The Truth About Beauty

Listen to this week’s podcast, BE-YOU-TIFUL, by clicking here!

A MESSAGE FROM SARA:

I feel like it’s been a while since I sat down and wrote our weekly blog. Monica is such an amazing writer and has really filled in that space so beautifully. I love reading her blogs because I feel like I can hear her voice talking to me as if she is reading it to me. Do you all feel that way? Coffee in hand, slippers on feet, and sinking into a comfy couch. But this week I am writing, as this week’s podcast was a special experience for me. I had the amazing opportunity to speak to about 400 women at my home church, Burnt Hickory Church, just outside of Atlanta. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel in my heart for the leadership to entrust that event to me, and even more to the ladies that gave me 30 minutes (okay, more like 40) to share my heart.

The whole subject of beauty and being beautiful has been so very near and dear to my heart over the years. I wasn’t what you would call ‘beautiful’ as a young girl. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think I was butt ugly or anything — but to start, I have curly hair that nobody knew what to do with, and well…let’s just say my hair was not very tamed. My sisters, especially my little sister, loved pulling out pictures of me for my husband when we were first dating so they could laugh at me. Of course it was all in good humor, but for certain my hair played a part in my self-image.

I was never really much into makeup…in fact, I was a little bit of a tomboy. I learned in college that it’s okay to be athletic, but it needed to be coupled with a little softness, femininity. The funny thing is, I’m having those exact same conversations now with my amazing and beautiful daughter. You see, we are just jeans and t-shirts kind of people. Throw in a pair of flip-flops and a rubber band for our long hair (thankfully I have learned how to tame those curls thanks largely in part to my curly haired BFF Megan), add some sun kissed on our cheeks and these two Goede girls are good to go.

However, as the Lord started my journey into Being Still back in my early 30’s, I realized I had become very discontent with me and did not feel beautiful at all. Two kids that tipped me once over 200 pounds, stretch marks, nipples that pointed in the wrong direction, and 30 pounds heavier than I was at my marriage, were all cause for not feeling so great.

But an even greater cause for my lack of feeling beautiful was because I had lost touch with who I was. In all the transition of graduating college, moving to a new town, new friends, a home owner, new career and then wife and mother of two, I had slightly lost touch with myself. (Okay, forget the slightly…I was gone.) In fact, I remember once walking into the bathroom and catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror thinking “who is that girl?” The more lost I felt, the more desperate I became to feel like I was needed and valued.

So I did what any strong, driven, woman of God would do; I became busy at DOING and started the long and lonely marathon of chasing my identity and self-worth through striving.

Long story short, the Lord rescued me from my own course for self-destruction and began a new work in me. I am ever so grateful that He loves me enough to become my new pacer in my race. But as we all know, no new work from God is never just a walk in the park. I had to take a long hard look at myself and participate in about what seems like 100 Bible studies that had to do with true beauty, lies women believe, and cleaning out your closet. I mean…how many studies does it take for someone to finally get the message? If you are reading this blog I am shouting at you right now…DON’T BE ME, JUST GET IT THE FIRST TIME!

Slowly but surely though, the Lord began to renew me from the inside out. I began to identify who I was again and had to peel away all the busyness in my life. It took a good bit of solitude for me to really hear God’s voice and see His hand and will for me, but as God always is, He was faithful.

And even though I am still on this journey, I have learned not to compare myself to the world around me. Because as Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison robs us of joy.” I prefer the way I once heard Ann Voskamp say it though, “Comparison is the thief that robs us of joy.” And I have learned to change what I can with my body but to accept what I can’t; that size 12 jeans are okay as well as retaining the same 30 pounds I’ve gained since marriage. And girls, it’s certainly not for a lack of trying — it’s just there no matter what I do. I have learned that real beauty is being who I am and standing secure in that. And that real beauty is letting the imprinting of the Holy Spirit touch the world around me and being filled with the sweet spirit of my Heavenly Father.

I have learned that real beauty is being who I am and standing secure in that.

That daughter I spoke of earlier that enjoys her jeans and t-shirts with her mama? She is my mission field. And though I have many, she is my inner-circle mission field…the one that God has entrusted to me specifically (and my hubby).

How in the world can I tell her she is beautiful? That she is fearfully and wonderfully made? That she is created in the image of her precious Jesus? If I do not myself believe those exact same truths? I cannot teach her what I do not possess. If all she hears from me is the list of things I don’t like about myself, then am I not teaching her that God is not a master creator and that perhaps He makes mistakes? And the crazy thing is, I don’t believe those lies for her…I can just sometimes believe them for me. So, I have a job…a calling. I must embody being me and the truth that God made me just the way He wants with the story that He wants with the gifts and talents that He wants. Because I am committed to raising a daughter full of those same truths. I want to impart that truth so I must possess it.

I will teach her that true beauty comes from who we are in Christ and the overflow of that is what will make us beautiful at what we do.

May we all recapture the vision of True Beauty and make the body of Christ more beautiful than even.

Love to you all,

Sara

Now it’s your turn!

Write a blog post on what it means to Be-YOU-tiful and link up to the blog hop below. Make sure to read the post before yours and leave a comment; we want to encourage each other and expose ourselves to new voices.

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Love you friend! Let’s commit to Being Beautiful — to being US today.

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