Broken Up Stream of Consciousness

Why is it so easy to find beauty in every single other woman but yourself?

I was analyzing this the other day, looking around the room full of ladies (not in the comparison-type way of looking, although I do have days where that is a reality). I paused for a moment on each and every individual, and in each girl I found genuine beauty. Now, there were girls who obviously had their hair done that day and it looked super cute, or someone did their make-up job extremely well that morning…things such as that (more societally beautiful)…but in every girl, make-upped or not, there was something…a glow, perhaps.

Glow connotes happiness and charm, not the diction I’m searching for…because even the broken ones, the ones who haven’t felt ‘glowing’ for years…the guarded and hidden ones…it was something in their spirit (a divine touch?).

This type of beauty you could not compare. I could not say one girl had it more than another. Everybody had it all the same, although in each girl it was completely unique and altogether different.

(I wish I could take you into my head and into that moment so you could see for yourself what I mean without me having to attempt to describe it for you).

I looked at one girl. “She’s beautiful,” I thought. I looked at the next girl, “She’s beautiful,” I thought. And so continued around the room.

It occurred to me that maybe if I was able to step outside of my body and see myself across the room or from afar, to observe myself like I had done the others, I’d find it in myself too. Maybe we can’t see it when we stand two feet in front of a mirror nit-picking every little detail! But maybe if we took a step back we’d look at ourselves and think, “She’s beautiful,” too.

It’s such a burden to be a woman. Every day is different – a different emotion towards your body, your beauty, and what you have to offer the world. Some days you just rock it. Other days you hope you survive the entire day dodging every other person alive. Most of the time it’s probably somewhere in the middle. There’s pressure coming at us from all sides—to be enough, to look enough, to feel enough.

I think the problem is both that we let Satan get at us all the time, and that we simply care too much. There is so much freedom in accepting that God gave women beauty, and that you have it. No hiding. No pressure. No doubt. No cover-ups. Just be.

I guess I write such things for two reasons.

One. Know that you are beautiful. You are absolutely beautiful, and everyone around you does see it (even when you don’t…even if you never seem to). This is not the surface, “Oh, everyone’s beautiful in their own way, (even the plain ones)!” type of cliché. I genuinely saw, felt even, a powerful beauty.

Two. What an honor it is to be ‘woman.’ What a label! We get to demonstrate the beauty of God, the beauty of the creator of the universe, every day! It’s actually quite the responsibility, which is probably why it often feels like a burden. But all we have to do…is be!

I haven’t read the book Captivating for a good number of years now, but I always remember the chapter that talks about how Eve (woman) was the crown of creation. In taking the Bible’s creation passage literally (suppress the hot topic debate with me for a moment), God continues to create and create, and it grows and grows into this beautiful creation, and we, ladies, are the climax!

Beauty is the essence of a woman. Beauty is the essence of God.




Oh, P.S. I feel really sorry for all the boys in this world for whom it is not socially acceptable to wear skirts every nice warm day. Poor fella’s are all missing out.

James 1:2

Oh my dear goodness. will I ever be learning patience this year.


(The hindsight will be glorious. Right now it makes my heart ache.)

Victory

Death is such a ridiculous concept.

I thought Andy's death would make me able to comfort and encourage those who also experience loss, yet this week when another gal lost someone beloved, I had no words. None at all. I never want to forget Andy. It's a weird thing because you need to heal and move on, yet move on with it always in the back of your head. Because as soon as we forget, then his life and purpose and witness are lost. And people should know. People should know how awesome he was. Andy was an example of Acts 2. Andy loved people, helped people, fed people, tutored people, prayed over people, drove disabled people to sporting events, everything for people. His funeral filled up an entire court at SMSU. The entire basketball team was there, the entire Crusade group was there, the entire church of Marshall was there, it was insane. How did he know so many people? How did he possibly touch that many lives in the short time he had. And most remarkably, why wouldn't God keep him on Earth to touch that amount of lives tenfold?

It makes me wonder if God takes us right when we're ready. Maybe Andy was so ready to be with God, another day on Earth would have been ineffective. There are so many weird, freaky things that happened leading up to it. The way he said, "Now is the perfect time to go." How he looked for the seatbelt but couldn't find it too far tucked into the seats and so gave up the search. The fact that he learned the song "One Day" just in time to sing it for God, unveiled. Just in time for us to sing it, a gym full of hundreds and hundreds of people, trying to grasp the meaning of each word. The fact that in his final seconds, he thought fast enough to take the full extent of the blow and weigh Amanda down in order to save her life.

There hasn't been a Sunday in passing that I've not prayed over and over again, "Take care of him, Lord. Just take care of him for us." We all will strive the rest of our lives to be such a man. Andy got it down just a bit faster than the rest of us. Why waste any more time on Earth, right?

"When this happens--when our perishable earthly bodies have been transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die--then at last the Scriptures will come true: Death is swallowed up in victory." - 1 Corinthians 15:54

Bare

Today I woke up, saw that I was nearly out of milk, and drove to Walmart. I jammed out with window's wide open, "Country boys and girls getting down on the farm!" I parked at Wal-Mart. I opened up my door and began to step outside. *Thud* First foot hits the ground. The ground is cold. The ground is rough and scratchy. The ground is touching my foot. How could I drive all this way and only now realize I forgot to bring shoes! I grumbled the whole way back to retrieve my flip-flops.