You Are Beautiful

So, this is a hard one.

There’s a lot of ways women can be beautiful.  They can have a beautiful soul and spirit and disposition but today I’m just going to address the obvious one.  The physical.

Because the truth is, most of us don’t believe we are physically beautiful.

How do I know this?

Well, I’ve fought for decades over whether the world thinks I’m beautiful.

I fought so hard in college that by my sophomore year I was throwing up five times a day.  I got to where it took nothing other than leaning over the brim of the sink or toilet or trashcan for my snack or meal to come right back up.  I got my first cavities that year because the acid clean wore the enamel off my teeth.

And friend, there are millions of you out there doing it today.  Thinking that having the bite of ice cream or tortilla chip will undo all the progress you made on your New Year’s Resolution and what’s a few seconds in the bathroom to zero out the scale.

It’s a lie.  Straight from the one who wants to take away every bit of self-worth that Christ Himself is trying to instill in the deepest part of you so that it can’t be shaken.

You are beautiful.

God says so.

It doesn’t matter if you are a size 4 or a 14.  It doesn’t matter if you, like me, couldn’t afford those braces and have a big overbite and a space between your teeth.  It doesn’t matter if you have scars.  It doesn’t matter if you are short or tall.  It doesn’t matter if you are pale or dark.

You are so very beautiful.

That twinkle in your eye.  That spray of hair the wind just blew over your forehead.  Those strong arms that lift little people up to reach the tree.  Those shoulders stooped after years of leaning over students desks.  Those wrinkles across your brow that reflect years of laughter and concern.  That skin peeling off your hands from another set of dishes washed. The curve of your neck.  The length of your leg.  They were drawn by Him.  The Creator of the Universe.

Stop destroying who He made.  Breath in His love and acceptance and release the years of criticizing the woman He created.  Intentionally.  Knowingly.  Lovingly.  Drawing you uniquely to shine and spin and sparkle.

Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you.  Jeremiah 31:3

Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? I Corinthians 6

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.  II Corinthians 3

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.  Psalm 139

Linking up today with Holley Gerth’s beautiful Coffee for Your Heart Encouragement Series, so grateful for her passion to encourage women.  Stay tuned, her new books is coming out and it’s going to rock your soul.