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Recently I celebrated on facebook how I've come a long way from my post in March 2013 when I had a breakthrough.
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| FB post celebrating a year plus since this breakthrough :) |
What I didn't realise was that as I shared the link again to what I wrote a year back, God was still working through it. Many people commented on how grateful they were that I shared this piece but there were these handful ladies that messaged me personally to say that my writing helped them.
Hearing that encouraged me a lot and made me realise that what I choose to say and talk about will impact people around me, and the potential of this is endless! (I'm getting exciting just thinking of what it can be). Anyway, one of the ladies who is my friend Lindley sent me her journal reflection that is related to my post..
I was sincerely touched by what she wrote and would like to share it here on my blog. Lindley has given me her permission so here it is! Enjoy!!:
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(Shared with permission) :
There is such beauty all around. Flowers, trees, majestic birds; to flourescent-coloured fishes, intricately-designed butterfly wings. I look at the sun every morning and marvel at its gloriousness. I'm thankful for the heat and warmth that it brings to my heart. I see the stars and my gaze is lost in its sparkle.
God made this. He made the Earth, and called into being all the beautiful things in it. Every detail was designed and crafted by the Maker. And they speak of beauty.
Including you. God made everything on Earth, including you. For through Him, all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3, NIV) I imagine that all of creation came under His scrutiny before actually having been created (laughs).
God is an intentional and a purposeful God. It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had design on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. (Ephesians 1:11-12, MSG)
So every part of you was designed and crafted by the Maker, and they speak of beauty.
Let that sink in for awhile.
You may not feel beautiful; people may not view you as beautiful, but He does. You are flawless to Him. Even if you have a gap in between your teeth; even if you have an illness; even if you were born deformed - He still thinks you're flawlessly beautiful. That is how deep His love is for you.
(At this point, I struggled with how God thinks of deformity as beautiful. A lot. But I realised that I had been following the world's standard for beauty. And that God doesn't look at outward appearances, but at your heart.)
He thinks you're beautiful, not by looking at your appearance. He looks at your heart and sees beauty there. You may have gone through horrible experiences; made terrible mistakes. But He's got it all covered. He has redeemed you - made your sins as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). So let Him define your beauty by His royal standard. Don't let anyone else define that. Because our standards change over time. Our own standards don't even measure up! Our standards of beauty have become so impossible that we need to resort to surgery and Photoshop to fulfil that kind of beauty standard. Beauty has become nothing more than a trend; and new trends replace the old.
This isn't just a recent phenomenon. In his wisdom, CS Lewis has written:
In a rough and ready way, of course, this question is decided for us by spirits far deeper down in the Lowerarchy than you and I. It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type….Thus we have now for many centuries…. As regards the male taste we have varied a good deal. At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men’s vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium.At present we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female’s chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children. And that is not all. We have engineered a great increase in the licence which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach.It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be…. As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the rôle of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!(CS Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 1941)
Let He who is constant define your beauty. Your unfading beauty comes from a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of greath worth, and is so precious to Him (1 Peter 3:4).
I'm sorry if no one has told you that you're beautiful. I know it hurts, because you long to be beautiful to others. So ask Him, "Am I beautiful?" Hear His heart for you, and let that drown out everything else. Because I'm certain that He will tell you how beautiful you are.
"You're beautiful from head to toe, my dear love, beautiful beyond compare, absolutely flawless." (Song of Solomon 4:7, MSG)
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Here's to all the broken hearted and to many who feel they are never enough. Let it be known that you are beautiful. Really. You are.
Ciao.
