Are You Beautiful?

I had a moment in 1991 when I desired to be beautiful on the outside. I was 12. I felt alone, forgotten, and I was deeply insecure. I wanted to be noticed, to be one worth noticing, and to be loved the right way (what I thought that was at the time). I think I remember saying it out loud. It was only but a flicker in my day… I didn’t spend much time thinking about it, but it was a deep request, one that you can feel in the pit of your heart. I was a very broken, young girl.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out what it means to be beautiful. Ive spent a lot of time pondering the difference between external and internal beauty. I’m not sure when it happened, but not too long after I realized that no matter what the outside looked like, we all had something we wished we could change about ourselves and we all had something we were fighting on the inside. Strangely, that brought me a lot of peace. It helped me not to focus so much on the outside.

Because I was an internal processor, I’d become analytical thinker. I can reconcile my thoughts and feelings better with a clear understanding of a situation. I like solutions, I’m not comfortable wallowing in the issue. Of course I like to vent, for goodness sake I’m not a robot! Lol. However, I like to call it “solving world problems”. I think it sounds less annoying, hahaha.

Today and like many of my current days, I found myself asking God to make my heart beautiful. It’s not the first time I’ve asked, but it was the first time I remembered how much it once meant to me to be beautiful to the eye. Now I long for people to see how beautiful HE is in me. I want people to see HIM when they see me. I don’t care much for people to see “me”. I had always been very comfortable being in the shadows. I don’t take compliments well at all. I will ignore you most of the time if you try and give me one. Lol. To clarify, when I had wished to be externally beautiful, it wasn’t so I could be gushed over, God knows that makes me want to vomit. The goal was only so that I didn’t have to be alone or to feel alone.

Being beautiful isn’t the same standard for everyone. However, the world has made being beautiful a standard that is unachievable, it’s unrealistic, it’s shallow, and divisive. The world tries to manipulate us into believing if we aren’t beautiful on the outside then we won’t be noticed. If we don’t look like the models in the magazine or paint our faces with makeup then we won’t fit in and we aren’t good enough. Social media has encouraged us to distort our faces to look “beautiful” so we gain the attention of society! Hold your head this way and add this filter because your skin isn’t flawless! Gotta get those “likes”! We need to break that standard! Friend, GOD MADE YOU!

For the better part of my life I have been looking at what people possess inside. I have ditched bad friendships and bad relationships. I’ve refused to create new friendships with people who I know have a track record of being hurtful. I ain’t willingly jumpin’ in front of that train, I can tell ya that! I do genuinely desire Gods heart for the people around me. I want to see them the way He does. When people hurt me, I still want to see them the way God sees them. It may sound crazy, but it helps me heal. Understanding what made them who they are, helps me process it in a healthy way.

So what did I figure out after all my years of trying to understand what it means?

I have concluded that being beautiful means to be kind. It means to be caring and thoughtful and loving regardless of what our exteriors look like. It means not pointing out the insecurities of another even if they’re doing it to us. It means to be a good listener. It means to have the humility to shut up and sit in the mud with someone who may even deserve the mess they got themselves into.

The outside of us can change too easily. The heart is who we are. The Bible says from out of the heart the mouth speaks. There’s a reason Jesus said that! Who we are on the inside is what makes our outside.

He made me. He didn’t want the world to hurt me and He didn’t want that hurt to stain me. It did for many years of my life, but He has made me whole. I am who I am because of Him and the more time I spend trying to be more loving, the more beautiful I feel. He sees that and that’s all that matters to me. Some days I don’t even brush my hair, I don’t care (I’m always clean 😂), but if I can offer a smile or an encouragement to another, it fulfills me more than any temporary facade ever could.

We can wash the crap off our faces at the end of the day, but we can’t wash it off our hearts. There’s not a liquid foundation that can fill the cracks of the heart. God fills them with His love, and His love is then what comes out of us!

Stay beautiful!

~ Jenn

6 thoughts on “Are You Beautiful?”

  1. You have always been beautiful, inside and outside…I KNOW this. It just took you a while to believe it. 😘 I have loved watching you embrace your “beauty”.

  2. This is so “beautiful” I love your heart! I grew up feeling very similarly and it wasn’t until I was truly saved and believed what God says about me that I learned to love myself. I tell my children everyday how beautiful they are and by that I remind them their beauty flows from their kind heart and love for Jesus. 💜 You are BEAUTIFUL my Friend 🤗 Thank you for being you!

  3. We’ll said, my friend. It’s a gift from God that we grow into who He created us to be. Lots of kicking and screaming along the way, but we (most of us!) do arrive at that peaceful destination.
    There is beauty in becoming.
    Just as the analogy says , you have to kiss a lot of toads to find the prince, we have to climb over those personal hurdles to see ourselves clearly, and as God sees us. The tiresome truth is that most of those personal hurdles that get established in our hearts, are placed there by other broken people. We see ourselves through their lens, not God’s. Thank you for the reminder that we need beautiful hearts, not beautiful cheekbones! ❤️💕

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