(Preface: This entry was precipitated by the fact that I am going through a Bible study called Do You Think I’m Beautiful? written by an extraordinary Christian woman named Angela Thomas. The study asks women to delve within themselves; “recover the secret longing of their heart, and embrace the One who finds them unspeakably desirable” – God. )
I am pondering a curious truth today that some days I just can’t seem to wrap my feeble head around: God calls me beautiful. It has caused my present to come face to face with my past and do battle over what will ultimately become the mantra of my
It all started several months when “who I am trying to become” collided with “who I
You see, I had just come to discover this neat little Internet website called Facebook. I had heard of it, but never ventured in until my daughter’s youth pastor encouraged us parents to investigate it and become familiar of its inner workings because our kids.
So in an attempt to bond with my teenage daughter (and admittedly spy on her online activities) -- I created my own Facebook page. From there, I immediately began trolling the waters looking for friends from my current church and community social circles, from past social circles and even from beyond that. I have to admit. It was fun. It was like a little window into peoples’ lives -- like an invitation to voyeurism without actually "stalking."
Suddenly I was looking under every rock of my life to find “Facebook buddies”: church, work, and neighbors. Once I tracked them down, I invited them to my “Facebook party” – to take a voyeuristic (and albeit a boring) look into my own life. I even went so far as to “poach” (my term for it) friends of Facebook friends. It was a total a “Facebook love fest”.
However, while searching for friends, there was one line I didn’t dare cross – high school. It held too much pain and confusion for me. Connecting with high school classmates was something I didn’t want to do. I didn’t go to any of my high school reunions because I didn’t really want to see anybody up close and personal for fear they would remember the “old” me. So now, I could search them out, but couldn’t
The thought of being rejected as a “Facebook friend” by one of these folks from my past was too much and dredged up a lot of inner turmoil from my teen years. ‘Didn’t
Then one day I got a Facebook friend request from someone I didn’t know who seemed to know me. I didn’t recognize her name right away because she was using a marital surname (I assume.) Later as I read her postings and went to her page to look at photos, a feeling of uneasiness came over me. I did recognize her. We had gone to junior high and high school together. (I won’t use her name here to protect her privacy.)
Someone from my past had tracked me down in my new life and all those socially awkward uneasy feelings were welling up in me. That line had been crossed because I
The thing is, she wasn’t looking for me to somehow “bully” me from cyberspace after 25+ years. She just thought it was neat to find people from high school online and see what they were up to now. After I accepted that, I could move on. Since connecting with this person, several others from high school have made contact, and I must admit, it is kind of cool to catch up.
This little voice of truth spoke to me from my gut, saying: “We aren’t in high school anymore. We are all adults, all with our own lives and issues.” Suddenly, there is a level playing field. When did that happen? .
The truth is that we had our own lives and issues back then too. No one was exempt -- Even the so-called “popular people.” There was, however, a perceived hierarchy among us that ranged from: popular to average, from to nerdy to just plain weird. I
In all truth, though we didn’t know it, the playing field was just as level back then as it seems to become in adulthood. Deep down, I think we knew it then, but admitting it was hard.
So what made life so agonizing and confusing back then? What made me want to become invisible and noticed at the same time? What made me succumb to the whispers of acerbic adolescence (real or imagined). What makes it my kryptonite even to this day?
The answer: Failure to know and believe the truth, and believing that “then” was life.
I remember a line from a TV show I saw a couple of years back. It was an episode of the CBS crime drama Cold Case. The main characters, police detectives, were investigating the cold homicide case of a young, awkward teenage girl who they were fairly certain had died at the hands of one of her classmates. When they finally cornered the killer (some 25 years later), all grown up and past the awkwardness of high school, they find that the murder was committed because this young killer didn’t want the stigma of being known as the “geeky” girl’s friend. Now that hit a nerve for me!
But the line the killer spoke that struck me was this: when asked by the police why she did it. Her reply was that back then she “didn’t know that junior high didn’t last forever.”
You see there is a “truth” that pervades female adolescence. The truth is that you must look and act like the “other” girl or be banished from important status circles forever (or as long as high school lasts). The warped rule was (and still is): If you don’t fit, you don’t matter. Different is definitely not cool. It’s like painting a target on a young girl’s forehead and declaring open season. And what is cool is dictated by the era in which one lives. Styles and trends change. “Mean girls”1 don’t.
For instance, when I was in junior high school (in the late 70’s), it was designer jeans (Guess?, Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the like) and the “Farrah Fawcett” hairstyle. The cool car was the Pontiac Firebird (with T-tops, of course) or it’s first cousin – The Camaro Z-28.
Today, ask a girl who Farrah Fawcett is (or was) and she’d ask: “Who??” But back then, every girl wanted to look like her – be her. But if you were like me and not blessed with good hair and parents who were willing to shell out big $$ on designer clothes, you were doomed. Throw in being overweight and a bad complexion and you have the recipe for a life to be lived in teenage oblivion. I was somewhere between wishing for a fairy godmother to wave her magic wand and wishing the ground would swallow me up so no one could see me. It might not be forever, baby, but it feels like forever.
The “truth” of female adolescence is a universal truth. It doesn’t matter which generation you grow up in, it is prevalent. Styles and trends change. “Mean girls”1 don’t.
I call it “truth” [quotation marks added] because as I’m sure you are aware, it’s not THE truth. What a difference a decade can make. You grow up and move beyond high school, cool cars, and trendy fashions and drive a mini-van and shop for clothes at
This is the truth that hits you somewhere about age 25 or so. Just about the time your parents become “smart” again.
But there a deeper truth, one that is planted in us by our creator. And this is the real truth.
It is the Truth that comes from God’s own mouth in his love letter to the masses: The Bible. The Bible contains the truth of God’s plans, thoughts and feelings for me that guide my life.
Truth #1: God calls me beautiful. And that which God has deemed beautiful, no man (woman, or “mean girl”) can call ugly.
Psalm 45:10-11 says:
“Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father's house.
The king is enthralled by your beauty;
Translation: What God says – goes. What other people say and think – not so much.
God says, “Forget your people and your father’s house.” I don’t believe He’s saying we should turn our back on our families and friends, but rather we shouldn’t give in to their (or the world’s) values – like the world’s definition of “beautiful”.
If what the world called “beautiful” were truth, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Even today with my cleared up complexion and my thinner body, I’m still only “marginal” at best by the world’s standards of beauty. But God calls me beautiful because he made me that way and had a design for me before there ever even was a “me”.
Truth #2: God had knowledge of me, and a plan for me all along.
Psalm 139: 13-16 says:
“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.”
Translation: God thinks I’m beautiful no matter what the world thinks of me, no matter what the “others” wrote about in me in some slam book2 from the 70’s. God thinks I’m a “knock out”, and the whole concept of “me” was His idea.
Now if I didn’t know more of the story I would think God had it in for me from the start, but there is another truth that I must embrace:
Romans 8: 38-39 tells me:
“. . . Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Truth #3: God loves me and nothing can change that. NOTHING!
Other people may not love me; may not see me; may not appreciate me, but God loves me with a deep, abiding, unwavering love that is fixed. It won’t go away. And a God who loves me like that can’t have a diabolical, destructive plan for my life.
If only that were so for the world. The world has a plan for us too. Beware! It is one that is advertised to meet the carnal desires buried deep within us, but tailored to lead us to a life of desperation – always striving for more, but never quite getting enough. It promises but does not always deliver.
It is because that from the earliest of our days, we knew how to be self-focused. A baby will cry to be held or to be fed, but hasn’t yet developed the sensitivity to empathize with others and their needs.
As we grow beyond childhood and adolescence, we may develop a level of compassion for others’ needs, but we still remain committed to our own needs and wants.
Unfortunately, this character flaw follows us into adulthood. Selfishness is human. It is inbred, it is in all of us, and it is sin. The Bible tells us in Romans 5:12:
“. . . Just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”
Truth #4: We want what WE want because we sin.
Sin entered the world through one man because someone else had a plan for us. By the way, his name is Satan. We may call him the devil, the evil one, or Beelzebub but he is not some red creature with a pitchfork and horns. He is an evil entity that created this sin, will settle for nothing less than our destruction from it. He designed the world’s plan (sin), giving us just enough to make it appealing. Like any good salesman, he wouldn’t come out and tell us that what he is offering is ultimately going to destroy us. He tells us it will make us happy; complete us. He takes us down a road that is at first smooth and easy to travel, but later rocky, treacherous, and seemingly, never ending. You see sin always takes you further than you want to go; keeps you longer than you want to stay and costs you more than you want to pay.
Satan’s road trip is a big lie from the pit of hell!
If you don’t believe me, let me ask you a question. Remember when you used that credit card awhile back to go on that expensive vacation? You know the one that was supposed to wash away all your troubles? Make you a new person? How do you feel now? And the kicker is that you will still be paying for it for days – even years – to come. Vacations are nice, but they aren’t nirvana. “And I might add, the credit card bills are a real headache!”
There is a better way.
When I bring Truths #3 and #4 together I see that God loves me with a deep love even though I am a desperate sinner with no hope of redeeming myself. Thank goodness God had a plan.
And the plan is this: Jesus Christ is the way to the truth. In fact, He is the Truth.
Jesus Himself stated in John 14:6:
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
He is the ticket to redemption. In Him we are reminded how much God loves us and why He calls us beautiful. Not because we look like Farrah Fawcett or wear nice clothes, but because we look like Jesus. We were created in His image, though sin tarnished us from the inside. Genesis 1:27 says:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
It all began way before our time, or anyone’s for that matter. Before sin entered the world through Adam, and everyone who came after was affected by it, God had a plan that He put into motion the day the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit inside that virgin teenage girl. His name was and is Jesus. Jesus is the way back to God’s image. He is God’s image because He is God.
However, there exists a chasm between sin and God and therefore between us and God until we do two things.
First we must realize and admit that we ARE sinners. Not too much of a problem there on first blush, because we know we do bad stuff. We’re just not so sure we’d go so far as to call it “sin” (such an ugly word). But we do know we’re not all “purity and light”. The truth is that it is ugly, and it is sin, and we are all guilty.
Romans 3:23 says:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . . .”
Yep. We all do it and it’s bad. Very bad. But there is some good news that follows in the very next verse:
Romans 3:24 tells us we are
“. . . Justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
When we accept Jesus as our savior and redeemer we are saved from the punishment of sin which is death and hell and all that implies. Redemption comes by grace, which means it is a free gift from God. We didn’t deserve it, but God gave it. Why? Because of His deep, abiding love for us covered in Romans 8:38-39.
Truth #5: When we are willing to admit that we are sinners and need Jesus to redeem us, we are saved and beauty (God’s version of it, not the world’s) is restored in us.
And one of the best parts is that what happened or what someone said 10, 15, 20, 25, even 50 years ago doesn’t amount to a hill of beans! We can let go of it, because we have taken hold of a new Truth: God calls us beautiful – and it is true!
1 THIS IS A REFERENCE TO THE 2004 FILM STARRING LINDSAY LOHAN AND TINA FEY WHICH DESCRIBES THE HIGH SCHOOL SOCIAL CLIQUES OF TEENAGE THEIR EFFECT ON THEM AND OTHERS.
2 THE URBAN DICTIONARY (AN ONLINE SOURCE) REMINDS US THAT A “SLAM BOOK” WAS “A SPIRAL NOTEBOOK WITH THE NAME OF A JR. OR SR. HIGH GIRL (USUALLY) WRITTEN ON THE TOP LINE. THE BOOK IS THEN PASSED AROUND AMONG CLASSMATES WHO WRITE NASTY THINGS (SLAM) ON THE PAGE UNDER THE GIRL'S NAME.
