Beauty

A few nights ago my friend and I took a walk with our dogs. We were gone for about two hours and it was one of the best spent two hours of the week. One of the subjects we covered was beauty and what it means to be beautiful. Every time I talk to Emily about this she gives me a much deeper understanding of what beauty really means.

It seems like an ever-present question on girls' minds: what is beauty? It is defined so many ways by so many people; unfortunately, most girls borrow their definition from TV and Pinterest where skinny bodies, clear skin, gorgeous hair, and being followed by men is beautiful. Whether we want it to or not, this definition of beauty has influenced how we see ourselves and others. I am no exception, I am constantly comparing myself to other girls and am painfully aware of my weight and the effect of food on my weight. These kind of thoughts push a lot of girls into unhealthy behavior; both the thoughts and the behavior become addicting. Thankfully, I have a good friend who whips me back to the truth whenever I get too far into these thoughts rather than God's. What she says and how she lives is beneficial to all girls and women.

Before a few weeks ago I did not believe confidence could be beautiful. I had it ingrained into my head that to follow God's call to humility, you had to think yourself ugly and incompetent. Disliking yourself was how you put others ahead. Emily let me know how wrong I was. By hating myself, I was hating God's creation and putting myself on a path to hating His other creations. The thing about finding flaws in yourself is that you will begin to find flaws in other things or grow contempt for the things that don't have flaws. God showed me how truly unhumble I have been. The effort it took to hate myself was effort spent only on me, not on working to meet the needs of others. Instead He has given me two beautiful and confident role models as best friends. 

Emily and Julia are both beautiful, and they both know it. In the One Direction song, "What Makes You Beautiful", beauty is portrayed as not knowing your beauty, these girls showed me how wrong that is. Neither one of these ladies goes around bragging about how beautiful and funny they are. They don't think they are better than everyone else, they are simply comfortable in their own skin. They acknowledge that God made them and called them good (Genesis 1). They simply have confidence. This may be an area where my written words are less sufficient than if I were talking to you verbally, because I think you really just need to spend a day with these girls to see how well they have balanced confidence and humility so that they can serve others instead of wasting time hating something beautiful. 

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." - C.S. Lewis

"I praise you because I am FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." -Psalm 139:14