we must look like teenagers in order to be sexy.

Let us set aside these cultural notions of beauty. They are nothing but a mirage—an image we will chase forever through a desert with no hope of ever attaining the goal. We will starve ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually, wasting our precious few days on earth running after an illusion.

Instead, let us live beauty. Can we embrace our bodies and all of the bumps and scars and wrinkles as signs of lives beautifully and fully lived, instead of forever wishing for bodies that pretend we’ve not lived at all?

As we meet our own eyes in the mirror every morning, can we see ourselves as our Savior sees us—as his beloved creation? Do we dare measure our beauty by looking inward and focusing on the condition of our hearts instead of on our outward appearances?

I imagine this is what Jesus would whisper into your soul as you glance into the mirror, if only you’d turn down the clanging, loud voices of our culture: Beautiful. Beautiful. BEAUTIFUL.

Believe it. Embrace it. Live it. And encourage the women in your life to live it too.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Tell your mom, your sister, a friend, or a coworker what you find beautiful about her according to God’s definition.