Project 31 Day 1: What Does Beauty Mean to You?

I honestly thought this would be easy.

Writing about what beauty means to me doesn't seem like it should be difficult; after all, we all have our own ideas of what beauty is (don't we?).

But as I sit here writing about how I feel about it, what it means to me, I keep coming back to the lies I believed about it for a long time, the lies from which I thought I'd broken free, the lies that somehow wormed their way back into my subconscious over the past several months.

Several years ago, I (like so many of you) read Captivating by John & Stasi Elderidge, and it changed my life in many ways. It was a tool God used to set my heart free, to tell me what he really thought of me, and to create a new intimacy between us, an intimacy that I had only dreamed of prior to that. Reading that true beauty is a feminine heart fully alive brought freedom to my weary soul. I didn't have to strive for a definition of beauty that was unrealistic, twisted, untrue. To be beautiful, I simply had to be me, my authentic self. I was beautiful because of who God is.

But over the years, and especially in the last several months when body changed as my pregnancy progressed, I slowly began to forget that beauty is more than the way my physical self appears. I somehow let the world's idea of beauty creep back in and twist my view of myself; when I looked in the mirror, what I saw became a distorted view of who I really was. No longer did I feel pretty. No longer did I feel valuable. No longer did I feel like I was living up to the girl that my husband fell in love with. After all, he thought she was pretty beautiful, and yet here I was, this distorted version of myself--how could he, or anyone else, find anything beautiful in me?

When I think about how we describe God as being beautiful, I realize that we cannot see his face. We see awe-inspiring manifestations of who he is, but we cannot physically see him. And yet, he's beautiful. What he does is beautiful. His heart is beautiful. Who he is is beautiful.

The truth is this: beauty does have a physical side to it. There are pretty things in the world, women included. But just "being pretty" isn't the same as being beautiful. Pretty is one thing; it's what we see with our eyes. And yes, I think as women, we want to be pretty, to feel it and to know that there's someone who thinks we're pretty, too. But beauty is not limited to the physical. Beauty makes us stop and stare in amazement. Beauty makes us experience wonder, amazement. It is awe-inspiring and encourages life to be fully lived and enjoyed. It brings comfort, solace, hope. Beauty captures hearts and imaginations. It's what takes our breath away.

Beauty is the quiet of the morning, the smell of coffee brewing, the sounds of life around me yawning and stirring and waking to the new day.
Beauty is second chances.
Beauty is the sunset and the star-studded night sky that follows.
Beauty is the first time my baby smiled at me. It is feeling her grasp my finger and watching her smile at me while she nurses.
Beauty is the knowledge that the Lord not only knows my name, but thinks I'm pretty great.
Beauty is the hope that life will go on, that things will get better, and that I get to experience each new day with my husband standing beside me, holding my hand.
Beauty is being attuned to what is going on in the hearts of someone else and doing something meaningful to minister to their needs.
Beauty is a flower budding in the early spring, reminding us that new life follows death.
Beauty is the mingling of flavors in a new recipe.
Beauty is the promise of love shared.
Beauty so much more...but like my friend Ashley said today in her own Day 1 entry, beauty simply is.

And perhaps that's the way God designed it, to be a mystery that invites us unto himself, that draws us closer to him.