3Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. 4Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. 5For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful....you are their daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. 1 Peter 3
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Proverbs 31: 30
I had what they call an eating disorder in high school. It wasn't the romanticized Anorexia, nor the intriguing drama that was Bulimia. It was a slobby, lazy, unattractive sort of compulsive eating. The kind that had me throwing back a bag of potato chips in the dark of the pantry at midnight, or stopping by a jiffy store to get a candy bar right after leaving the gym. It was the kind that had me on an odd diet of green beans, diet coke and (loaves of) bread during my visit to France, and kicking my legs spastically in the French hotel pool at night to burn just a few more calories. (How many crepes did I miss out on?!) It was the kind of disorder that had me touring the campus of Samford college on day 10 of something I said was spiritual fasting, only to return home and make myself sick on Mexican food. The kind of addiction that inspired me to cook for my family for a week just so I could smell the food I wanted to be eating, only to eat three times as much as I needed the next week. The kind of addiction that kept me from ordering a hamburger for years. Grilled chicken was my staple. And cereal.
My grandmother used to say this little poem to me when I was a ringlet-crowned toddler:
There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.When she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.
When I was bad, I would eat and eat and eat until it didn't matter what form of sugar I was eating, it all tasted the same, began to taste like its fundamental form, like a syrup coating my tongue. Nothing was original anymore... I was eating because I shouldn't, eating because it was forbidden, eating because I was terrified of eating, eating when I wasn't at all hungry...
Except that I was. Hungry for Truth, for a Reality I could count on, hungry to make myself whatever it was that was beautiful.
In 8th grade I noticed cellulite on my legs for the first time and asked my dad if he could see it, was I really seeing this in the mirror? Was this really my destiny, to be a- gasp- grown-up, with-gasp- cellulite??
What pressure was on him without him even knowing it! He had no idea I was asking him to define beauty. What did he know about the mind of an adolescent girl? He gave me what I'm sure he thought was a good, honest, "man to man" answer because we'd always been such close buddies and he always did me the favor straight talk: "Yeah, they look a little waffly, just exercise some and it'll go away." He couldn't have been less aware of how that one sentence would resonate like a toxin in my blood and leak it's poison into every part of my brain, or I'm certain he would've never said it.
Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm senstive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect -- But tell me the truth.
-Shel Silverstein
My mother couldn't understand either. Having had a different body type than I did, having always been lean and long, her biggest problem with her looks growing up had to do with feeling too skinny and too tall. She had little experience in the dieting world. If she had gained a little weight along the way, she and my dad would have homemade popcorn and diet cokes for a few days and problem solved, so her natural response to my distress was to simply repeat what the world had told her, what her friends did, what commercials said: diet and exercise.
And you could, most certainly, blame the television shows and movies and magazines that my classmates and I were all buying into. I didn't own any of those magazines myself as I wasn't allowed to, but I made sure to burn their images into my mind when I would wait at the Orthodontist's office.
So this is beauty, I thought, how strange that I never noticed this the first 13 years of my life. What planet have I been on? This reality took me by surprise. I looked back at the innocent years before me. But I never even got to say goodbye, I grieved.
And- to jump ahead for a minute- I am so thankful for those first 13 years. They were like oxygen to me in later days when I was at a breaking point. To even have those free days to look back on, drink from, breathe from, was nothing short of a divine planting, like oil hidden away in the ground. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
A big hurdle for me was the mixed messages I was getting. I had put a sensitive antenna out and picked up such contradicting ideas of who I was with it: child who can do no wrong until she does wrong... the golden child, the fat child... the child of Jesus, the child of law. "Beauty is on the inside," or "that's just something fat people say to make themselves feel better." Because it had to be one or the other. Either the outside mattered or it didn't; a riddle I couldn't answer.
Now I myself don't get off scotch-free here, either, for my part in the deception. I had a Bible. I could've asked and sought for what my Creator had to say about my identity crisis, what my Bridegroom Redeemer said about me. (You were bought at a price; do not become the slave of men. 1 Cor. 7: 23). But I was still a people-pleaser in those days, so instead, I held out my wrists to be shackled and hung my head in shame. (As a guilty woman does.) I was blind to the power of His blood and I sold my soul to the world and its definition of what counts.
I had been like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter; I did not realize that they had plotted against me, saying, "Let us destroy the tree and its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more." Jer.11: 19
Sure, I was leading Bible studies and running FCA and all of that. I knew my doctrine. Just like Peter and Judas, I knew Jesus. I wasn't drinking or smoking or partying. But I was a hypocrite and of the worst order.
"Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' " Matthew 15
Talk about regressing. In my childhood I knew what beauty was and called it by name: the glassy surface of the lake first thing in the morning, the sound of the crickets serenading me into sweet sleep, the magic of Christmastime, the warmth of the summer, the thick saltiness of an ocean breeze. Beauty was how my friend in 5th grade would bear her soul to me about her unstable home, it was the courage of my friend in 7th grade who made the decision to walk with a Christ her parents had never known.
In high school there was beauty all around me, still, but I denied it. God brought image after image before me like the most glorious love montage you could imagine. My eyes saw the rainforest of Ecuador and her Jesus-loving people that had once killed missionaries but now sang His praises in an unwritten language. My eyes saw the streets of New York where former gang members were being sheltered, where men in boxes were being fed and prayed with, and where churches sparkled like a diamond in a dirt mound... but mostly, my eyes saw my own dark reflection in the storefront windows as we walked the city streets.
I had sold my mind. I was like Christine in Phantom of the Opera, listening to the song of another, captivated by the "beauty" of the night, a slave to darkness and to its ruler, to the one to whom God spoke these pivotal words:
Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. Ez. 28: 17.
And so I stumbled my way through the dark; through Weight Watchers, Nutri-system, Atkins, and even Weigh Down. Through this gym or that, through this sport or that... keeping records, making lists, reading articles, cutting out models, stepping on and off of scales, weighing food, pinching skin, assessing in the mirror. I start to feel nauseas as I relive it now. What a sad, hard, cold, thirsty, hungry world I called mine. If my heart had been a balloon it would've been a blue one. A deflated, shriveled, dry, empty, icy, almost brittle blue balloon that is hardly even recognizable as ever having been a balloon... something you would step on in the street without noticing.
Now my heart is a soft, full balloon. A yellow one. It feels good in my chest. Full. Bursting.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Cor. 5: 17.
(But I'm jumping ahead again.)
For 3 1/2 years I let the world tell me who I was. Then the glorious day finally came- all praises and glory be to God- when I realized I had a decision to make. I could believe God or I could believe man. And this was no small choice! To believe God, I thought, to believe that inner beauty is what counts might mean obesity for me. If I gave up my (unsuccessful, mind you,) dieting, I wind up obese for sure. I might lose all control (I already had) and I might not end up with the life I wanted for myself. But I felt I was going down either way, a sinking ship. There's not much to gamble on when you're already at the bottom. You know what they say- no place to look but Up.
This decision was realized on the couch of my youth pastor's wife, Stephanie, in the middle of my Senior year, with our Bibles folded open in our laps- just the two of us. It was a regular meeting we had. I looked at her sipping her coffee with her pretty legs crossed. Her pink shirt made her cheeks glow. Or was it something else? She wasn't 16 anymore, but she was beautiful, that was plain to see. On the inside and the outside. In fact, her inner beauty enhanced her outer beauty, and her outer beauty simply highlighted what was underneath. I want to be like that, I thought. I didn't want to answer to high school's definition of beauty anymore.
We read Martin Luther's Preface to the book of Galatians that day and something happened in my heart. God spoke. He underlined the defects in my heart and put a firm period on the sentences he did it with, in heavy ink, the kind that flows from a fountain pen. Then He showed me the power of His sweet breath as He blew every dark letter off the page, floating into space like weightless down fluff that faded and disintegrated into nothing as it went. And what's more, He then showed me how unnecessary even this beautiful gesture was, really, because He'd already done it on a cross long ago. A scandalous, beautiful work that I was setting aside and disregarding like something ordinary:
21I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! Galatians 2
I shared my heart with Stephanie, the ugliness of the hell I'd been living, and we prayed. I remember feeling like I was standing on the edge of a cliff in Ireland or somewhere, with a strong wind on my face and white capped waves breaking below... I felt like I was jumping with God as my only parachute. It had come to this, though. Either He was real and His word was true, or it was not. I was going to test Him. (He was ever-so-patient not to smite me right then.) I was willing to sacrifice my vanity on the altar and seek a different sort of beauty. Because there are sorts of beauty.
Christ Himself was not considered beautiful but He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isa. 53: 2). And yet God IS beautiful: One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. Psalm 27: 4. It was in time to brace the seeming paradox. It was time for humility, for surrender.
I was ready to sacrifice what I thought outer beauty gained in the world- a husband, a family, acceptance, admiration, a voice in the world- to follow the first Fisher of Men. And finally- finally- I ran for Him. I dropped my nets and I ran.
I went home and read the whole book of Galatians:
Chapter One...
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ... 10Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men?... 11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
Chapter Three...
1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? 3Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
Chapter Four...
8Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.
The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
7You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9"A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough."
And on into other books...
Colossians 3...
8See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.
16Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink.... 17These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. 19He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
20Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
But even before reading any of this Scripture, He had done the work in me already and it was complete. It was one of those rare instant healings, praise You, Lord. I left Stephanie's ready to live just as I had the first 13 years of my life. Thankfully, I had a vivid memory of how glorious that had been, and what it had felt like. This gave me enough of an idea of how to do it again, giving no thought to food, to scales or clothing sizes. I was surprised when I got my Senior proofs back and looked thinner than I'd looked in years. The swelling was gone. I had cheekbones and teeth. Come to think of it, I was wearing average sizes again. Miracle of all miracles, it didn't seem like I would wind up obese.
I graduated and went on to college at Wheaton, where I was surrounded by lovely, godly women of all shades, sizes, shapes. (Some of them might be reading this now! ;) ) And they continued to inspire me. My vanity and old definition of beauty had disappeared in an instant on that couch back in Florida, but God used my friends at Wheaton to write a new definition of beauty on the walls of my mind. They were the new wallpaper going up, and boy were they beautiful. If they were beautiful to me, who was to say I wasn't beautiful to them? And it didn't matter to me anymore anyways, I wasn't looking for it as I was so taken with God's thoughts towards me, but it did blow my mind open and inspire new praises for Him.
I'm not saying I've arrived, or arrived back then. My senior year of college I started watching a lot of Friends re-runs while doing my homework. Mind you, I was married and 3 years past the ways of old at this point. But I noticed a sort of discontent coming over me as I watched Jennifer Aniston wave her pretzel stick arms around in grand antics. God spoke firmly. Told me that would be quite enough of Friends for awhile.
After each pregnancy He has to whisper again and again Stand firm, then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
It's not that we are to lack control or be diet-haters, but rather that when we try to have control for the sake of vanity and selfish wants, we are destined to fail. We have to sacrifice our vanity, hand over the reigns, and worry about our inner beauty. If we strive for self-control it must not be for vain reasons, for selfish reasons. God never asked us to lose weight and look like a super model, in His name. That is something we want. He wants us to work on having a gentle and quiet inner beauty.
It was interesting to go to college and hear new ideas of feminism and equality and whatever... but I already feel equal. That doesn't excite or inspire or make me want to be better. I'm sick to death of people dismissing the value of a gentle, quiet inner beauty. I'm tired of the condescension toward women who seek this. God can use us the best when we are the least concerned with what He is doing, and the most concerned with delighting Him in the every day life, in the small moments, in our daily sacrifices. He moves mountains through women like this. Women like Mother Theresa... women like Michelle Duggar.
Okay, and I realize that was a jump, from Mother Theresa to the mom on the Discovery Health reality show 18 (or 19 or 20 or however many it is now) and Counting, but she was actually the one who got me thinking and inspired me to sit down and write this at 5am this morning.
I checked out their book (they co-wrote it, she and her husband,) from the library and read it this week. I am in awe of their simple, childlike faith. They are refreshing to me after years of doctrine and theology and over-thinking and over-analyzing, and when childlike and loving is all God ever asks us to be.
This brings me to the 5AM wakeup, when I start thinking. About the Duggars, about my misconceptions about parenting and being a mom, about how few role models we really have out there. Sure, there are plenty of people who talk and talk and talk (like I am doing right now,) but how many are there that do and do and do... that you see and learn from. There are plenty of us running around like headless chickens, driving our carpools and vacuuming our rugs and organizing our kitchen and decorating our walls... but what about our hearts?
I start thinking about this, about my own messy heart. About my constant complaining and frustration with the house getting messy, with the messes, with the children just being children, with my responsibility to teach these wayward crooked little hearts, and the truth becomes blinding: it is really my high school battle all over again.
It's all about me. It's all about my crooked, little wayward heart.
God does not ask that we have perfect children, or an incident-free trip to the grocery store, or our home repair list checked off. God does not say that we deserve to be praised for surviving a day of a poop-smeared crib, nor for cleaning the McDonald's caramel dipping packet off of our car rug. In fact, quite the opposite. He asks that we take up our cross and know we are loved, and that we love others in return, whatever the sacrifice; that we continually strive to work on that inner beauty and on being more loving, and in doing so, more lovely.
When I choose to focus on this (because it is a choice I make- or don't make- every day,) I don't lose my temper half as easily, I don't sweat the small stuff... I enjoy living. I want what I already have, I feel thankful and I see my children as the gifts that they are, and I rise to meet the challenges the day brings. It makes me feel good. Not because anyone here on earth notices, but because He notices, and He loves me whether I am loving or not.
When I am focused on inner beauty, I aim to be beautiful to my God all the day long. I know that He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young (Isa. 40.) I feel His leading. I let go of the world's definition of who I am or could be and I listen.
When I watch this precious Duggar family 11Make it their ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind their own business and to work with their hands,12so that their daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that they will not be dependent on anybody. and I make it my goal, too.
I make it my goal to take these commandments that He gives me, let them be upon my heart. 7 Impress them on my children. Talk about them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. 8 I tie them as symbols on my hands (the hands that stick on bandaids and change diapers,) and I bind them on my forehead. Deut 6 I am not intimidated by the rest of the world. I am not intimidated by heady Christians who have lost their way. I know my path, it is well-lit. I wallow in my quiet life. I pray to be quieter, humbler still. (Because being too quiet has never been an issue for me.) I pray to be more beautiful every day. I pray to be fully present with my children, to hear what God would have me say to them... when they ask questions, when they hurt, when they search.
My five-year-old daughter came into my room before gymnastics the other day; my precious little girl with her wispy blonde hair and big eyes, in her black leotard and smooth skin; energetic, exuberant, and lovely. She rolled onto my bed in her restless way and said:
I was just looking at my leg thinking it was a little bit big right here (she pinched her perfectly precious thigh) but then I thought, 'No. God made me just the way I am.'
My heart ached almost more than I could bear, more than I could ever pretend to express on paper or in words. I knew it was a moment to slow down, to be extra careful, to wait for God's leading. I knew not to open my mouth too quickly, nor too slowly.
What made you think that, I asked her.
Well, I just looked down and thought it. But then I said, 'no God made me just the way I am.'
That's exactly right, I said. You are a beautiful child. Your legs are beautiful, your skin is beautiful, you are the only you, and it pleased God to make you. And what really pleases Him is that you are beautiful inside, right?
She nodded and bounced around on the bed, already understanding the lesson I was trying to teach.
I will fight for her, Lord, I think. We will fight for her, and you, of course, are already a step ahead of me.
I am more than ever aware. She has not heard me complain about my body, (Shaun is the lucky recipient of that post-pregnancy groaning,) and still the world's message is already ringing in her ears. And I am more determined than ever. She will not be allowed to think outward beauty gives us meaning or worth. She will not be permitted to live a vain existence. She will not swallow that pill, buy that lie. We will not go tanning or look at magazines, we will decorate the walls of her heart. We will work on inner beauty together. We will walk this road together- I will walk it with her- and we will find a higher road. We will demolish every argument and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Together, we will take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10.) One by one, we will take them.
I thought maybe she could grow up oblivious to the world's message, somehow protected from it, resistant to it. Now I am seeing that it is a battle we will have to fight until it's won and she's safe on the other side.
And that is the beautiful thing about generations. As the world presents new (or at least newly packaged, newly presented) struggles to each generation, God is there all the while, equipping, preparing, instructing, alerting, blessing... He has kept His word to my grandmother when she chose to follow Him in middle age, and to my mother after her when she believed and followed while I was still little and she was young, and then to me when I was about Evan's age:
23 For they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear. Isa. 65
I am so thankful for all of the women in my life who are beautiful inside and out, who are patient with me while I try to (slowly) mature in my faith... like Bambi on ice, it might seem. I am so thankful that His burden is light and His yoke is easy and that we have each other to keep reminding us of that.
