good (enough)

Balancing herself on the scale she huffs at her current weight, sucks her stomach in the mirror, and blows out a disheartened breath. She smiles widely, not at all in a socially pleasing way, but rather to meticulously check on every chip in her teeth or mild defect. She thinks people are watching the way her legs rub against one another, adjusting her shirt to make sure that her shape is well hidden. She clasps and unclasps the compact mirror in her pocket restlessly wrestling between being afraid of bringing attention to her face which feels oily and fixing the problem. She is pedantic about her food intake, measuring it all out to a tee; crash diets are her bread and butter. She excuses herself from the table to reline her eyes and touch up her mascara. She filters her every move and picture, feeling weighed down by the person looking back at her full of imperfection. She is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.

So many women around the world are plagued by the weight of what they think they should be. Skinnier, taller, shorter, less this or more that. Vacuous celebrities pose in next to nothing on magazine covers with surgically enhanced bodies, promoting the idea that young women should act or dress in certain ways just to keep a guy interested. Pornography has ruined the way that men see women making them a compartmentalized idea, not living breathing daughters that are complex and multifaceted. Many are walking around as smiling husks, wishing that they were someone else and envying those that they feel are more beautiful, more well-liked, or have something that they don’t have. In the age of social media, it is easy to parade your spoils online in order to make people think higher of you, carefully watching to see how many people are invested to boost your feeling of self-worth. Sigh. So, I know you’re begging the question: what does the Bible have to say about this?

We all know that verse in Proverbs 31 (and if you don’t, please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 31:30) about how charm is deceptive, and beauty is passing—let me give you a real-life example. I have met some beautiful people in my twenty-seven years and one such beauty at first was lovely and so outwardly boisterous and bubbly…until you got to really know her. She was ruthless and jealous, a horrible gossip amongst other things although everyone saw her as such a great person. Under the social niceties and engineered small talk, there was such a darkness about her soul that was impossible to deny but easily went under the radar because of her carefully crafted social masking and innocent appearance. Charm wears off in no time at all. It’s like when parents put cheese on vegetables in order to entice their children into eating healthier; the first few bites are cheesy goodness until the bitter aftertaste of broccoli settles in. Beauty ebbs or flows based on the condition of one’s heart, not how tight their skin is or whether or not they’ve got a twenty-two-inch waist. I guarantee that you also have met some good-looking mama jamas who were absolutely vapid, banal, and lacking common courtesy that it made them appear less attractive if not unattractive regardless of their outer appearance and vice versa (some jama mamas turned out to be mama jamas at heart based on their inner beauty).

One starts to wonder, when did all of this happen? Can you pinpoint a time in your life that you felt that you just weren’t enough solely based on your outward appearance? Was it overhearing your mother complain about the shape of the beautiful curvature of her body that God gave her? Was it smelling the Weight Watchers wafting from the microwave at your aunt’s house who was known to be on a “weight loss journey” for all the years that you’d known her? Abuse you suffered at the hands of those that were supposed to love you? Was it voices that told you that you were too fat, too ugly, too undesirable to matter to anyone? Was it the way that people picked on you when you were young? Was it the feeling of lack in love?

For me, it started in childhood, first as a thought implanted from the enemy and once from a word said by a boy in middle school. At the time, I had a huuuuuge stupid crush on this guy that I was friends with, and I reckoned he liked me too. Once in computer class, I overheard him talking to his friends about me and one of them said that I was “weird looking”. My crush didn’t necessarily come to my defense either, instead saying “Yeah, but she’s cool!” and later that year ditching me and dating someone so much prettier than I was. That rejection propelled me into changing my whole persona as soon as I got into high school. I was determined to be someone that people thought was beautiful so that I would never have to live that pain again. Even before I heard her music, girls in my gym class would call me Amy Winehouse because of the size of my winged eyeliner and it just went on from there. At one point, I couldn’t leave the house unless I had a face smothered in makeup, it didn’t matter what I had on as long as my face was made up. I could spend hours in the mirror and still see an ugly person looking back at me. I’d starve to lose weight and still wasn’t small enough, getting a sense of satisfaction only when people would comment on how tiny I was. No matter how outwardly beautiful I appeared, I was spiteful, angry, and an incredibly broken person on the inside.

As you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see a child of God who is “fearfully and wonderfully made;” excerpt from Psalm 139:14), or do you stand face to face with rejection and body dysmorphia? That hatred of self isn’t at all from God and if you are succumbing to it, you are living in bondage. In 1 Samuel 16:7B, the Lord says to Samuel the prophet “For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” You could be “to’ up from the flo’ up” and if you have a heart for God be a beautiful princess in His eyes. He doesn’t care if you’re the hottest thing since crossed buns. And honestly take some time to think why it matters to you so much. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with putting on makeup because it is just such a lovely, inherently feminine thing that we as women have done since before there were horse and buggies (I assure you some rock dwelling women were smearing berries on their lips and cheeks and ooga boogaing to the ladies about it), but what is your why? Is it to attempt to materialize beauty that you don’t think you have or to enhance it? Is it to please men?

I briefly stated that pornography has been a curse to men and subsequently women and will expound briefly (as this topic in itself has so much more depth than I can fit into a mere paragraph). There are many men that have seen images that scorned their minds from a very young age which is the devil’s intention for them. When someone is indoctrinated into something from a young age, their brain is wired in said direction as it is developing. That’s why the Bible says in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Too often we see the enemy sinking his teeth into our young men through friends, lack of supervision, or WHATEVER—if there is a crack in the door, he will bust in. (Even in that, however, there is hope for our young people whose parents continually speak Godly wisdom over them, praying for them night and day.) Whether or not they fully acknowledge it, the obscene images and videos inform their perception of women as a whole. It creates an idea of monogamy being boring and desensitizes their minds to unfaithful acts because “I love her and this other thing doesn’t really mean anything”. Some women are compartmentalized into uninteresting sex dolls, fantasies, one to marry some day in the faraway future or one to scratch a selfish itch. At times, it can be hard to fathom a beautiful woman having a brain or a lesser attractive woman with a good heart to be desirable. The spirit of lust attacks men, even against their will as they fight urges, thoughts, and even themselves when they see things that they know they’re not supposed to see, but just cannot stop—men in the church as we speak are facing these challenges and it cascades over their homes and to the women that cross paths with them becoming a curse to them. Praise God that those living in bondage have the hope of being freed through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, not by their own efforts.

Well, PHEW, what a mouthful (or, technically speaking, a handful), hopefully all of that made sense. I pray that my beautiful ladies (and brothers if you are reading this) got something out of this. You are so, so much more than what you look like, how much you weigh, or how many men are knocking on your door. If you ache to be chosen, an excerpt from Ephesians 1:4 reminds us that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,”. Hello?! Don’t worry about not getting a text back from some dork (sorry) that you met last month who couldn’t care less if you lived or died when the King of Kings chose YOU before the earth was formed. When there was nothing. Blank. Nada. He knew you and picked you. You are made worthy and justified by God through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. And maybe that is just resting on your head, not in your heart, but I urge you to chew on it. In order to overcome the flesh, we must meditate on the word of God day and night (Joshua 1:8) and carry it in our hearts. The more you pull your focus from worry external matters and put your focus on the word of God, the more you know who He called you to be and the less it matters. In Matthew 24:35, Jesus says “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” You are loved. You are chosen by God for wonderful things, and you are enough.