When Beauty is Elusive

I am not feeling feminine today.  I am not feeling beautiful today.  It's hard to feel pretty when your acne has erupted into (what feels like) golf-ball-sized cysts.  It's hard to feel feminine when you can't look your husband in the eye because he might notice the acne on your face....the husband who has seen you in the most unflattering of situations (childbirth) and loves you regardless.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, beauty is vain, beauty is only skin deep, you are more than your flaws.....all nice cliches until you wake up one morning and for whatever reason what you see in the mirror makes you cringe. Makes you want to stay inside away from the world.  Makes you doubt yourself.  Makes you feel ugly.

Beauty is more than what people see on the outside.  It's more than what you see when you look in the mirror. Beauty is just as much mental as physical.  And never more so than when we attribute beauty, or the lack thereof, to ourselves.  We look in a mirror and then quickly look away.  Or we look in a mirror, sigh in dismay, and then attempt to fix (yet again) what is "wrong" with our appearance.  The ideas that we carry around about our appearance and our bodies are so often negative.  From magazine images, media advertising, comparisons among other people - we never measure up and deep down inside, we tell ourselves we never will.  How many times have I told myself that if I just try one more cleanser, buy one more high-priced product, see one more dermatologist, cut out one more food group that my skin will finally be normal?  I can't even count the times.  Sometimes, the disappointment that comes from unmet expectations triggers more of those negative feelings and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

I have a choice - right now, today.  I can wallow in these feelings of ugliness and low self-worth until my face heals from this latest outbreak.  Or I can look outside myself and my own feelings to a higher truth.  Truth is a fact that is unchanging...unlike my fragile and whimsical emotions.  Truth is ultimately found in God.  My sovereign God, who is intimately aware of how I feel and what I'm saying to myself in my head, had a "message" for me this morning. My quiet time was focused on Psalm 139, which is probably my favorite psalm.  The accompanying reading was from the book "15 Minutes Alone with God" by Emilie Barnes and this quote shot right to my heart:  "You are His child.  He loves you more than any earthly father could possibly love you.  Because He is your Heavenly Father, Almighty God, He cares for you even when you don't care for yourself."  What grabbed me about this is that God doesn't just care about my acne....he cares about how I feel about my acne.  He cares about my embarrassment, my feelings of ugliness, my feelings of disallusionment.  He loves me.  Not just in a nebulous way where he knows about my suffering and might choose to do something about it down the road.  But he loves me enough to comfort me in the midst of that suffering and let me know for the thousandth time that I am special, I am His and I am worthy.  That is where I can find peace and regain some semblance of beauty - even in the midst of the pain.  There is real beauty in being loved that much.  It's not hard to love perfection, but when Almighty God can condescend to love the wholly unworthy, ugly and deficient - that is something about which to rejoice!

You may look at me today and see my flaws; but God is looking at me right now and seeing his special and belovedchild.  That is beauty that no one or no thing can ever take away.