In the Eye of the Beholder

I have some dear younger friends who are still in their teens.  They have captured my heart with their love for God.  I want to encourage them to celebrate life and the uniqueness of who they are.  I don’t want them to waste time wishing they were someone else.  I want them to enjoy who they are and who they are becoming.  They are each beautiful and each different. 

When I search for words to encourage them, I think back on my own life.  What did I need?  What do I wish I had known when I was their ages?  So many things! 

I started out a natural blonde...no complaints here...2 years old

I wasted so much time in my early years lamenting my perceived lack of physical beauty…wishing my eyes were larger and more defined, my eyelashes longer, my body lighter, my hair thicker and blonder, my legs thinner, my feet more narrow, my breasts perkier…and the list goes on…

There were days I cried out to God and said, “Why did you make me ugly?!?,” and, “Please, God, make me pretty!”  I thought that no one would ever love me because I wasn’t pretty enough. 

7th grade...asked for the Dorothy Hamill cut and here's what I got...

As an adult, I look around at married couples and I see that they come in all shapes and sizes and various levels of “perceived” beauty…and whose perception are we talking about, anyway?  Clearly beauty is in the eye of the beholder and beauty is more than skin deep.

Have you ever met someone whom you thought to be quite ordinary-looking and as you grow to know their heart and mind they transform into a person who is quite attractive?  It happens often.  We can be shallow and short-sighted when it comes to beauty.

The Beginning of the Awkward Years...

Will it never end?!?

When I was in High School, I was most depressed about it all.  I tried hard to look like other popular girls who had the beauty stamp of approval.  My class pictures were always a disappointment to me.  Too much make-up and too much trying to look like someone else.  I was cursed (so I thought) with impossibly fine hair.  This was a fate worse than death in the “Big Hair” 1980’s.  In an effort to make my hair look thicker, I did the curling iron roll around my face and sprayed it.  From the side, I looked like I was wearing a sausage.  What was I thinking?

Oh Yeah...looking cool with the brown boots and gray suit...

 

My early attempts at "Big Hair"

In college, I hot-rolled first thing in the morning and I went back to my room before lunch everyday and hot-rolled again.  (I am talking curlers for those of you who don’t remember).  Then I would tease and spray and try hard to get the biggest hair I could.

Sadly, my insecurities were only reinforced by the men I chose to date in those early decades of my life.  After I had been in therapy for a few years and was feeling somewhat more confident, I dated a man who challenged all that confidence.  (Isn’t that how the enemy works in our lives?)  After an argument in the car on the way to visit his parents for the weekend where he criticized my choice of clothing (“You know that sweatpants aren’t flattering on you”), and the gift I had lovingly made for his mother (“I’m just not sure that she will like it but she will feel obligated to display it”), he said to me, “I grew up looking at pornography and I’d always imagined that I would eventually end up with a Playboy centerfold or a Miss America…I am just having a hard time dealing with reality.” Ouch!

25-ish

Yes, that really happened.  And yes, that set me back a little, although I knew that it was utterly ridiculous to buy into those words which were lies on so many levels…there it was, another message that I was somehow “not enough.”  For the record, we eventually broke-up.  That was a toxic relationship for both of us, although I believe he has grown and changed (as I have) and turned out to be a great husband for someone else.  Timing is everything, and the timing was not right for us.  No woman should have to combat those lies from a man.  We hear these kinds of lies in our heads without the help of a partner egging us on.  If you are hearing words like that from a significant other and you are not married yet, run away as fast as you can!  If you are married, seek counseling!  Find ways to build yourself up and be encouraged if you can’t get it from your partner. 

Now, as I look at pictures of myself in my 20’s, I think, “She is beautiful!”  Whatever was I thinking?!? 

What was I complaining about?

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, Why did you make me like this?  Romans 9:20

What I didn’t know back in the day is that all women have this inner doubt…this wondering of “am I pretty enough?” at least sometime in their lives if not all through it.  Even the so-called beautiful people have self-doubt.  It’s part of the curse of humanity; part of the lies that Eve embraced from the devil himself.

I wish I had not wasted so much time fretting over the way that I looked.  I was beautiful…how sad that I did not enjoy it!  And yes, there is more to beauty than outward appearance.  I hope (and believe) that I am growing in beauty.  Although physical beauty can fade in degrees throughout life, inner beauty can increase exponentially.  There is no limit on how beautiful our hearts and spirits can become as we grow in the grace and knowledge of God.  Yay!

As I glanced in the mirror this week at work, I saw some lines in my face that I didn’t like.  I saw some signs of aging.  I am 48 years-young after all.  That voice in my head said, “It’s all downhill from here, Janice.  You are in the years of fading beauty.”  I will choose to yell out loud, “Get behind me Satan!” (after I get home from work…not sure what the co-workers would think of this.) :)

Okay, so it is what it is.  Some aspects of physical beauty do fade.  But I want to learn from my past mistakes…this, after all, is a way of redeeming them.   I look back 20 years ago and I see a lovely young woman who was quite pretty who thought she was ugly.  I don’t want to be a 70-year old woman looking back at a 48-year old woman who, though her beauty had begun to fade was still attractive and didn’t appreciate it.  It’s all relative, isn’t it?  It’s ridiculous to harbor negative thoughts!  Stop the insanity!

The Bible says in Psalm 139:

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 where written in your book before one of them came to be.

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness with lies from Satan, he quoted scripture to combat the lies.  He gave us a great example to follow.  He created me in my mother’s womb.  There are some characteristics of me that were meant to be.  My height, my eyes, my hair, my basic shape…these were created by God.  I can choose to thank Him and celebrate my uniqueness.  I’m done lamenting.  I am choosing thankfulness.

My new motto is “to play the hand I’m dealt.”  Make the best I can today of what I have been given and then move on…focus on growing in other ways.  I told my young friends about the serenity prayer.  I think it’s a good one when it comes to this topic…

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  Reinhold Niebuhr

I mentioned earlier that I hated my school pictures all through Jr.High and High School.  Picture day was so stressful for me…I would try hard to look good and I was always disappointed when pictures came back.  In the non-digital era, you didn’t know what you would face several weeks after picture-day when the teacher handed you your picture packet.  There would be your fate for the yearbook and for all to see.  Of course I prayed about it every year, as I prayed about everything in my life. 

Most Recently...July 2013

It was several years later, when people began to comment to me about how photogenic I was.  I didn’t believe them at first.  Even today, at 48, people continue to tell me I am photogenic.  It makes me laugh every time, because I know it is a little joke between me and God.  He has graciously chosen to humor me in this simple request.  I do believe He has a great sense of humor.  After all, He created humor.  He must be pretty funny…

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.  Proverbs 31:30